Blood Money in WoW

How Cheating at WoW Leads to (Virtual) Racism

Companies in China employ poor workers to play popular RPGs such as World of Warcraft.  They're not having fun, though – they play efficiently for maximum profit.  Their labor provides gold and leveled-up characters to be sold to other players.  These "gold farmers" work in sweatshops, playing MMORPGs.

Based on a recent essay by media culture commentator, professor, and Director of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, Lisa Nakamura.

Buying and selling in-game gold for real-world currency is cheating, so it's against the rules, and it causes inflation on the in-game economy.  Because the gaming culture has come to believe that most of the so-called gold farmers are Chinese workers in particular, gamers across the RPG spectrum now consider Chinese players to be the source of their in-game money troubles. 

This is causing the perception of a Chinese player to be that of a low-life, unwanted class of game citizen.  There is even a subculture of gamers who celebrate killing these worker-players, while calling them Chinese.  The result is a casual in-game simulation of racially-inspired murder of a real-world race, with death threats towards Chinese people spoken casually amongst friends, and even broadcast in homemade videos using in-game footage.

Read more in the full essay, “Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft” by Lisa Nakamura.

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