Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer Turns Joy to Job

Ever thought you’d love a job where you’d get paid to play video games? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Just ask Li Qiwen.

The New York Times featured a look into the lives of Chinese Gold Farmers from Nanjing, China. Li plays World of Warcraft twelve hours a day, seven days a week with only three evenings off a month. For his work he recieves the equivalent of about 30 cents an hour and free company housing. Glamorous right?

Zhou Xiaoguang, who is 24, says it’s hard to say where the line between work and play falls in a gold farmer’s daily routines. “I am here the full 12 hours every day. It’s not all work. But there’s not a big difference between play and work.”

Not all gold farmers lose their sense of enjoyment of the games they play to survive reality. 22-year-old Wang Huachen, is in no hurry to complete his testing for his certificate to practice law. He says, “I will miss this job. It can be boring, but I still have sometimes a playful attitude. So I think I will miss this feeling.”

The game industry often expresses outrage over gold farming siting that it unbalances the economy of MMOs. Ebay banned selling virtual money for real in January. Players are also often openly hostile, hunting down gold farmers who are fairly easy to spot due to their repetitive play style. Every moment the farmer wastes in death is a loss of money. It is devestating when a farming account is deleted and the farmer must start again from scratch.

Gold farming operations have reacted by offering power leveling and special items by forming raiding teams of their own to claim some the rarest most valuable items from the most dangerous dungeons for their customers. But when the teams are dissolved and it’s back to gold farming, it can be unbearably boring.

In the end most find it best to forget their work has anything to do with play.