I have just completed the readings for the upcoming week and felt compelled to blog about it. The reading was "Anda's Game". What started out as a narrative that I thought was going to be about gender identities in virtual worlds resulted in a story about virtual and real world sweatshops. At first I thought what a clever twist but then I began to think that this might be real.
A fellow school teacher of mine plays the game "star wars galaxies" and has several characters that he uses to build up in game resources. He then sells these resources for real US currency on eBay. I have seen him do this and am amazed at the amounts he receives for doing so. He told me that the market fluctuates but he makes about $12,000 a year in exchange for 2-3 hours each night spent "working" in game. He considers it a part time job. Now, for SWG, this is actually against the rules and could result in his getting banned from the game, although many have found ways to fly under the radar. As far as I know he has never "subcontracted" anyone to do any of the work for him.
Now, with second life, it is not a violation of the rules to profit from in game activity. In fact its encouraged. This makes me think that "outsourcing" labor is not only possible but highly probable. The idea of Real life sweatshops using second life sweatshops to produce virtual goods that bring real life money. Does this really exist yet? What are your reactions to this possibility?
2 comments:
You bet!
Thanks for your thoughts and the personal story about the Star Wars Galaxy player. It made me think even more about the story and the "system(s)" at work here.
I did some searches and found this excellent article from the Globe and Mail. It relates to many of the class discussions we have been having and talks about some specific cases of "griefing" and what's been done about them.
Regarding your question about whether this is happening, one of the middle paragraphs features this quote:
"World of Warcraft diehards rail against the 'gold farmers,' basically sweatshops full of workers in Asia paid low wages to play WoW and earn gold to be sold to Western players who don't have the time or patience to work their own way up the game's levels."
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