How's this for a prison sentence - break rocks and dig trenches and kill night elves.
By day, inmates at the Jixi labor camp in China would do a surreal mix of backbreaking physical work and then play hours of online video games. Prison bosses made close to 300 prisoners play games in 12-hour shifts, and that was after a day of mining. Or carving chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood. Or assembling car seat covers to be exported to Korea and Japan. And for some political prisoners, they also had to memorize communist literature.
To make sure they were making their virtual quotas, prisoners who fell behind had real punishment. "They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things," one ex-convict said.
Known as "gold farming", the practice of building up online credits through basic tasks in games such as World of Warcraft, is a highly lucrative trade, as gamers all over the world are willing to pay real money for those credits. The trading of virtual currencies has become rampant in China, and has become more difficult to regulate. The China Internet Center estimates nearly $1.2 billion in virtual currencies were traded in China in 2008.
It is estimated that 80% of all gold farmers are in China. The country is home to the largest internet population in the world, and it is estimated there are more than 100,000 full-time gold farmers.
Sounds rough, but since the article I read had no mention of shower rapes, gang wars, or rioting, Chinese prison still sounds better than San Quentin.
By day, inmates at the Jixi labor camp in China would do a surreal mix of backbreaking physical work and then play hours of online video games. Prison bosses made close to 300 prisoners play games in 12-hour shifts, and that was after a day of mining. Or carving chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood. Or assembling car seat covers to be exported to Korea and Japan. And for some political prisoners, they also had to memorize communist literature.
To make sure they were making their virtual quotas, prisoners who fell behind had real punishment. "They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things," one ex-convict said.
Known as "gold farming", the practice of building up online credits through basic tasks in games such as World of Warcraft, is a highly lucrative trade, as gamers all over the world are willing to pay real money for those credits. The trading of virtual currencies has become rampant in China, and has become more difficult to regulate. The China Internet Center estimates nearly $1.2 billion in virtual currencies were traded in China in 2008.
It is estimated that 80% of all gold farmers are in China. The country is home to the largest internet population in the world, and it is estimated there are more than 100,000 full-time gold farmers.
Sounds rough, but since the article I read had no mention of shower rapes, gang wars, or rioting, Chinese prison still sounds better than San Quentin.
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