SWEATING THE DETAILS

The "virtual sweatshop worker"-- the real occupation, or the roleplaying persona, or both-- finally arrives in Second Life.

"I'm a Chinese girl," the new resident tells me, by way of introduction. "My work is playing this game for my boss in real life, and my boss asked me for 500 Lindens a day, or I'll be fired, and I'm poor in Second Life and real life, so don't have any chosen.

"So," she concludes, "I'm in trouble now, sir."

"Why does your boss want 500 Lindens a day?"

"Because," she explains, "500 Lindens equals US$2, and US$1 equals 8 Yuan. So I have to finish this task… Do you know my job now, please sir?"

And of course I do know what her job is. The wonder is that I haven't met her kind sooner. At the moment, she's a voluptuous blonde woman with white angel wings, and a spear in her hand. But she's also the latest incarnation of an even more elusive figure-- and perhaps one that's just as fantastic.

"As some of you are probably aware," Persig Phaeton posted to the Second Life forums a few days ago, "other MMO titles over the years have had to deal with an influx of actual sweatshops in Third World countries. These sweatshops force young, underpaid workers to play [popular MMOs], not for enjoyment, but solely for the purpose of harvesting gold to be traded out... to be eBay'ed." This apparently happens on more traditional online role playing games, where it's possible, for example, to earn gold coins or whatever else the official currency of the realm happens to be, by having one's character perform some simple, mindless task like mining or fishing for hours at a time. With enough low-paid laborers doing these tasks on a battery of workstations, the theory goes, it's possible to auction off a large block of the currency on a site like eBay for a profit.

Since there's no simple, mechanical way of earning in-world money in Second Life, however, Persig believed the phenomenon wouldn't come here.

"Last night, however, I had a disturbing experience."

And Persig went on to tell the story of how he met a new Resident near a telehub, where she pleaded with him in fractured English to help her secure some land-- on pain of real world unemployment, if she failed.

"I could tell she was having trouble and she was in distress," he continued in his post. "Finally, she blurts something like, 'Please to be helping me! If I don't buy land in three days, my boss will fire me!'"

At this point, Phaeton sought help from Anshe Chung, one of the most well known (and controversial) personalities in Second Life. Because as it happens, Anshe is publicly known to be Chinese, in real life-- Chinese-German, to be exact-- and Persig hoped she could help translate.

"I just talked to her short time," Anshe tells me, when I follow up with her, "and tried help her with land buying. Finally got her buy First Land plot." (This is a program for new users who want to begin their Second Life career on a small, low cost square of property.) "She said her boss would want to play here or something." Anshe chatted with her in Romanized Mandarin, "and her pin ying (using Latin letters to spell Chinese) was quite good." So, she speculates, "Central or North China, as opposed to Hong Kong (Cantonese)."

On the Northern continent of Second Life, we search awhile for the land Anshe helped this new Resident buy, flying over fields strewn with For Sale signs, along the shore, and farther in-land, over untrammeled forests and fields. Meanwhile, Anshe forwards via IM my request to interview this new resident.

"'Eh, ni hao. Ne ge Hamlet Linden xiang gen ni tan hua. Wo jue de ta ke yi bang ni yi huir'," Anshe cites for me, quoting the message she just sent to her.

"For your records," explains, winking.

I ask her if she believes the new Resident's story.

Anshe shrugs. "Dunno. It sounded quite real.”

Finally, we arrive at the girl's half-built property.

"Oh! A money tree sponsored by her!" Anshe Chung exclaims, surveying her land. "I use this in my malls to give money to newbies. The tree spawns dollar bills that newbie can pick up and receive L$1 or L$5 payments. You pick up and the tree pays you. Maybe she hoped to use it earn money. Or to attract friends for her boss. I remember she told me her boss wants to invite guests."

In any case, a few hours pass, and Anshe tells me the Resident has agreed to my request for an interview. And that the Resident-- who I'll call Hsiao-Tsing, for this story-- happens to be online now.

And within minutes, I'm standing with Hsiao-Tsing at her new home in the mossy tundra.

"What kind of company do you work for that your boss wants you to make Linden Dollars?" I ask her.

"Computer Internet Game company," Hsiao-Tsing replies. "There are many in [China]. Just like the Lineage 2 or World of Warcraft or Heaven 2 game, they all can make money for him. But we learn this game just five days [ago], so no one know how to play [Second Life], and get more money, so I'm in troubles, in a big stress... The life in China is so hard to live on thank you." She worries that her account will be cancelled, if her moneymaking purpose comes out; and though that's not true, I promise not to reveal her Second Life name, for this story.

"Could you help me please, sir?" Hsiao-Tsing persists.

For awhile there, I consider paying her L$500 from my own account, to allay her fears for today. After some deliberation, I decide to avoid the ethical tangle of that option. Instead-- give an avatar a fish, she eats for a day, teach an avatar to fish, she eats for a lifetime-- I tell her that I'll explain how Residents usually earn their Linden Dollars.

