So, first you think..."That's got to be racist!" Then you move on to..."gold eh?" Let me break it down for you. Chinese gold farming is the evolution of the sweat shop into something new and high tech. Today chinese laborers work long hours, making cloths or little electronic gozmos for pennies a day. America has always been such a strong consumer, the need for these shops will always exist. We love have gobs of junk for little cost. That's where our Chinese laborer comes into play. This blog will be about how it has evolved into a new, high tech animal. Video games in America and around the world is a huge, huge industry. Making millions for many folks. One place in particular has been Online games. One I will focus on tonight is World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. In games like this, there are places to buy and sell virtual items. But people have found ways to sell items outside of the game for real money. One way is to sell you're password to your account to someone so they take over your character. I personally made 500 U.S. dollars doing this. Companies now are buying up maxed out characters and using them to populate the game with farmers. Characters who entire purpose is to avoid other contact from players and kill beasts and minions for in game gold, to be sold online for real money. You will know when you see them, they never talk or respond to you and run away if engaged in combat. They kill the same creatures for hours and hours. This changes the way the game should be set up as it does two things. First, it makes the game difficult for normal players. I witnessed one farmer kill lizards for 4 hours. I needed to kill the same lizards but had to quit because he killed them too fast and kill ALL of them. A task which should have taken me 15 minutes became a 3 hours chore. Second, you tip the balance of real world players, where people who have a few hundred to drop, can purchase gold online and then, purchase the best items in game.

This is real and this is happening. It's not a small group of people, when you factor in the millions of subscribers to this SINGLE game, you must realize that there are a lot of farmers. Is this the beginning of a revolution? Are the conditions better than a normal sweatshop? Many argue, well they are playing videos instead of working a sewing machine! But how is this that much better if the pay is terrible and the conditions are still bad? Just because the task is more high tech, does that make it better? It's not like they are actually playing the video game either, they have to go to a spot, and kill the same thing for hours...8 or more hours, and they can't talk to anyone.

Are we moving forward? Or just moving with a different task?