On Gold Farming

My last video game system was an N64. Although games like Banjo-Kazooie and Goldeneye and Ocarina of Time kept me entranced for hours on end, something happened around the age of 11 or 12 where I just lost interest. New systems were coming out (Gamecube, Xbox). Probably I just wanted to be outside more. My parents were fairly hands off and rarely the ones to take the "this is a waste of time" angle in dissuading me from playing, but I'm sure they were relieved when I began spending my allowance on books over games. 

At the same time, I'm pushing myself to challenge that "waste of time" narrative, as this week's readings ask us to search for a deeper meaning in something that has no actual physical output. And why not? What is produced when one reads a book? 

Still, my gut reaction to reading about the economies of gold farming was incredulity. This probably stems from some mixture of work ethic and a grad-school neurosis of mustalwaysbeproducing; how is it that such a large segment of the global population spends so much time devoted to games like WoW? And moreover, why are they willing to put money towards it? 

That's the Puritan take: all this time spent idle without any physical dividends. Before reading the articles, I had assumed that Chinese gold farming was another example of low-wage workers exploited at the hands of Western interest - not dissimilar to some form of factory labor. But what would Marx say? 

What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?

First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it.

As interviews with some of the gold farmers note, the work is different from alienated factory labor. No, it is not in the worker's "intrinsic nature," but the affection that many of the farmers feel towards the game (the fact that they have their own characters they maintain after their shifts) indicates that although it is wage labor, it is not forced labor. Certainly that will depend on individuals, but the NYT article especially challenges us to interrogate the dichotomy of "work" and "play" in WoW. 

As Miller et al. note, anthropology has always been opposed to a strict boundary between work and non-work. Gold farming challenges us to find meaning within the fluidity of work and play that the Internet has inaugurated. It’s certainly something I plan to keep in mind as we move into our virtual ethnographies.