First, wrap your heads around the concept of the virtual world -- in on-line interactive games like World of Warcraft and Ultima II, as well as on-line virtual "communities" such as Second Life. You interact with other actual people in the form of "avatars". People who do this tend to say "you're in a 3D world, with a 3D representation of yourself" but that's just plain silly. It's a 2D representation of a 3D experience that replicates an artificial version of life.
But, I digress.
Second, wrap your heads around the very real notion that people trade physical, real-life money for virtual things to use in these virtual worlds. Weapons, fairy wings, hair, clothing, land and buildings (they call it "real estate" but I'd probably have called it "fake estate"), and so forth. If your character in a game has a magic sword, you, the real you, can go on e-bay, list it, and get real actual money for it -- hundreds and sometimes
*thousands* of real dollars. You arrange to "meet" your buyer in the game at a pre-arranged virtual meeting place and hand him or her the magic sword, and somehow they are happy.
So. Given that. Here's why the Chinese -- who are still under a Communist economic and political system, mind you -- are more evil than anyone has imagined:
Reportedly they have instituted factories -- real physical buildings -- where they have legions of young Chinese people working 12 hour shifts with a couple of days off a month playing the games in order to acquire these virtual objects, or the virtual raw materials to craft virtual objects. The children are paid 30 cents an hour which is a princely sum. Their owners^H^H^H^H^H^Hemployers keep the stuff and sell it to the gamers who are there to, well, waste their income and their time playing the games.
Too weird! Yet, not. Reminds me of Servo -- remember him?
So other than the lame wages they're paying, which might not be so lame over there, what's the problem? It's online work, somebody has to do it. If the gamers are stupid enough to buy game pieces, let 'em, clearly they got too much money and need to be relieved of it so they can remember their dignity.
Aside from the hypocrisy thinger, and the exploitation of people (2 days a month off? 12 hour shifts?), the main objection I have is that they're WalMarting it. Most people who want to make money by selling virtual stuff don't have armies of people to turn into large-scale factories. They buy their own stuff and sell it, or they find it and sell it, or they create it and sell it. Legitimately, and are actually looking to make a living at this, or seriously supplement. People who want to escape the cube farms are being undercut by the masses of cheap labor.
I dislike it when it happens in meatspace, so I guess it follows I dislike it happening in virtual space.
The only problem with your position is... well... there's lots of problems with your position on this issue. For starters, Wall Street is all about "virtual" things; stuff like speculative markets and commodity futures (there's even a government agency for this - http://www.cftc.gov ). Guess that's why Sun Microsystems claims to have been running the world's biggest massively multiplayer game for years and years. Read for yourself: Next Generation article.
Then there's the whole problem of our currency being "virtual". I mean, the difference between a 5-spot and a 100-dollar bill is only what it represents; they're both just printed paper with essentially no intrinsic value.
Speaking of intrinsic value, ever stopped to think how much value resides in a "service-based" economy? Considering the U.S. has been heading that way for years (and we've even taken to calling burger-flipping at the fast-food joint a form of "manufacturing"; just for the bean-counters, of course) I'm hoping lots of people are wondering, especially with so much debt hanging over our heads.
And by the way, those virtual worlds and videogames aren't any different than movies people see at the theater, the concerts they attend to hear their favorite band, or the sporting events they travel half way across the country to witness when they could see it on teevee. In each case people are exchanging their hard-earned dollars for... an Experience. They walk away from the transaction with... memories. Isn't that crazy?
There is one significant difference though... I can take that virtual sword you're laughing at and manufacture a real, tangible, in-the-flesh object from the 3D data behind it (I showed how once, you can see the reaction it got from one person - Wired magazine's Senior Editor Chris Anderson). In fact, there are now businesses set up to do this sort of thing: grab the 3D "virtual" data and rapid manufacture a tangible object (not too much different than the CAD files I generate that get tooled into products people buy at the store).
And those Chinese, well, they're doing *much* more than just "farming" virtual items (though give them credit for capitalizing on the Western players' laziness to actually play their own games). The Chinese are building out a huge industrial complex dedicated to the business potential of tying virtual objects to manufactured goods.
Welcome to the real world, more virtual than you know.
As soon as I can get real stuff for virtual money, then I'm in.
Undercutting is what China does this week, they seem pretty good at it.
