Re: Would you play online games for real $$$?
 

In another sense, this already occurs in some games, but not in the way that most of you are thinking. There are actual "sweat" shops set up in some places like say Korea, who employ people to sit there in a location and earn items and money and stuff in game, in order for the employer to sell these items/money on places like eBay to people who need such item.

I know that this occurs in games like Everquest/Worlds of Warcraft. I have not personally sold anything in this manner, but one of my old guildmates used to actually finance a living by doing this. At the time he was the richest person on the server (for instance, I was considered rich cause I had a million platinum, he at the time had about 80 million platinum and he held the money to my guild bank, which was another 100 million or so).

So, he used to sell a lot of this money and other such items that he found while killing things to people who needed it for real cash and then giving it to them in game. There were a lot of people that I knew who used to do this, as well as the people that I mentioned first. Sometimes you could tell who these people are when you'd go into a place that a specific item dropped, and these people would be sitting there camping such an item for days on end.

It was a very huge business for a while and although I'm not involved in these types of games anymore, I would imagine that it's still pretty huge.