How Some Online Gamers Make Real Money

A few months ago, I wrote an introductory article about ways that online game players have been making real money in virtual worlds. While many game companies have enacted measures against the practice of some players selling characters, weapons, and loot at auction websites like eBay, these players in turn have become more sophisticated. (Note that eBay banned the sale of in-game items and other virtual assets in 2007)

"Gold Farming"

In Asian countries, particularly Korea and China, massively multiplayer online role-playing game players number in the millions, much more than in the United States. Lineage and World of Warcraft have the in-game largest populations. There, in fact, Asian companies that pay employees on eight-to-ten hour shifts to do nothing but accumulate in-game "loot" by fighting game characters and monsters known to "drop" loot. This practice is known as "gold farming." These companies have been criticized for the extremely low paid player-employees.

Power Levelers

EZGamers is a service where novice massively multiplayer online game players can "rent" professional players (known as Power Levelers) to move their in-game characters up to more advanced game levels. The prime objective is to make a player's character more powerful.

24 hours of focused game play by a professional power leveler will cost a less experienced player about $25.

These types of services also sell pre-leveled characters.

In-Game Crafters

In some online multi-player games, like EverQuest II, players are offered the option of being "crafters", only rarely engaging in combat. Full-time crafters mostly do nothing but "craft" or manufacture in-game items like potions, spells, weapons, or armor. Some of these players sell their crafted items on auction sites for real money. Note that Station Exchange is the Sony-sponsored official auction site for EverQuest in-game items.

Entropia Universe

In 2006, Swedish multiplayer online game maker of Entropia Universe planned to introduce a real world ATM card into their game, allowing players to withdraw real cash from their game's virtual bank account. In 2007, Mastercard told the game company that they would no longer support the game's ATM Project.

Sparter

In 2007, a Silicon Valley company launched Sparter, an online peer-to-peer in-game item exchange operating much like an online stock broker. They earn their profits on trade commissions from sellers and specialize in World of Warcraft, a game with nine million subscribers.

Note that some online game companies like NCSoft, makers of Lineage, a MMORPG with millions of players, have banned more than 200,000 players for buying and selling virtual items for real money. The most vulnerable of game companies have been those who have introduced virtual currencies into their games.

Most massively multiplayer online game players have contempt for these pre-paid game shortcuts, claiming that these practices spoil a level playing field as well as the game economies, overvaluing certain items within the game.

SOURCES:

"The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer", Julian Dibbell, New York Times, URL: (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html?ei=5090&en=1676d344608cb590&ex=1339732800)

"Paying Real Money to Win Online Games", Robert Siegel, NPR, URL: (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5032947)

"Virtual Cash Exchange", Mark Ward, BBC, URL: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3368633.stm)

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm

"Gaming the Online Games", Mark Russell, Newsweek, URL: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6199780/site/newsweek)

"Sparter Opens Virtual Money Market", Ryan Olson, Red Herring, URL: (http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=22582&hed=Sparter+Opens+Virtual+Money+Market+§or=Industries&subsector=InternetAndServices)

"Making Money in Virtual Worlds", Laurence Holland and David Ewalt, Forbes, URL: (http://www.forbes.com/careers/2006/08/07/virtual-world-jobs_cx_de_0807virtualjobs.html)

"Entropia Universe players", Seth Schiesel, New York Times, URL: (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/arts/02entr.html?ex=1185768000&en=c0d0722216883506&ei=5070)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4953620.stm

http://www.3pointd.com/20070131/entropia-atm-bank-ditched-by-mastercard/