Gamers 'outsourcing'!

They're like gamer sweatshops - and they're serious, in some cases exploitive, business. There are "well over 100,000 young people working in China as full-time gamers," often in 12-hour shifts and meeting strict quotas, the New York Times reports. Why? Because "from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online guamers [among the some 100 million worldwide] who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese to play [online games' boring] early rounds for them." The practice is controversial - "many hard-core gamers say … [it's] distorting the games," the Times reports. The article provides fascinating insights not only into gaming in developing countries (China has some 24 million gamers) but also into the maturing worldwide "industry" of MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games). In this alternate world, people are making real six-figure incomes for designing virtual clothes and selling virtual real estate, and less but real money selling advanced-level characters, weapons, pets, armor, etc., in games like The Sims and World of Warcraft (see "Lively alternate lives"; "$100k virtual land," 11/4 and 10/28; and "Games' shadow economy").