Virtual Power

As JinGe (GeJin?) and Dibbell both explain, gold farming, on a macro scale appears to be a case of exploitation, in terms of cheap supply for demand, and wage disparity between the workers and the sellers of the workers' labor.  But in speaking with the workers, a more complex picture emerges.  As JinGe explains:

"In contrast to their impoverished real lives, their virtual lives give them access to power, status and wealth which they can hardly imagine in real life. This is a reason why they are so addicted to their job. This is a paradox that the term "sweatshop" cannot convey: in the gold farms exploitation is entangled with empowerment and productivity is entangled with pleasure."

How then, do we understand the role of the virtual world in the life of a Chinese gold farmer?  Is it a sense of power despite external powerlessness, or does it translate into "real" power in any way? 

Dibbell describes the power leveling activities, where gold farmers amassed a raiding party of 40 to take paying players into the highest level of WoW to get special weapons drops as a sort of collective empowerment, teamwork, creativity.  Once it proved to be less profitable and was disbanded, the spirit of the work force seemed to diminish in kind.  Profits are constraining factors here as in any other free-market business.  It seems that assembly-line repetitiveness (to obtain maximum amounts of currency) is rewarded in this industry as in many others on this basis.