Virtual Economies: Gold Farmers

This week I would like to comment on Jin Ge's article Chinese Gold Farmers in the Game World, and Julian Dibbell's New York Times article Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer.  As someone who has not dabbled in the world on online gaming (prior to our class's short Second Life venture), I was blown away by the intricate and elaborate gold farming operation taking place internationally on a large scale.  The concept that really struck me was simple: it is troubling to think that there really is such a huge market for an operation like this.  It is one thing to have a multi-million dollar market for an online game- there is always a market for recreational activities.  But the fact that there is an established multi-million dollar market for cheating in these games is a testament to the values of people today.  Isn't half the fun of games supposed to be working through the levels so that one feels a sense of accomplishment when they get to the highest level/win the game?  However, I suppose with the reading that we have been doing this shouldn't be as big of a surprise as I find it to be as we've been shown how incredibly emotionally involved people are within virtual realities.  I wonder how the people who use these gold farming services feel after they've purchased gold that someone else earned, or weapons that another individual had to fight for?  I'll confess that when I played Sim City I used a couple of cheats (though I never paid anyone to build my cities for me).  Even if I only used the cheats to help start my city, I simply didn't feel accomplished, nor did I feel like the city was mine.  I wonder if people who pay for these markets view themselves as players and if they always have a nagging feeling that they didn't do all the work by themselves.  Finally, I was also a disturbed by the easily blurred lines of frustration towards gold farming as a form of 'cheating' in a game and outright racial hostility described in the article.