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"Read it and marvel, as I do nearly every day, how here in the 21st century, science fiction and reality are never more than a hair's breadth apart."
Last night I read "Critical Mass" by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (1961, Galaxy) and couldn't help noticing that they'd caught today's US pretty good. Even got the date: just prior to the 2000 election.
So add this to your reading list, if you can find a copy!
What I find interesting is that in the context of MMPORGs, people routinely engage in behaviors they wouldn't in real life. No, I'm not talking about the slaying of ogres and dragons, but about the degree to which players are willing to carry their principles.
In World of Warcraft, the game with which I am most familiar, the gold farming system (as opposed to the character farming system) requires that large, fungible amounts of in-game gold be amassed before it can be sold (illegally) to lazy-ass players. Note the perjorative: virtually EVERYONE in an MMPORG disdains those who buy gold (not to mention characters). BUT! those large, fungible amounts of gold can really only be generated by acquiring items valuable within the game context and exchanging them for in-game gold (legally) to other players. The online Auction House mentioned in the NYT article is the main avenue for this...and people who would never associate with a player who bought gold from a Chinese/Korean/Eastern European gold farming sweatshop WILL generally buy goods from people they KNOW are engaging in the production end of things without a second thought (the behaviors of such folks are well-known and well-documented).
Because they are, in game currency, cheaper. Thus what I call the WalMart effect: people who would never support child labor or slave labor will avoid checking the label to see where something comes from if the price is right.
Nathan Newman covered this a while back based on a couple of paragraphs from a BBC article on the gaming culture.
Virtual Gaming Sweatshops in China
October 29, 2005
http://www.nathannewman.org/laborblog/archive/003517.shtml
...
Picturing online gaming's value
Thursday, 27 October 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4360654.stm
