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Gold Farmer: A person who collects in-game currency in a Massively
Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) for the purpose of
selling it to other players for real world currency.
Synopsis:
Multiplayer online games have given rise to a virtual economy, in
which all kinds of virtual assets from in-game currency, magic shield
to whole characters are traded against real world currency. In China,
there are tens of thousands of gaming sweatshops that hire people
to play games like World of Warcraft and Lineage. The gaming workers
kill monsters and loot treasures for 10-12 hours a day to produce
virtual assets that are exported all over the world. They are called
Chinese gold farmers by western gamers and many myths about them are
circulated in the game universe.
This documentary leads you into several different Chinese gold farms.
Who opened those gold farms? How did this industry emerge? What international
connections do the gold farm owners have? How do they manage the virtual
transactions? Who are these gaming workers? What is it like to play
games for a living? Why don't they do something else? You will hear
several gold farmers tell their own stories and see their everyday
struggles to live at the border of the virtual and the real.
Xiaobai started working in a gold farm serving Korean gamers in 2002.
For the past four years, he traveled around China and worked in several
gold farms. After being a gaming vagabond for so long, he finally
established his own gold farm with a friend in Jinhua. His gold farm
is growing into an enterprise famous for power leveling (raising the
level of customers’ virtual characters) in World of Warcraft. He
has to deal with government officials, brokers, customers from all
over the world, and a volatile body of employees...
Changmao was a member of a gang in a small town called Lishui. Some
residents in Lishui say that the town feels a lot safer even since
the emergence of gold farms and there are less unemployed youngsters
wondering around and looking for fights. He started working in a gold
farm one year ago. Now he is persuading other gang members to join
him to fight virtual enemies...
Tietou went from Shanghai to Amherst College in the US to study computer
engineering in 1999. However, he felt very alienated in the US and
spent most of his days playing online games in his dorm, often trading
virtual assets on Ebay. One day in 2002 he suddenly realized that
he could use cheap Chinese labor to produce virtual assets, so he
quit college and came back to China to establish gold farms. Although
he was very successful at the beginning, now his gold farms have collapsed
because of the fierce competition in this business...
Xiongxiong used to work in Tietou's gold farm. Since Tietou's gold
farm collapsed, he invited several co-workers to live in his small
home and keep playing games for a living. Since they don't have a
distribution network, they are barely making enough money for food.
But they cannot stop playing...
Such stories of the Chinese gold farmers are juxtaposed with stories
of Americans who are also involved the global food chain of gold farming.
David is a janitor in a Casino in Las Vegas. One year ago he made
friends with Tietou and volunteered to provide Ebay and Paypal account
for him. He honestly transferred all of Tietou's money and only accepted
the virtual currency of Lineage—adena—as a reward. Because Tietou's
business collapsed suddenly, he now has to face many real legal and
financial troubles related to his accounts...
A Chinese gold farmer and an America gamer might kill a monster together.
But language and social barriers prevent them from communicating with
each other. They are a mystery to each other. What will happen when
they actually meet in real life? Julian Dibbell, author of Play Money,
has been trying to uncover the operation of gold farms in the past
3 years. He even tried to establish a gold farm himself just to understand
how it works. From March 2003 to March 2004, he earned more from being
a gold broker than he have ever earned as a professional writer. Julian
will finally arrange a visit to the gold farm of Xiaobai. All the
pieces of gold farming this global phenomenon will come together as
Julian and the Chinese gold farmers discuss over what the game world
means to them, how gold farming impacts their real and virtual lives,
why China became the world factory of virtual goods, whether it signifies
the beginning of a new new economy and our collective evolution into
science fiction, or the inevitable reproduction of global capitalism
in the virtual world…
As the stories evolve, you will also hear diverse views on this mysterious
and controversial business. In China, we interview families of some
gold farmers, government officials, a Chinese female gamers' club,
doctors of game addiction etc. In the US, we interview gold brokers,
game designers, activist gamers who established the NO Gold organization,
and gamers who bought virtual assets etc. Particularly, we present
why gold farming is so controversial amongst gamers. While some gamers
happily buy gold as a way to enhance their virtual experience, some
gamers are strongly against it. They think that the game world should
be a level playing field, that it should be a magical circle free
of the corruption of the real world. The game companies’ response
has been ambivalent; some outlaw it but some incorporate it. We interview
economists, law scholars and social scientists who debate over the
social implications of gold farming. How big will this virtual economy
become? Who owns the virtual properties in the game worlds? What will
IRS say about your income from virtual trades? Can we tell the virtual
from the real after all? How do we distinguish work from play? In
the end, this film is not about massive online games, but about life
in our global village. The virtual interaction makes the world smaller,
but does it bring us closer?
