Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Do Chinese platinum farmers tell people that they work on a farm?
WorldChanging has a pretty cool synopsis of how the virtual world is colliding with the real world. A Chinese plat farmer approached me in EQ2. I didn't understand a word, but I'm sure he didn't say this:

"Unsurprisingly, game worlds are therefore often home to "players" who game as a job, accumulating online goods to turn into real cash. But some have decided to outsource the efforts, hiring rotating shifts of players in places with cheap labor and decent Internet connections, simply to farm online games. The employees of these "cyber sweatshops" are paid minimal amounts to push a small assortment of buttons over and over (as the tasks most farming entails are extremely repetitive, they're easy to automate, drastically reducing the need for skilled control). For a variety of reasons, many of these companies seem to be in China, and "Chinese farmer" has become a typical in-game reference to those so employed."

You can read the entire Globalization in the Virtual World Article at WorldChanging.