[insert witty title]

Further to a conversation at lunch where a lot of people expressed incredulity that such a thing as online gold-farmers could exist I present a video showing one of these online sweatshops:

There is something very wrong with any world with enough disparity in resources that people in one country can end up working in sweatshops where their only product is purchased by people with enough disposable income to spend real money on digital gold coins.

I can’t see this sort of behaviour diminishing over time. As interaction in online communities becomes more the norm, there will be more and more oppurtunities for people to make real money from a digital world. Here are a few articles that have struck me recently:

Comprehensive article on gold farmers. I don’t understand all of this one, but it is really interesting.

Probably my favourite news article ever Computer characters mugged in virtual crime spree

An episode of South Park, half of which was filmed entirely within an online game (link to full episode)

Finally, Julian Dibbell is the guy that first got me into thinking about virtual communities in this way. He used to keep a blog about his quest to “declare to the US Internal Revenue Service that his main source of income is the sale of imaginary goods.”. Dibbell writes very well and his stories about the characters he encountered online (scammers, korean hackers, friends) were always a delight to read. He has published his account in a book, which I might pick up one day. Sadly after publishing the book he seems to have removed his blog.