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  • 2006-10-14

    ALL about Farmers and Farming in the game

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    THE What
    A farmer is a general term for a MMORPG player who attempts to acquire ("farm") items of value within a game, usually in order to exploit the game's virtual economy. This is usually accomplished by carrying out in-game actions (such as killing an important creature) repeatedly to maximize income. More broadly, the term could refer to a player of any type of game who repeats mundane actions over and over in order to collect in-game items.

    A gold farmer is a player who farms items for the sole purpose of sale to other players via an out-of-game venue, such as eBay or IGE (also called RMT - Real-money trading). Since there is significant real-world demand for in-game gold, gold farming sometimes is taken very seriously.

    Most modern MMORPGs include terms of service that forbid this kind of activity, so gold farmers tend to be secretive about their real life (and online) identities.


    Professional organizations
    In the beginning of online gaming, most gold farmers worked independently, but as the market for their services has increased, a greater number of gold farmers are becoming affiliated with a gold farming organization of some sort. The largest gold farming organizations operate like real life industrial producers, with low-ranking employees performing the actual production work, supervised by managers, and delivering their products to centralized repositories where they are then sold either directly to the customer or to a gold reseller like IGE and OffGamers. Some organizations even impose quotas on their employees or tie wages to production.


    Gold farming in China
    According to estimates, around 100,000 people in China are employed as gold farmers, as of December 2005.  This represents about 0.4% of all online gamers in China. Chinese gold farmers typically work twelve hour shifts, and sometimes up to eighteen hour shifts. Wages depend heavily on location and the size of the gold farming company. One gold farming operation in Chongqing in central China with 23 gold farmers was reported to pay its employees the equivalent of about 75 U.S. dollars per month, while workers at a larger gold farm in Fuzhou earn the equivalent of about 250 U.S. dollars per month. The rising prevalence of gold farming has led to the creation of gold farm brokerages, such as UCdao.

    Because of reports indicating many gold farmers are located in China they are sometimes referred to as "Chinese farmers" or "China farmers".

    There are "gold farmers" or "gold farms" in other countries aswell such as Romania, the Philippines, Indonesia and Mexico. However, they do not approach the scope and scale of the Chinese farm industry. China's abundant labor, availability of high-speed Internet connections and cheap computers have made it a powerhouse in collecting virtual assets for online games, fueling the market among the 30 million or so online gamers worldwide.

    If you search online, you find most gold farmers are from China. China is infact dominant in this industry and Jin Ge, a 30-year-old Shanghai native has done a documentary on "gold farms" in China as part of his doctoral research at the University of California at San Diego.

    He is one of the many researchers who has invested his time in investigating how farm owners manage their production and distribution of virtual commodities across the border between the virtual and the real as well as the border between nations. His main aim in his research was also to delve into the background and lives of these workers "I also tried to find out what this job, combining work and play, means to Chinese gold farmers and how it feels like to live at this peculiar intersection of the virtual and the real."

    Ge Jin's research is also documented in his periodical online news articles which can be found at Consumer Studies Reseach Network.


    More on the in-game activity
    Gold farmers are characterized by performing the same tasks repeatedly for long periods of time. On English language servers, gold farmers operating from another country are often observed to speak poor or broken English. Also, a typical gold farming character is operated by different people between 8 or 12-hour shifts so they are sometimes observed to be logged in and active for longer amounts of time than one person could manage (sometimes 24 hours a day). A gold farmer's ingame behavior and ethics often stem from the human controlling the character. For example, some farmers may be content to share their earned "loot" with other players, while others will go through whatever lengths necessary to acquire items before another player does.


    Public opinion
    Gold farming is a very controversial subject in the MMORPG community. Supporters argue that the practice brings jobs and money to those who might otherwise not have them, that it levels the playing field for those who have less time to play or who joined the game later than others, or that it follows the spirit of capitalism. Those who oppose the practice usually do so because they feel it violates the spirit of the game as an enclosed virtual world or that it is unfair to those who are unable or unwilling to purchase gold, not only because they are at a disadvantage in relation to players who do buy gold, but also because greater availability of gold causes a rapid increase in prices, or Mudflation. Players are also vocally against gold farming, but the continuing health of the in-game currency market indicates there is a large segment of the players who are willing to purchase gold. PC Gamer, a popular pc gaming magazine, recently decided to deny all advertisements of gold farming in their magazine, and other companies have joined them in their boycott.


    Game economy impact
    Gold farming by definition entails the harvesting of gold or gold equivalents such as items desired by the community to be sold for gold. As the vast majority of gold farming takes place as a solo activity, the range of gold equivalents that may be acquired by the gold farmer is limited. Items such as materials utilized in crafting professions, quests, and low to mid-range equipment makes up the bulk of gold equivalents introduced by the farmer. Equilibrium value of crafting materials, quest items, and low to mid-range equipment is reduced due to the extra supply. Player crafted equipment may be produced at cheaper rates as a direct result of reduced costs from additional supply and greater availability. Once gold accumulated by the farmer changes hand to a second party the primary visible impact is increased demand for items perceived to be at the top-end of what is available in the game.

    The common perception by the community is that gold farming is somehow damaging to the economy as a whole. For those interested in manually laboring to farm gold via solo activity or when purchasing top-end items this can be true. On the other hand activities tailored to take advantage of excess supply created by the gold farmer, such as crafting from materials they increase available supply of, tend to be more profitable as a result of farming activity. Sale of top-end items also allows for those who choose not to purchase in-game currency with real world funds to leverage the impact of farmers to their own benefit.

    Ultimately the influx and outflux of game currency is controlled by small quantities of raw currency collected from dispatching NPCs or completion of game tasks, and money-sinks such as travel or repair costs. Gold farming activity skews the cost of a variety of game items by increasing supply of those easy to acquire while increasing demand for the more difficult however otherwise the overall impact is typically negligable. By focusing on activities that take advantage of cheap labor the regular player may turn the farmers efforts to their own benefit.

    However, it can also be said that by doing so, gold farmers make the game more difficult for less frequent players who do not spend as much time in-game. By increasing the supply of these cheaper items, the gold farmers make it more difficult for amateur players to "grind" their way to in-game wealth.


    Discrimination
    The prevalence of gold farming has also led to claims of discrimination against players with poor English on English speaking servers.


    eBay and Auction Sites
    Although buying gold in an online game is often referred to as "eBaying", most farmers do not actually make sales through online auction services. More commonly, sites such as eBay are used as a system of advertisement for gold sellers who manage their own websites.


    Price Comparison and other Tools
    Tools for the comparison of this secondary market have recently become more numerous. Eye On MOGS (Online since December 2005, source NetCraft. See also this October 2005 Slashdot Article), was the first site to tackle comparison of Gold sellers, however 2006 has seen similar sites appear - for example GamerPrice (Online since mid-2006, source NetCraft), MMOFX and Gold Price Watcher.

    GameUSD also provides an interesting vantage on this market and shows an interpretation of the exchange rate between virtual currencies and the real-world Dollar (USD).


    Rules and enforcement
    In most games, gold farming is specifically prohibited by the game's EULA or terms of service and is grounds for termination of the account. [citation needed] However, enforcement is generally sporadic, due to the manpower required to perform investigations of that kind and the large negative impact that the termination of a compliant user account has compared to the minor positive impact of the termination of a gold farmer. As well, most MMORPGs require players to spend large portions of their time on repetitive actions or "farming", making it difficult to distinguish between characters that are farming for their own use and those that are farming for real-life sale.
    (Wikipedia)


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