So you plant gold seeds and come back in the fall and harvest gold plants?
If you’ve spent any time playing multi-user online games, you’ve probably run into players who just stand in one spot, never say anything and just harvest virtual resources worth a few cents an hour.
I used to spend time playing a thing called Runescape – it’s run by a company from England. One of the things that amused me was – like virtually all online venues – especially in Europe – they had a zero tolerance policy about racism, homephobia, and any other kind of phobia.
This was ironic, because several times the owners spoke to the press and referred to the place being plagued by “Chinese gold farmers” who were ruining the game. Had he said “accounts created with stolen credit cards”, that wouldn’t have been ironic.
Another amusing aspect was that one of the older areas of the game had an area that was a very thinly veiled stereotype. The setting was in the desert with camels, kebabs, tents, snake charmers – where every character was named Ali. The characters try to cheat you, and one of the activities is luring characters into a corner and whacking them on the head with a billy club. The characters immediately attack you if you are wearing a symbol of the “good” religion. Shortage of water is a constant threat.
The entire historical narrative of the make believe world is based on races of animals and how they have fought each other, and betrayed each other. The core of the story is the fight between two religions, one thinks it is the “good” religion and the other thinks Good is bad. Talk about the make believe religion all you want, but don’t peep a word about a real religion, or else.
I wonder if they plan to do an update for Libya.