December 09, 2005
Outsourcing the Playing of Video Games
At one point when younger I was trying to level up on the "Adventure of Link" on the original Nintendo, and I found a place in the game where I could place a stapler on the controller and Link would continue to swing at a bird enemy that would perpetually regenerate, yielding experience points. I could go to dinner and come back later to find Link still swinging, but as a much more powerful character.
According to a recent article, some Americans are now outsourcing the playing of video games to China, where workers in sweatshops, being paid less than a quarter per hour, are playing games on their behalf to develop their characters to higher levels and to earn gold on multi-player on-line games. Some of these characters can then be sold for large sums of money on eBay and in classified ads.
Posted by Lonne at 06:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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