A new report from infoDev.org takes a fascinating, in-depth look at the so-called "virtual economy," which consists mostly of gold farming, power leveling, and other small tasks like reading CAPTCHA values. The angle that the report takes is that the market for virtual goods and services represents a growth opportunity for developing countries, and that NGOs should consider getting involved in connecting poorer, mostly rural residents with opportunities to help meet the demand for farmed gold, high-level player characters, crafted in-game items, and the like.
The report focuses on two areas of the virtual economy: "third-party gaming services," which are mainly gold farming and power leveling, and "microwork." The latter is best exemplified by Amazon's Mechanical Turk service, which lets small, repetitive tasks like image recognition be parceled out to low-wage laborers in other countries. The authors identify two other areas of the virtual economy that they choose not to focus on: virtual item creation and "cherry blossoming" (i.e. paying users to increase a brand's social network footprint by "Liking" certain pages or becoming a fan of the brand on Facebook).
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