"Thank you sir," she says. "If [you do] that I won't worry... For I must work hard overtime day to night day and night."

"In Second Life," I say, "people do not make money as they do in [traditional MMORPGs.] It's not possible to sell gold pieces, etc. to make real US$. To do that, most people make clothing or weapons or other items. People buy them, and they take the Linden Dollars and convert them to US$. Also, some people buy land, improve it, and then sell it to other Residents at a profit. That's another way. Anshe Chung, who you met, does this."

There's a pause, as Hsiao-Tsing absorbs this information.

"So I must take your advice," she says. Then, "Please help me sir, tell me what shall I do, please?"

"Another way to make money," I continue, "is to be a dancer at the nightclubs. Or another kind of entertainer."

"You mean I have to find some job [in] the first place, sir?"

"Also, you can make money by playing games like Tringo," I add.

"Thank you, but my boss' office seems doesn't have this game."

"No, Tringo is a game inside of Second Life. If you like I can show you."

"Sir, you mean that game can make money please?"

"Yes," I caution, "if you win at it. You have to be a good player." I ask her if there are other online games people in her company are paid to play.

"A xing Qiu Da zhan xing ji," Hsiao-Tsing answers. "Just a moment, I'll search its English name." There's momentary silence from her side. "Star Wars, sir. Do you hear and play?" I tell her that I have. She apologizes for her poor English. "So sometimes will communicate slowly." I tell it's way better than my Cantonese, which is next to nil, beyond what I've learned from Hong Kong movies-- even though my own grandfather immigrated from Canton. She tells me that she lives in a province near Canton, but it's not one I'm immediately familiar with.

"So please help me to find some jobs can make more money to finish my task," Hsiao-Tsing says, "then I'll try to build and trade. Please, sir? I must over work and my health is get bad quickly... and I work in big city, have no house, live in my Company, and the bed is so bad, and so dark and so cold, and my meals are also well, often yucky. And I search for how to play this game, and can't sleep and eating well. Do you understand my hard condition sir?”

I tell her that it does sound hard. Though something about the tone of the plea seems off, somehow.

I'm having trouble with my computer, so I tell her to wait while I log off, and that I'll be back in a few minutes to take her to a Tringo contest. But the technical troubles persist, and I'm not able to return into Second Life for another half hour or so.

And when I return, Hsiao-Tsing is no longer in-world. Leaving me to wonder how much of her story was true, and how much of it might have been clever role playing. Almost exactly two years ago, shortly after taking on New World Notes, I left off with similar questions, wondering whether the story of a homeless hacker with a Second Life mansion were true, or an admirably elaborate fiction. Then again, that was before the third party exchange of Linden Dollars for real money was permitted; that was before the stakes had been raised so much higher.

For Persig Phaeton's part, since meeting Hsiao-Tsing, he's had some time to think about the story she told him, too.

"I hope it's a practical joke," Persig writes me. "If this girl really is buying land for her boss," he says, "I hope it isn't in a sweatshop atmosphere... I hope [her boss]... pays her better than a subsistence living wage. I hope. I hope... I hope."

In recent weeks, it's worth pointing out, noted game journalists and academics have begun to wonder if the stories of sweatshops for online worlds in developing nations were apocryphal, to begin with-- or if they exist, whether they merit the term "sweatshop". Since, after all, sweatshops usually involve industrial machinery, toxic chemicals, dangerous equipment-- not people sitting at computers in an air-conditioned office, endlessly (but not miserably) clicking away. Not necessarily something deserving of an in-world labor uprising, in other words-- as tantalizing as that hypothetical is.

In any case, as Linden Lab CEO Philip Linden posted in the official forum yesterday, "We will make sure to the greatest of our technical abilities that simplistic money-mining (buy account, give stipend to other person, make profit) doesn't work."

No doubt true. Though for my part, I can also imagine an entire office floor of a skyscraper in Shenzen or Shanghai or cities unnamed, housing an endless stream of highly skilled, underpaid college students at their workstations, devoted 24/7 to the business of beating all comers at big pot Tringo.

"By the way," Anshe Chung tells me, when we're flying over the new continent, in search of Hsiao-Tsing's land, "I have ten sims ordered now. Going expand my continent to fourteen sims as soon as Ryan [Linden] can deliver… different themed sims, making use of land deeding feature and the first sims were successful." So her own in-world holdings continue to grow.

"You all know Anshe Chung and you know how the poor situation of my own family in China was one motivator for me to work hard in this space," the real estate tycoon wrote in the Second Life forum. "The 'sweatshops' will come, yes, and I admire the people who will work in those sweatshops."

For confidentiality's sake, some descriptive details of "Hsiao-Tsing" and her property may have been changed for this entry.