Virtual treasure earns real rewards for game players
At first sight the bleary-eyed teenagers playing online games in a dusty apartment in the Chinese backwater town of Wuxue may appear simply to be engaging in their generation's favourite form of rest and relaxation.
But these young men are not battling fantasy monsters for virtual treasure merely to amuse themselves. They are on the frontline of one of the newest trends in global outsourcing - winning virtual goods that can be sold for real money to cash-rich but time-poor players elsewhere in the world.
"Many of those [mostly overseas] players are busy at work. They want to get all these things . . . but just don't have the time to play," says Li Zhi, the entrepreneur who runs this 24-hour back-alley operation.
With tens of millions of people playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games, known as MMORPGs, the market in game items is already worth nearly $900m (￡489m) a year - and growing fast.
Many of the most popular games are structured around fantasy tasks or quests that allow players to win virtual money or goods and to develop their online characters by earning experience or learning new skills. To social scientists, players' willingness to pay hard cash for virtual treasure is powerful evidence of the blurring of the lines between the online and offline world.
For countless internet-savvy businessmen it is an opportunity - and one that China, with its excellent telecoms infrastructure, 100m-strong online community and low-cost labour, is well placed to exploit.
Mr Li pays just Rmb200 (￡13) monthly rent for four concrete-floored rooms, and a further Rmb1,000 gets him a high-speed fibre-optic internet connection to a local telecom company.
Few virtual games items suppliers are willing to discuss their operations, which exist in an untaxed legal twilight, since the Chinese government has no rules covering the sector. "The market is too chaotic and uncontrolled, it's like being in a dark room," says Lu Yanlin, an online games veteran and colleague of Mr Li.
Mr Li himself is something of a visionary, however. He is happy to explain the workings of his business and is hopeful Beijing might soon legitimise the sector by drawing up regulations to govern its activities.
Indeed, he recently drew up a business plan that calls for foreign investment in a proposed game-item "factory" and trading platform.
A foreign partner could help Mr Li deal with one of his greatest challenges: how to repatriate money earned from sales of virtual items to the overseas buyers.
Few buyers will wire money to China, so Chinese traders must work through intermediaries such as expatriate relatives or friends.
Internet Gaming Entertainment, a US-based virtual item auction site, offers one solution by sending payments directly to Chinese suppliers' accounts, a procedure it says leaves any legal problems with them - but which means it gets a hefty slice of the profit margin.
Mr Li would rather go it alone and has already begun structuring his unofficial business, which employs more than 40 people, along the professional grounds he sees as the future.
Some workers specialise in developing better ways to win gold or experience in games such as World of Warcraft, the popular fantasy game developed by US publisher Blizzard Entertainment, while others focus on sales.
The players are paid according to how much they produce and are supplied with translation software so they can exchange text messages with English-speaking or Japanese players within each game, whose co-operation can be essential to completing lucrative quests.
Mr Li schools his employees to be polite and rule-abiding online, in part to avoid them attracting attention from games companies.
Most companies oppose cash-based trade in virtual items, which some players see as a form of cheating, and games managers routinely cancel the accounts of players found to be "farming" online treasure.
Mr Li's training seems to have paid off. A recent visit to his gaming rooms found one employee looking for treasure in the South Korean-developed Lineage II game exchanging courtly bows and magic spells with a genuine player, to the benefit of both.
Mr Li says his workers make an average of Rmb700 a month, a decent wage in Wuxue, a ramshackle town on the banks of the Yangtze river. And the craze for MMORPGs among young Chinese means he has little difficulty finding staff.
"I used to play World of Warcraft in internet bars," said one 19-year-old employee. "I still really enjoy it, even now that it is work."
