Gold Farming, Now Unionizing...

Korea, is home of world turmoil, threats of being a nuclear wasteland from the north, and of course gold farming. Now those gold farmers are deciding to unionize against the government and MMO's who is moving against them.

Their new title is D.A.D.P.A. (Digital Asset Distribution Promotion Association) And it’s all about selling virtual items and gold to western MMO players who have more money then time and/or patience to play the game they are paying a monthly fee for.

Though it is breaking the EULA (End User License Agreement) Which is that three to five pages of small print you click past without reading to install any video game you load on your computers, in there stating you agree not to do that or forfeit your account if caught.

So in Korea where an average days wage is about or under $7 a day, selling 5 hours of farmed items and gold for about $10-$20 is a serious wage earning and real income. Supporting themselves, family, drinking and getting to play as well.

Of course the fact they are unionizing means this is not just a handful of guys here and there, but an actual industry, because five people do not form a union that stands against the government and other corporations in legal battles.

You should be very shocked at how many illegal aliens are in the U.S. boarder. If they where organized and all decided to strike at the same time, they could bring the U.S. to it’s knees, and now the U.S. online game industry has spawned a working class that is becoming a multi-national union of thousands of “digital farmers” who live within our virtual worlds doing the same thing that Mexico is doing.

Illegally invading the boarders to take on below “U.S. standards of living” and farming mundane and drudge works for pennies on the dollar. However it isn’t the salads and canned food, burgers, and other fast-foods we stuff our faces with after work, but it’s now our play they are living on.

We have such a level of living (yes even you guys who complain about working for minimum wage) are living at such a level in the world market that people are scrounging for your play-time scraps.

I have never purchased digital content, I have paid monthly fees to play games with digital assets, (Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy-Online, World of Warcraft, and Beta'ed many MMO's out there, Yah I have played a lot of them) I do know persons who have purchased from the farmers (DADPA’s) because their play, as is life, is becoming a business decision for any moment in play or work.

Their time is becoming so valuable that they have re-evaluated what their time is worth to them in play and by buying digital assets they maximize their limited fun time off of work.

Instead of spending hours and hours (we are talking almost like having a part time to full time job) to get to a level of play, they purchase short-cuts to get there because their play time, like the rest of our lives here in the U.S. we don’t have enough time to do the things we want.

So it comes down to , we are so successful her in the U.S. that we are literally paying others to play for us because we don’t have enough play time for ourselves.

What’s wrong with this picture??

MMO's, virtual worlds, and other legal drugs..

So it comes down to the fact that people's marriages are failing due to MMO's. relationships are being formed on MMO's that lead to future ruined marriages, and in some cases it seems to be saving marriages, as couples dive into this together. (Those who play together stay together.) the broken marriages statistically speaking is where one plays and one doesn’t.

Lack of sleep, work effected, people speaking in incoherent tongs at work, DPS Vs Tankers, Agro, bosses, mobs, it sounds like something to do with drugs and the seedy underground. Thieves assassins, getting owned, or owning people, sounds almost like a form of slavery as well, or possible sweatshops.

What is one to do?

Well logically it comes down to “shit I better get with the program or get left behind!”

So I am making it my singular mission to become part of the problem with EDMMO.

In the not so distant past, I had everything fleshed out for a RTS game, that also involved a “Light” form of MMO interface for it. And it as other types of drugs took on a life of it’s own. I was 6 numbers away from the financing I needed to make everything happen and for world domination.

Then, as if not playing the lotto, and winning, wasn’t a high enough odd for me to fight, a golden ticket appeared over my head in a bright flash of light floating down as if a mythic feather from an angel above granting me my wish.

As an Independent Studio with dreams of grandeur and self delusion several years back, pounding the keyboard night after night teaching myself C++ and C#. When suddenly in one of my nightly jaunts into the vast world wide web, my tears of blood and sweat of labor was answered by an unlikely agent of mercy.

I was looking to secure a web address by the name of multiverse for my game, when it appeared in front of me, someone had already owned the URL, not only that, they where an MMO maker, and not only that,.. They also where a publisher of MMO’s and supplied the engine for those who wanted to make MMO’s.. Whoa, that stunned me. what was the chance I would type in that URL and find the very thing I wanted without any knowledge of their existence? (6 numbers are easier to hit I think)

I signed up got into the pre-beta, and been working on it quietly ever since. Before the media hype, back when others where still trying to make stuff and before there where functional bits and peaces to supply.

It seems, that my delusions of grandeur are merely stepping stones to true world domination. So it seems, that coupled with the Garage Games engine for my RTS, I have my tools, and development as a very small studio, is in fact moving forward without lots of money and Macro-soft type of monster support.

If you haven’t yet checked it out, hit the sites. www.edmmo.com and www.edrts.com

Pretty soon I will be dealing out my own type of street legal brain candy, hopefully it will have the same clean and pure cut and strength of barbiturate known as WoW, (World of WarCrack), usually smoked with a Dwarven bong, or gnomish hooka-pipe. I’m sure the elves use needles, the horde just snort it, I mean k’mon look at those noses, you know they snort it.

I’ll try to supply it all for everyone. Though, and of course, your first few tastes will be for free.

The question is, will it save marriages and jobs or destroy them?

-Psyberwolf

Debt Free AND a Direction..

