Life of a gold farmer gallery

by Elizabeth Harper Jul 21st 2007 at 7:53PM

You may recall Julian Dibbell's recent piece in the New York Times where he traveled to China and visited some World of Warcraft gold farming operations -- giving us a good look at life on the other side. However, just as interesting as his words is his recent publication of pictures from the trip on Flickr. If you take the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, then this gallery has quite a bit more to say than the original article.

[via Game Girl Advance]

Tags: china, gold, gold farmer, gold farmers, gold farming, GoldFarmer, GoldFarmers, GoldFarming, world of warcraft, WorldOfWarcraft, wow

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Galleries

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Squirrel007 Jul 21st 2007 8:56PM

Its kinda sad how they only get payed around 4 USD for a 12 hour shift...

xcb Jul 21st 2007 9:34PM

Kinda sad?!

Room, board, AND $4 to play WoW all day?

My only thought was: Are they hiring?

Squirrel007 Jul 21st 2007 9:49PM

If I played WoW THAT much I would probably want to punch Blizzard in the throat.

Sargentd Jul 21st 2007 10:07PM

/shudder, no mods...

swatltlen Jul 21st 2007 10:09PM

Also China artificially devalues their currency on the world market, so its not really for comparison purposes $4 USD, because it trades within the domestic economy at a higher value.

foop Jul 22nd 2007 6:20AM

When you think about it for a while, this sort of thing is completely bizarre. Imagine trying to explain to people, say, 20 years ago that an industry will be created that makes money playing games on computers for people. Did any SF writers see this one coming?

The way farmers view the game is a little difficult to get my head around. Patches generate enough sound and fury from people who play this game for fun. What must it be like when you suddenly have to change your business plan because Blizzard nerfed rogues?

Mats Jul 22nd 2007 7:29AM

Well, at least they got a fan. So it's not a sweat shop.

fordp Jul 22nd 2007 11:06AM

The article that led to this one spoke about dehumanizing the workers who are farming gold and how we should focus our efforts on shutting down the industry instead. Yeah, right. Put yourself in the shoes of a gold farmer and ask yourself "would I rather be called names while earning a living or have my living taken away and not be called names?" The fact of the matter is that we injure the people who are doing this work in either case.

So, either 1) you think gold farming is wrong and you are willing to hurt those people either psychologically or in real ways to shut it down or 2) you come to accept gold farming as a reasonable economic practice in any virtual world and allow those folks to earn their meager existence.

Lori Jul 22nd 2007 2:06PM

First off, a gold farm is not what I pictured it to be. Which was a wearhouse like area with long tables of people siting shoulder to shoulder in front of monitors. Or something like telephone operator rooms back when long distances calling required operators to make connections. They spent eight hours/day sitting on a stool plugging/unplugging cables in jacks. They sat in front of boards maybe 3 feet wide, shoulder to shoulder in 90 foot lines. Both sides of a room with nearly each position occupied. It looks like more than 60% of the work stations in these pictures are idle.

I don't remember reading that for $4/day, gold farmers also get room and board (free or deeply discounted?). While the dorm rooms appear rather spartan, I would expect to see something more along the lins of an army barracks. And the buffet looked pretty decent in the pictures.

Seeing is believing and I don't believe those people are so bad off after all, except that they are forced to eat with a pair of sticks.

RogueJedi86 Jul 22nd 2007 2:40PM

Any idea why the gold farmers were playing WSG?

Julian Dibbell Jul 22nd 2007 3:16PM

A few quick responses:

They're in WSG farming honor points.

Interesting point about the skewed exchange rate, but 30yuan a day is still pretty low wages, even in China.

Big ups to my guy Jin Ge, a Shanghai/UCSD grad student whose research for a forthcoming documentary on gold farmers was invaluable to my article. More info here:

http://www.chinesegoldfarmers.com