We may grind for levels, but few seem to grind for gold. I know I don’t. Day one in the game, G-Money comes prancing up on his pony and gives Hallgrima and I 10 gold each and some bags. I tell you, that made us the richest level 1 characters in all the land. We had the wealth that many level 30 characters never achieve. It bought us early training and travel and thwacking stuff.
It wasn’t until I was forced to do a Matrix reboot on my virtual life that I realized the true value of having this gold. Actually, I realized the value of not having it. The game was harder. The rewards more . . . err . . . rewarding. I had to earn my way . . . which is what set me out searching out where to buy gold.
As I’m looking through the Google results where I come across the option to ‘power grind’ This is basically for a fee you let someone else play your character. And by someone else, let us be clear . . . we are talking about folks being paid less then we give the guy on the corner to NOT wash our window. Somewhere out there there are . . . well, they aren’t sweat shops . . . what should we call them? Regardless of the name, there is now a class of cyber-serfs.
Most good folks reactions and even those of folks like me standing within ear or rifle shot of a good person, are negative to this cyber-serfdom. Twinky’s first response was that he would never speak to me again if I engaged in this cyber slave trade. Twinks a nice and squishy liberal so I expect no less and no greater than for him to have a conscious in such matters.
Reading the fineprint and doing some math on the $299 package to ‘power grind’ [not cause I ever would . . . really, I was just read the articles] I noticed an interesting line. All you get are the levels. You don’t get the gear you would earn. You don’t get the gold you would earn. Where does it all go, you might ask?
Well, it goes to those who pay for the gold. If you have bought gold you have tied your karma to the crime of cyber-serfdom. It’s what in the good ol’ days we called, “blood money’. Someone paid a price for it, but now it is with a Visa card.
Yeah, this post raises some thorny problems for me, because I've purchased gold in the past, so I'm tainted. To be more specific, I purchased 500 gold on the Blackhand server just before we made the switch to Khaz Modan, because I knew that the realm was new and that would mean that gold, if available, would be considerably more expensive there than in Blackhand.
ReplyDeleteI bought the gold from an outfit in Singapore, and it was a very professional transaction. I selected the realm and the amount of gold, made a paypal payment, and then logged in to WoW. By the time I got in, the gold was in my mailbox. Talk about efficient.
It is perhaps that efficiency that underscores the unease this post raises for me - metaphorically, I think probably Satan probably makes it "one-click easy" to sell one's soul.
My motivation for having the gold, far more than I've needed so far, was to do for others what James had done for me - 10g, some bags, and an equipment upgrade. And in fact, I've had fun randomly gifting noobs with 5g. To the extent that tainted gold can be used for good, I've tried.
But the fact remains that what this sort of commerce seems to allow is for those with privilege to play, in ways that those without, cannot. Below, I've posted links from articles about the cybersweatshps I found online, and I was struck by two different pictures, perhaps attributable to the reporter's perspective. One is "hey, as a Chinese serf, this is great - I get to play games for 12 hours a day, and it's certainly less back-breaking than other work I might do," while the other is "you try clicking for 12 hours a day, with a quota to fill and no job security, it ain't no game."
I don't know that I'd ever have the reason to purchase gold again - I don't go through that much of it on personal uses, really, but I guess that like my experience with Napster, once you've put a toe into the ethically questionable side, and then learn more about its consequences, I'm less likely to continue.
Power levelling, on the other hand - well, that's just uber-sloth. I wouldn't talk to James again if he did it, just because it's just so damn lazy....
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/12/08/business/gaming.php
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/2238/2005-10-25/160@278526.htm
http://www.gameguidesonline.com/guides/articles/ggoarticleoctober05_01.asp
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1776345&lastnode_id=523351