Escape from the cube farms, so what, you actually think people don't love their cubicles? I figured myself to be the only miscreant around by merit of my madness. We certainly wouldn't want the Chinese to affect our ability to walk out the door.
The Chinese are lucky that their government vilely mistreats them, that gives them a motivation to replace it. If they were really unlucky they'd have a situation where their own desire for freedom caused them to enslave themselves, then they'd be pretty much stuck. You know, in a situation that sucks but isn't really bad enough to pitch a life and death fit over.
I'm starting to get the idea that I woke up cranky this morning. More coffee, yeah, that's it.
El Jefe, what makes you think American dollars are any more "real" than the virtual dollars in some video game? They're promisory notes backed by nothing real. The only thing that makes them "real" is that people accept them as "real" money.
Except the 7-11 which won't take $50 or $100 bills, which if I'm not mistaken is illegal given that those bills are "legal tender" for all debts public and private.
Yep. Definitely cranky this morning.
BTW is that picture Manuel Donde as it appears to be?
csven, you make wonderful points and thank you, but what, exactly, did you think my "position" actually was?
That making meatspace money off of snippets of code was a bad thing?
That was so not my premise in the slightest. I applaud capitalism. Making oodles of ca$h by leveraging the harmless desires of others is something I am counting on to fund my retirement, innit.
Meanwhile, laughing at people who'd spend huge amounts of their hard-earned cash on snippets of code to make their fake characters more powerful or look better is something I do. Meanwhile, they're free to laugh at me for prefering to spend my hard-earned cash on a sportier looking car instead of an old used Volvo. 'k?
"what, exactly, did you think my "position" actually was?"
From my perception of the tone of the entry represented in elements such as:
- "wrap your heads around the very real notion" (the word "notion" implying not the philosophical but the odd and nonsensical)
- "people trade physical, real-life money for virtual things" (perceived bias emphasizing "physical, real-life" nature of something which is, in fact, valued - in real-life - for its virtual properties)
- "and get real actual money for it" (reiterating and emphasizing the "real" and "actual" in apparent contrast to "fake" "magic" make believe)
- "somehow they are happy" (tying back to "notion" by implying there is something unusual or abnormal in a person's positive reaction to a videogame experience... as opposed to, say, the normal happiness of people passively watching teevee or something)
I took your position to be condescending.
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Furthermore, I have first hand experience with China - both as a business person who visits their factories, and as someone who interacted online with a Chinese "child" (in reality a young woman who was eventually profiled online) trying to make money in a virtual world (you can read about my own experience here - Link). I've been following this issue for years now, and my take is that those people working in so-called virtual sweatshops have it pretty good in comparison to some of the factory workers I've encountered. If anything, in my opinion this shift toward "service" is less evil than what the Big Box Retailers have wrought on both the Chinese workers and the U.S. blue collar workforce.
But that's just my take.
csven said: "I took your position to be condescending."
Ah.
So, condescension is more of a trait or a tone than a position.
You are correct in that I was deliberately condescending since I choose to spend fairly large portions of my real-world earnings on generally more solid things than transient game pieces. That doesn't meant I would not spend money on something transient or fanciful. I simply do not place that high a value on such things and find it silly to want to spend many tens, hundreds or more on such a thing.
As well, take it as given that I do not agree that there are problems with my condescension. It is what it is -- an expression of my values and feelings. That these do not match yours does not make them problematic or even wrong.
:: shurgs ::
They're promisory notes backed by nothing real. The only thing that makes them "real" is that people accept them as "real" money.
What's all that gold in Fort Knox for?
"So, condescension is more of a trait or a tone than a position."
While I may be mistaken, I believe the root word is "descend"; thus one can have a condescending position.
And I don't recall saying there was anything "wrong" with it. I said it was problematic, and subsequently pointed out the lack of thought and imagination that accompanied it since so much "real" "actual" brand new sportscar-buying money is at stake... which, like much the rest in circulation, seems to be heading overseas.
Having done that, I wish you well.
Abbadon, all the gold in Fort Knox is probably for some clever President to use to pay off the national debt, it hasn't backed the dollar for decades. Could be silver there too, it doesn't back the dollar either. Look it up, the dollar isn't backed by gold or silver.
Did they also invent carbon credits? Are there virtual carbon footprints?