Monday 28 September 2009

There are an estimated 400,000 'gold farmers', mainly based in China

"In basic terms, gold-farming [the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games] is a sizeable phenomenon. The rather wobbly-legged best guesses for 2008 are that 400,000 gold farmers earning an average US$145 per month produced a global market worth US$500m; but we could easily more than double the latter to over US$1bn. There are probably 5-10m consumers of gold farming services. The main uncertainty of estimation relates to the gold-farming market in East Asia, which appears much larger than that in the US/EU. That uncertainty in part arises because gold farming operates at four levels – local, national, regional and global. We should encompass all four but, to date, the focus has been almost entirely on the global trade."
Source: Page 66 of Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on "Gold Farming":
Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games, by Richard Heeks, Development Informatics Group, IDPM, SED, University of Manchester, UK
2008
, citing Wang, R. (2008) The Truth Behind Gold Farmers, WoWMine, Wilmington, DE
This excellent paper will tell you all you need to know about gold farming!

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