Gold farming is basically buying virtual money, armor, weapons, etc. for your online gaming. This is obviously a really great idea and is great for making money or getting ahead in your game if you are an intense gamer. It is crazy how virtual graphics can be worth a real dollar amount. People will pay to receive something that is not even tangible. However, I do not think this is the best idea for a couple reasons. It is cheating, confuses the gamer using it if they aren't experienced, should be illegal, and are a type of sweatshop.
First, I believe it is cheating. This is unfair to users who legitimately spend their time trying to earn the exact same things while others just buy their way through the game. I understand that people cheat in games, I have before. When I used to play Sims I knew some of the cheat codes so that I could get thousands and thousands of dollars so that I could just buy anything I wanted. It was fun when you create the house you live in and stuff like that, but it essentially defeats the purpose of the game. If you cheat your way through like that, there is nothing to work for. When I had all that money on my Sims account, it was useless for me to try and get my characters better jobs and things like that. Everything was worthless.
Here is a clip from BBC News about Goldfarming and cheating.
The second point I wanted to make was that when you use these people to get ahead, more in Power Level rather than gold farming, you get so far ahead in the game by not doing anything that when you get the game account back and are suddenly at a much higher level, you don't have the practice and experience that is needed for you to be at that level and don't know how to do the things you need to do. Part of going through games and different challenges is that you gain experience and find little tricks along the way to help you in the future and to prepare you. This makes it so you get there and aren't ready for the challenges they set up. This, too, defeats the purpose of levels and essentially the game. I know that most people in this class will disagree with me, but I don't think it is fair at all. If you are a gamer, then I think you should DO YOUR OWN GAMING. Even if it is just tedious work that you just don't want to spend the time doing, then that shouldn't be a reason for you to cheat your way through. If the game companies, like Blizzard, say that it is goes against their terms of agreement then I think gamers should respect that. It isn't fair the the companies creating the game.
Finally, the controversy on the working environment. Many of the places that gold farmers work can be considered sweat shops. In an article by James Lee on 1up.com says, "It isn't too difficult from there to make the leap into creating your own sweatshop. All you need is the ability to write game macros or the money to purchase them. That's right, if you know where to look, they are on the open market. A macro that uses a teleportation exploit in WOW is currently going for $3,000. Then just hire cheap labor to monitor the bots". The people working there are in close quarters, dark areas, long shifts, and paid very low wages. However you also have to consider that the people working there would probably be getting paid the same low wage at any other place they would work. Also, they are choosing to work there. Some of them had law degrees and have graduated from Universities, but they still choose to work as a Gold Farmer. They love what they do. They are provided with a place to live and food. Also, when they are off from their shift they are STILL playing the game. So is it a sweatshop? From first glance, yes. However these people are okay with it. They don't mind how they are working.
In my opinion Gold Farming is not something that benefits interpersonal relationships. Although MMOG's can be a benfefit, and enhance your ability to communicate with people around the world, I don't think Gold Farming is one of them, especially for the farmers. Since they are just gathering coins or boosting someone's levels all day and all night they are not really communicating with other people. They are working, not playing, so they have no time to waste on communication with others. When they make transactions with other players who buy their gold, they are not communicating with them either. They hand off the gold and go their separate ways. You can purchase it on a website collect the coins from someone and the whole thing is over with no communication. So again, this is not benefiting interpersonal relationships with others at all.
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Can you connect any previous readings and current events with this post. This is a good start, but needs to synthesize some more ideas and your own research a bit.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I never participated in real life purchasing during my gaming years, I have to respectfully disagree with some of your points.
ReplyDeleteAlthough technically, these real life purchases are cheating (according the terms of service that each player accepts when they join the game), I personally don't think they should be considered as such. The reason I think this is because a game is exactly that, a game. For many people, games are meant to be fun, not to be a boring, work oriented experience. A lot of people don't want to come home from work only to work more in a game meant to be entertaining. On one hand, it can be very satisfying knowing that your character is all yours, that you put all the work into getting levels and gear etc, but some people just want to have fun on the game and it doesn't matter how they have fun on it. Also, if I want to play with a friend of mine, and he's a lot better than me at the game, but I'm better at working than him, why shouldn't I be able to use my skills to make my character better when he is doing the same thing? I think the everquest model is ideal (the built in real money purchasing system) because people can use their skills and resources, whether in game or in real life, to better their characters. If they're time rich, they can use their time to better their characters, and if they're monetarily rich, they can use their money to better their characters.
I do agree with your second point, in that players who get power leveled generally are far less knowledgeable about their characters than those who level them up themselves and this can indeed ruin a game for, not only the player, but for those playing with the player.
I do have to disagree with your last point though. You mention that people should do their own work in the game, but what if we had that same mentality in real life? What if every person was required to make their own clothes, grow their own food, etc? That cuts down on the efficiency of a society greatly. Society has grown by leaps and bounds because of specialization, by honing a certain skill and using that skill to contribute to society. Why shouldn't this same concept be applied to gaming? Also you mention that "Even if it is just tedious work that you just don't want to spend the time doing, then that shouldn't be a reason for you to cheat your way through". If I spend money on purchasing game items/services, aren't I still spending my time on it? Money is just a representation of time after all. Why shouldn't someone spend the time doing something they're more efficient at, then using that time to pay someone else who is more efficient at gaming?
One last question I had was what do you think about the ethics of claiming gold farming should be illegal? There are a lot of people who make a living off of this (even if it is exploitation, they're still needing to make the money some way) and in reality does it actually harm anybody? If we are giving people a chance to help support themselves and possibly their families through gold farming when nobody suffers from it, is it unethical to remove these newly created jobs?
Overall I do agree with you, I never participated in buying/selling items/services for real life money and always made fun of people who did buy their items/accounts, but I think there are a lot of points that need to be addressed as gaming and virtual reality begins to seep into modern day life before being able to adequately criticize this phenomena.
As a person who has experienced playing with those who cheat, and as a person who has cheated before, I feel that goldfarming/powerlevel epitomizes this to the fullest. I understand both ends of the spectrum when it comes to cheating, because someone might just want to see what its like when you are the among the cream of the crop, but I feel at the same time, one should have to earn the right to be among the best. I feel it is only after putting in the time and experiencing the ups and downs of the game, that one should then be able to dominate the competition. This same concept applies to real life work, sports, academics, you name it, so I don't think just because you're playing a video game, it should be any different. So basically, I feel that I am on your side on these particular issues, but what would one propose to help cut down goldfarming/powerleveling?
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