August 26th, 2008

Gold Farming!?!

If you're wondering about the link between gold and games, probably you never played a game involving Gold as a resource, no matter if it's about Age of Empires or some MMORPG. Anyway, here's something to help you - we're talking about the so-called "gold farming," a general term usually used to point player attempts to acquire items in a game by exploiting repetitive elements of its mechanics, like killing various creatures. Why "farming?" Well, this is sometimes done using bots or automatic clickers, but when talking about the financial gains of such gaming procedures, the numbers look pretty impressive, as we're going to see next...

In most cases, if you're going to look for "gold farming" on the Internet, you'll end up facing pages with tips and tricks for World of Warcraft, but it gets much deeper than just that. Anyway, we're not going to talk about a specific game, as I was saying earlier, because this is all about the numbers. If you ever had the crazy idea that games only involve spending money...your world is going to be turned upside down right away, believe me!

According to a research conducted by the University of Manchester, quoted by GamesIndustry.biz, gold farming "could be worth as much as USD 500 million," and if this is not impressive, I guess you met King Kong when you were a kid, and instead of running scared, you simply said "Hi, monkey! What's up?" and moved on...

In the report written by Professor Richard Heeks it is mentioned that gold farming employs over 400,000 people, earning an average of $145 per month. If we sum it all up, we can figure out that the "gold farming industry" is worth over $500 million, since I am sure we're talking about more than 500,000 people "farming" on the Web.

Interviewed by the BBC, Heeks said "I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry. In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands." (a teacher who's also a gamer! awesome!!!)

At last, it should be noted that, in most cases, MMO players sell in-game currency for real money, going against the terms of service they agreed with when starting to play the game, and also risking their accounts. Well, it's nothing new how far could go some people for money... but would you spoil your turn your gaming experience into a hunt for cash? I wouldn't!