Current mood:

geeky

Gold Farming... Whatcha Reckon ?
Just went to an interesting talk by my supervisor where she mentioned MMOs and gold farmers. I've heard the story before a few times. She's talking about the exploitation of low-paid workers to support the play of richer players in the west. So that the fantasy of mastery can be purchased, while somebody else's labour is obscured.

Suddenly, this made a connection for me with some stuff I've been thinking about gaming and work. Two other examples I've been rolling around in my head for a while gained new meaning. There are:

1) T.L. Taylor, who is fucking cool, has done some ethnographic-y work with Powerlevellers. Basically d00ds who are playing super-efficiently, putting in a lot of hours, to get hold of the best stuff and effectively beat the game. Traditionally researchers found this hard to make sense of because it looks like work. TL just accepts that this is another form of play that people like, and hangs out with them acting impressed about their groovy items.

2) A guy I did some research with about internet use. He gave me some audio-diary stuff of him playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, which I am looking at for how playing is accomplished through emotion. And it boils down to him having no fun while he plays, and experiencing the game a lot like work. He's pissed off that he/his character is spending a lot of resources he can't really afford, pissed off that the people he's teamed with are playing badly, and have designed their characters badly/selfishly, and his main motivation to play is the XP. All he wants to do is drag his character to the next level. So his play resembles work, but unlike TL's, where they are go-getting professional-types, he's doing some kind of not-fun alienating work.

So basically I'm struggling with the idea that play can look and feel like work. And then yesterday it struck me, it can also have an exchange value like work. Grinding for gold to pay for your mount, or XP to get out of a slump level into a shiny, fun level, becomes almost a money-saving exercise (like doing your own DIY, or mending your jacket, or whatever), in a world where you could pay £20 for someone else to do it for you. And does this then impact on the warm-shiny feeling you get to have accomplished it, the knowledge that you could have, and some people definitely will have, bought it?

So now there really isn't a terrible lot of difference between play and labour. TL's latest work is with professional Counter-Strike players, where the difference becomes even more crazy-blurred.

So is play work ? Or, more accurately, in what ways can playing an MMO be work?