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July 29, 2005

Wage Slaves

At first glance, the idea of being paid to play on-line games seems like a good thing until you read about how it is done. Then you realise that the subjects really are just wage slaves.
The way it works is simple, say you happen to play in a MORG (Massive Online Reality Game) like World of Warcraft. You start with a character and play all weekend having a great time. In fact this might continue for a few weeks and then reality starts to interfere with your game world - you need to go to work / earn money / eat / all the basic necessities of life. In the meantime your on-line character languishes and falls behind other characters (controlled by teenagers who don't need to eat / sleep / work / etc). You figure, maybe you could skip he boring bits and jump to the next level (or 10) if only you had enough online gold or points or something. You also figure this is worth real money (because it saves you time) and so you pay up in the real world to get something in the virtual world.
The only problem is how ethical was that transaction when you realise that some poor b*gger worked three weeks for 50 cents to generate that online gold for you...

Personally, when I read the story I was dumbfounded. I have played games before and when you get to the point of it not being interesting, you work out how to "cheat" or "automate" the bits that are boring. You don't pay someone else to do it for you. The idea of doing it yourself is what used to be called "hacking" (before the media confused that word completely).

Posted by Ozguru at July 29, 2005 07:30 AM

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Comments

Say you happy fixum grammar and rework this post?

Posted by: Rofl [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 31, 2005 11:08 PM

Thanks for noticing.

Posted by: Ozguru at July 31, 2005 11:11 PM