Playing in virtual economies
Gold farmers in Lishui. [source]
Will Eslinger of Entertaining Grime has up a list of his top 5 pieces of game writing:
1. The King of Azeroth by Julian Dibbell
2. Little Big Planet meditation by Michael Abbott
3. The Video-Game Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls by Jason Fagone of Esquire
4. Why We Need More Torture in Games by Clive Thomson
5. The Grammar of Fun by Tom Bissell
The articles on Eslinger’s list are all worth a read — even for people with little to no interest in gaming particularly; like most incisive pieces of writing on popular culture, they’re about their ostensible topic in a way that allows substantial engagement with other issues, which should be of general interest. Julian Dibbell’s list-topping piece looks at some of the fascinating practices around real-money trading (RMT) practices and businesses, which I’m still trying to wrap my head around.
As to my preliminary thoughts on the article and its subject, I’m most drawn to the fascinating conflation of work and play. At one point, Dibbell quotes Liu Haibin in Jinhua, China, a 26-year old who owns and operates a gold farming shop — Liu says that part of the reason he and his employees stick to the industry is that they also love the game. The slippage between work and play is one of the many things about arcade practices int he ’70s and ’80s that fascinates me. Gaming can often resemble certain kinds of (mostly white-collar) work, when we look at the machines and movements involved and the level of discipline required for success. When notions of what might constitute “work” change, as they do with the advent of RMT as an industry, we need to critically assess practices of play as well.
Some questions I’m currently engaging with:
- What does it mean to “play” a game?
- Is it still “play” if it is a job task?
- How might the professionalization of video gaming tasks relate to the professionalization of sports?
- At what point do “virtual” economies become “real” economies, and how should we define “real” in the aftermath of Enron, etc.?