Chinese Communist MMORPG

[Adrian II]

Spino started a thread about this that was locked because of its unfortunate title. The subject has interesting angles, so let us try again.

Story

The real news of course is this:

Online gaming has exploded in China in recent years, with an estimated 14.3 million people playing regularly and spending some $240 million on their hobby last year. Annual revenues are expected to hit $1.5 billion by 2008 for a habit that domestic media warn is taking a toll on children's studies.

Already thousands of Chinese 'gold farmers' are active on EQ, WoW and other online gaming servers, collecting ores and credits, building valuable avatars and making in-game fortunes that may be converted into RL fortunes via Ebay and other auction boards. These gold farmers work in sweat shops where they play avatars 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for the equivalent of $150 a month. Meanwhile game companies are outsourcing more and more of their software development and account management to Asian countries. As a consequence, gaming environments will have an Asian 'look and feel' about them in the near future. More elephants and demons, less individual diversity in avatars.