Game outsourcing to China

No, we're not talking about gaming jobs being outsourced to China, we're talking about gameplay being outsourced to the world's most populated country. The New York Times writes: "Every day, in 12-hour shifts, [paid employees] 'play' computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash. That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese to play the early rounds for them."

Always nice to see the flow of disposable income to low-income countries, but does this undermine the point of a video game to begin with? Would you outsource the early levels of an MMORPG?

[via Richard K Miller]