“游戏企业家”网上探宝
在
落后的中国武穴市一间尘土弥漫的住宅里，一群两眼惺忪的少年正在玩着网络游戏。乍一眼看上去，他们似乎只不过是沉溺于他们那个年纪最风行的休息和消遣方式。
但是这拨年轻人与虚幻的怪物厮杀，并非仅仅为了获得虚拟财宝来自娱自乐。他们是在从事着全球外包行业最新潮流的前沿工作――赢取虚拟装备，卖给世界其他地方有钱没时间的玩家来换真钱。
“那些玩家很多（绝大多数是外国玩家）都忙于工作。他们想得到这些东西……但就是没时间去玩，”李志（音译）说。他是这家24小时运转的小巷作坊的老板。
现在有数千万人在玩被称为“MMORPG”的“大型多人网络角色扮演游戏”，游戏物品的市场每年价值已达9亿美元，并且在快速增长。
大部分最流行的游戏建构的基础是虚幻的任务或者探宝活动，可以让玩家赢取虚拟货币或物品，并通过赚取经验值或者学习新技能来培养自己的网上人物。在社会学家看来，玩家愿意用现金购买虚拟财宝，这是“网上”与“网下”两个世界之间的界线发生模糊的有力证明。
对于不计其数的精于网络的生意人来说，这是一个机会。而在中国，电信基础设施优良，每100米就有一个接通网络的社区，人工成本又低，中国开发这个机会的条件已经万事俱备。
李先生租下混凝土板楼的四个房间，每个月只掏200元人民币（合25美元）租金，另外再出1000元人民币从当地电信公司签下一条高速光缆连接互联网。
虚拟游戏物品供应商几乎都不愿意讨论自己的买卖――由于中国政府还没有为这个行业设立相关法规，所以它处于一个尚未被征税的法律模糊地带。“这个市场非常混乱，也没人管理，就像在一个黑暗的屋子里一样，”陆言林（音译）说。他是网络游戏老手，也是李先生的同事。不过，李先生自己也算是个梦想家。他高兴地介绍了自己生意的运作方式，他也希望北京出台管理这个行业活动的法规，好尽快让该行业合法化。
其实，他最近草拟了一份商业计划，要吸引外资投入一座计划建造的游戏物品“工厂”及交易平台。
李先生遇到的最大挑战之一是：将虚拟物品销售给海外玩家后如何拿回货款。有一个外国合作伙伴可以帮助他解决这个问题。没几个玩家会把钱汇往中国，因此中国商人只能通过海外亲友等中介来完成交易。美国的一家虚拟物品拍卖网站――网络游戏娱乐公司（Internet Gaming Entertainment）提供了一种解决方案，能够将货款直接打入中国供应商的户头。该公司声称这种操作方式不会给供应商带来任何法律问题，同时也意味着该公司可从交易收入中获得丰厚利润。
李先生宁愿单干，并且已经开始组建他尚未获得官方承认的生意。他雇了40多人，朝向他视为未来的专业方向前进。
有些员工精于在《魔兽争霸》（World of Warcraft）等游戏中开发获取金币和经验值更好方法――《魔兽争霸》是由美国游戏发行商暴风雪娱乐公司（Blizzard Entertainment）开发的一款虚拟游戏。其他员工则主要负责营销。
玩游戏的员工们根据他们所制造的物品数量领取报酬，他们还配备了翻译软件，可以在同一游戏中与操英语或者日语的玩家用文本信息来交流。要完成奖励丰厚的探险任务，他们的配合相当重要。
李先生对员工进行培训，要求他们在网上遵守礼貌、循规蹈矩，部分原因是避免他们被游戏公司盯上。
绝大多数公司都反对虚拟物品的现金交易，因为部分玩家将这种交易视作一种欺诈的形式，同时游戏管理员也定期封杀被他们认定是“出售”网络财富的玩家帐户。
李先生的培训看来起发挥了作用。我在最近一次造访他的游戏室时，看到一名在韩国开发的游戏《天堂二》（Lineage II）游戏中寻宝的员工，与一名真正的玩家互换魔法咒语，并且很有礼貌地相互鞠躬。这对双方都有好处。
李先生说，他的员工平均每人每月能拿700元人民币，在武穴这个长江边破旧的城市里，这算是一份不错的工资了。而中国年轻人对于MMORPG游戏的狂热意味着他要找员工基本不用费劲。
“我原来在网吧里玩《魔兽争霸》，”一名19岁的员工说：“尽管现在这已经成为一份工作了，我还是非常喜欢这个游戏。”
