IEEE Spectrum December, 2007 - 27

RMT service-one of the companies that convert game gold
into real money and vice versa.
While there's no law against real-money transactions, game
companies are understandably uncomfortable with the whole
idea. "We all admit that sort of thing is out there," says David
Swofford, spokesman for NCsoft of Seoul, maker of the online
game Lineage. "But it's not anything we endorse.
"It's a hazard of the business. What we're trying to do is have
games create the best possible experience. If people are doing
things in violation of rules...we don't want them in our game."
Game companies and hardware manufacturers such as Intel
are going after hackers with varying degrees of aggressiveness.
Among the most intense is Sony. The company says that during
the past few years it has booted out more than 20 000 players
suspected of farming gold in EverQuest; Star Wars: Galaxies;
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes; and other Sony online games. And the
game companies don't take kindly to operations like IGE. "They
claim they don't have any employees doing farming," Sony's
Hartsman says, "but they have thousands of contractors doing
it. You push a button that says, 'I would like to sell a coin';
within 5 minutes you have people respond. And they're not asking where that coin came from."
But here's a hint at how alluring, and maybe insidious, gold
conversion is: for all its prosecutorial zeal, Sony itself has succumbed to the temptations of gold conversion. It now has its own
service, called the Sony Exchange, which allows players to buy
and sell virtual items online. Sony gets a cut, of course.

eal gamers are fed up. "It's disconcerting to find
out that the warrior decked out in purple epic bling
bought all his kit on eBay," complains Drew Shiel,
webmaster of a World of Warcraft fan site called the
Wizard of Duke Street (http://www.dukestreet.org).
"Having someone come in and buy a high-level character makes
a mockery of the effort that other people have put into their
own characters."
But as online gaming worlds become more realistic, there's
little chance of getting rid of the perceived criminal element. If
anything, the most gamers and companies can hope for is that
the metagamers eventually do what Thurman did: grow up and
log off.
After a couple of years of gaming for dollars, Thurman got
tired of living on the edge. The clincher came when a competing
gold farmer began sending him messages threatening him and
his family. "We thought he'd show up at our house and kill us,"
Thurman says. Even the biggest sword in Ultima Online would
not be able to protect him from that.
n

About tHE AutHor
Contributing Editor DAVID KuSHNEr blogs for Spectrum
online at http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/. His latest
book is Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids (random
House, 2005).

StACEy SuGAr (2)

to probE furtHEr
to check out the largest online retailer of virtual items for
games, go to http://www.ige.com.
Julian Dibbell's book on his adventures inside the virtual
game economy, Play Money: How I Quit My Day Job and
Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot, was just released as
a paperback by basic books. Dibbell's New York Times
Magazine article, "the life of the Chinese Gold farmer,"
appeared in the 17 June 2007 issue.
www.spectrum.ieee.org

The Oldest
Profession
of all the weird new businesses supported by virtual
gold, one of the strangest is related to prostitution. online,
real‑world women (or men posing as women) give gamers
text‑based and animated cybersex in exchange for game gold.
the sex workers then trade that virtual dough for real cash
through real‑money transaction sites.
under the nom de jeu of Stacey Sugar, a 25‑year‑old from
England runs a popular strip joint in Second life, an online
virtual community where players customize their characters
and environments. Industrious players create elaborate strip
clubs and brothels.
If your character
doesn't have
genitals, no problem,
you can buy yourself
whatever you need
in a Second life
store that sells
virtual doodads
in exchange for
virtual dollars.
Sugar runs the Club xtC Elite, a virtual brothel complete
with "pole dancing, lap dancing, table dancing, booth dancing,
cage dancing, shower dancing, a champagne room, and
four private fully fitted and animated sex suites," she says.
Visitors pay in game cash, called linden Dollars, so that their
game characters, or avatars, can have "sex"-expressed
through titillating chat and character animations-with
virtual prostitutes controlled by real people. Sugar gets a
20 percent cut. translated into real money, she's earning
roughly $7 per hour for work that's less tedious than flipping
burgers at mcDonald's.
the people who control the virtual prostitutes get all
the training and accessories they need. "All girls who come
to us complete an employment application form," Sugar
says, "and if accepted go into our mentoring program [called
"bimbos‑r‑us"],
which provides the
avatar with a revised
body, sexy skin and
makeup, shoes, a
large range of clothes,
bling, and hair-
everything they need
to look gorgeous fast."
one of the most
notorious video‑game
tarts is Khannea Suntzu. In real life, she's a 30‑something
divorcée living on disability checks in the Netherlands. In
the game world, she readily parts players from their in‑game
cash. It's not just a matter of slinging salacious type or
wiggling her cartoon character on yours. for the right price,
Suntzu takes the action out of the game and into real life via
the online telephony software Skype.
but that's where the virtual story ends.

-D.K.
December 2007 | IEEE Spectrum | NA 37

http://www.dukestreet.org http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/ http://www.ige.com http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum December, 2007