The talk of getting out of debit is on most everyone’s lips, How it is such a good thing, an attainable thing, just that we got so much going on right now, but hey, I can get out of debt most any time, just need to knuckle down and get to it.

Debit is such an easy corporate trap. Owing not to another person but to stock holders, as it is the group of people who are making a living and retirement on the monthly payments your making.
I’m not a corporate bashing, tree-hugging, Commie, steal from the rich to give to the poor, sniveling little puke. I’m a Tech-utopian Libertarian conservative. (most people at this point say.. WTF? You’re a what?)

Here’s how this out of the box person see’s things.
We can save this planet with additional Technology, as in wireless and or wired broadcast power and communications (talking vastly larger amounts of bandwidth to anyone who is on the grid.) Higher Tech fuels, as in screw the gas, Screw the Bio-diesel, We are talking ocean saltwater electrolysis Hydrogen stored and powered hydrogen fuel-cells with pure water and minor amount of heat for waste products, (just think folks, if this was going on, we could produce more Oxygen, if all the cars where replaced, then all of the forests we cut down in Americas history.)
Save oil for military, and industrial use. We really don’t need it for civilian use.
Laptop, portable, off the grid, but somewhat protecting the majority of the environment (not into clear cutting) but I do strongly believe in private ownership of land, homes and bank accounts. Thus the Tech-Utopian belief.

Libertarian in that I believe individuals should be allowed true freedom as far as choice over one’s own body, mind and spirit. However I’m Conservative in that I don’t believe in the welfare state. I don’t believe in communism, it never works because it is everyone’s nature to covet, to want. I want that really nice car, I want a big house surrounded with forest with no one else looking in my kitchen window while I’m cooking. Communism and welfare state deal mostly with those who don’t want to do anything and still have everything.

Communist leaders and “party leaders” end up with everything and everyone else is living in a welfare state. The Welfare state (note: I’m not talking about disabled persons) deals with people who don’t want to work or do anything and receive everything for basic living.
God’s (or whatever belief system you may have) only motivator to give any person motivation to get off their ass and do something was hunger. Take that away and people fall into apathy. The only thing driving America and other “developed” nations is that whole covet thing, “I want this and I want that.”

I believe If you get off your butt, go to work and make money, it shouldn’t be taken away from you to feed some jackass drunk who claims life wont help him get out of the bar to hold down a job, so now you and me must give some of our money so he can go get drunk. What a bunch of crap, if you can work, you should work if you want (anything) The only thing the state should be paying for is medical and child daycare (for those who can’t afford it. Instead of giving them a welfare check, cover the daycare costs so they can work and make a life for themselves.

Long description of my belief system.
I work a day job (at night) 40 hours a day, and working what extra hours I can for making my way as a publication and game studio, which = about 60 hours a week in active work. Some for money and some hopefully to eliminate the need for money, and the fact I really love to make games and develop story ideas bouncing around in my head. That and I really hate working for someone else 40 hours a week, away from home.

Tossing my life away for someone who is taking my skills and making 800-1200 percent more off of my contribution to the company then what they are taking from me. (My check isn’t any where close to the profit they make off of my labor.)
If I only make 120 percent of the value of my labor, and it is all my money and labor for things I love to do, would be vastly better then having someone else making the 800%+ off of my labor, because it is all mine for me.

If I work co-operatively with others working on the same or similar project then it is great because I am not being Financially raped to live off of my labor, it would be a mutually agreed work life instead of a forced life style.

So As I get farther into this development rout, and start some of these amateur product development, with my professional experience in similar products, I’m finding the work isn’t so labor intensive as with working for someone else, and my energy level has gone from 100% drained to a negative energy drain situation. That’s where you gain energy from what your doing instead of being wiped out by what you are doing.

So with my spouse, who is the financial planner and mover of the family, we have managed to work under the corporate thumb for a good number of years, but cleared our debit, close to having our house paid off, and free to really work full time on our own projects to make a living.

When you have no bills and no mortgage, switching jobs and going from the top of the market to the bottom of your “chosen” job market and working up becomes as stressful as eating an ice-cream cone during the summer. Because even if you have “bad months” all you need to worry about is some food, as the roof over your head is already paid for.
And those good months become really, really good months.

Note to others pay your bills off and get out of the corporate “voluntary slave trade” When we paid our credit cards off, all the money we used to pay to the card companies and “interest” was being put to our cars, which got paid off in less then a year, and all that money along with the money we put on our cars, suddenly got piled up on our house payments, Guess what. That accelerated the house payment from 30 years to a track less then 18 years, however, because we didn’t start spending it all and put more money on the house, we may have it paid off in less the 5 years. Then we will have all that money for, well. Vacations will be really good to us after that..

..It all started with putting an extra $50 on one of our credit cards, which cascaded onto other cards and so on as they got paid off. It doesn’t take the lotto folks, simply start living with “in” your means (Stop buying things on credit), and you will find you will be out of debit in relatively short order. All the money your paying in debit, could probably pay your house off in half the time or less if you took your current bills and paid them to a mortgage (or took all your bill money and bought a house instead of renting)

The only thing you have to deal with then is, what would you really rather be doing instead of what your doing now for a job? The answers pretty simple.

As for me now I’m working on my representative for Elemental dimensions
So you like, she’s not too bad, don’t let the bald head fool ya.