Tricia Wang, a charismatic blogger who lives in California, tip me off on this research project about young people who are building gold farms to earn money off online gamers in China.



Here is a YouTube clip of the project:



It's an incredible bit of research and film-making by her friend, Ge Jin. It's a fantastic project that uses "distributive filmmaking", which I take to mean is a collaborative form of documentary, which puts together videos shot by people located in different parts of the world.

It's a great example of how the Internet infrastructure can be employed by one person and his constituents, as if the Internet itself is one massive computer. I love it when a good plan comes together!

Ge Jin is not the only one to pick up on the potential of networks. In his research, there's the student who studied engineering in the US, but returned to China when he realized that he could make a value chain out of dozens of online workers/gamers:

Tietou went from Shanghai to Amherst College in the US to study computer engineering in 1999. However, he felt very alienated in the US and spent most of his days playing online games in his dorm, often trading virtual assets on Ebay. One day in 2002, he suddenly realized that he could use cheap Chinese labor to produce virtual assets, so he quit college and came back to China to establish gold farms. Although he was very successful in the beginning, his gold farms have now collapsed due to the fierce competition in this business.

And then, there's the writer who made more money than he ever earned at his own trade:

Julian Dibbell, author of Play Money, has been trying to uncover the operation of gold farms for the past three years. He even tried to establish a gold farm himself just to understand how it works. From March 2003 to March 2004, he earned more from being a gold broker than he had ever earned as a professional writer. Dibbell will finally arrange a visit to the gold farm of Xiaobai. All the players of gold farming will come together, as Dibbell and the Chinese gold farmers discuss what the game world means to them, how gold farming impacts their real and virtual lives and why China has become the world factory for virtual goods. They will also discuss whether this signifies the beginning of a new economy and our collective evolution into science fiction, or the inevitable reproduction of global capitalism in the virtual world.

 

rion
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