Have an ogre to slay? Outsource it to the Chinese

One of China’s newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. The people working at this clandestine locale are &#...

One of China’s newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. The people working at this clandestine locale are ‘‘gold farmers’’. Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they ‘‘play’’ PC games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash.

That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them. ‘‘For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters,’’ said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. ‘‘I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I’ve had. And I can play games all day’’.

He and his comrades have created yet another new business out of cheap Chinese labor. They are tapping into the fast-growing world of ‘‘massively multiplayer online games,’’ which involve role playing and often revolve around fantasy or warfare in medieval kingdoms or distant galaxies. With more than 100 million people worldwide logging on every month to play interactive computer games, game companies are already generating revenues of $3.6 billion a year from subscriptions, according to DFC Intelligence, which tracks the computer gaming market.

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As they grind through the games, they accumulate virtual currency that is valuable to game players around the world. The games allow players to trade currency to other players, who can then use it to buy better armor, amulets, magic spells and other accoutrements to climb to higher levels or create more powerful characters. The Net is filled with classified ads from small companies — many of them in China — auctioning for real money their powerful figures, called avatars.

That has spawned the creation of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of online gaming factories here in China. By some estimates, there are well over 100,000 young people working in China as full-time gamers, toiling away in dark Internet cafes, abandoned warehouses, small offices and private homes. ‘‘It’s unimaginable how big this is,’’ says Chen Yu, 27, who employs 20 full-time gamers in Fuzhou. ‘‘They say that in some of these popular games, 40 or 50 per cent of the players are actually Chinese farmers’’.

China estimates it has 24 million online gamers, meaning that nearly one in four Internet users here play online games. — NYT

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