I’m a science fiction sort of guy. I’ve written some fantasy, and edited some fantasy anthologies, but I don’t really read very much of it, and, when I do it, what I reach for tends to be something of the sly, somewhat tongue-in-cheek sort that John W. Campbell, Jr. used to publish in his classic magazine of long ago, Unknown Worlds, or one of E.R. Eddison’s heroic Norse-derived epics, rather than one of the multivolume sagas about Finding the Rightful Prince who will wield the Wand of Power (or Sword, or Ring), against the Dark Lord in the Great Apocalyptic Battle of Good against Evil. The Prince/Wand/
Dark Lord saga is okay now and then, I suppose, and some of the big modern fantasy sagas are pretty gorgeous stuff—I think in particular of George R.R. Martin’s superb Song of Ice and Fire novels—but for me a little of that goes quite a long way.

I don’t play computer games, either. Don’t know a thing about them, in fact. Some of my aversion to them is simply a generational thing, an unwillingness to spend time in front of a computer screen for anything but doing my work and getting my e-mail and looking things up on the Internet. But also I suspect that a lot of the computer games are just more Defeat the Dark Lord stuff, full of elves and wizards and dragons and spells, and there are other things I’d rather do in the remaining years of my finite life span than wage computerized warfare against the Powers of Abysmal Evil. My loss, perhaps, but so be it. I don’t do crossword puzzles, either, or bungee jumping, or rock-climbing, because, though I know such activities afford great delight to many people, my a priori hunch is that there isn’t much in them for me.

This combination of my lack of interest in formula Evil Wizard fantasy and my sense that most computer games draw upon those very formulas has kept me from learning anything much about them. The other day, though, I saw a story in the New York Times about computer games that not only drew my attention to the computer-game milieu but, well, opened gateways into new realms of wonder for me. Not that the piece awakened any desire in me to start playing the games myself—far from it. But what I learned about the world of game-playing was so surprising in its perversity that it provided me with a little chill of sociological awe, the tingle of excitement that comes from peering into an alien world.

The idea behind most and perhaps all computer games, apparently, is that the successful player acquires “wealth” as he plays, in the form of some sort of virtual “money” that is legal tender only in the world of that game, and uses that “wealth” to purchase more and more power in that fantasy world, until at last he can slay dragons with a flick of his eyebrow, or, maybe, leap tall buildings at a single bound. This is the same general idea that is found in such archaic games as Monopoly, where by means of successful rolls of the dice you gradually acquire real estate in Atlantic City and become a tycoon by making your fellow players pay rent on it to you. The chief difference (and bear with me if I’m getting some of this wrong) is that the Monopoly tycoon is trying to acquire such properties as Marvin Gardens and Boardwalk, and the computer-game aficionado seeks possession of the most potent magical spells, swords, talismans, and wands.

As I recall from my Monopoly games of sixty years ago, there’s no way to get possession of the major properties except by rolling the dice and following the rules. But, to my amazement, I learn from the Times not only that it’s possible to use illicit means to become a big deal in the world of your computer game but that a whole industry has sprung up in China that is geared to making actual real-world money by selling virtual merchandise to computer-game cheaters who want to get to the top of their fantasy universe the quick way.

The way you cheat at the games, I’m told, is to go to one of the many websites specializing in this kind of operation—“farming,” it’s called—and simply buy, for very real money charged against your credit card, a belt of invulnerability or an enchanted sword or a stipulated quantity of magical gold or virtual warriors or whatever commodity it is that will allow you to ascend to higher levels of power in the game of your choice. Doing this is supposedly prohibited by the terms of use of most of the games, but that doesn’t seem to matter much. Thus a Times reporter who in real life plays a game called “World of Warcraft” received an unsolicited e-message from a certain Hasfdlf, inviting him to go to a website where for $9.99 he could buy one hundred virtual gold coins that are legal tender in the “Warcraft” universe, with discounts available to quantity buyers—$76.99 would get one thousand of the coins, for example.

Anybody with more cash than scruples could thus rise instantly to a level of great might in “Warcraft” without having to bother to win those gold coins by clicking away at his computer in the dreary old-fashioned way. For instance, it can take six hundred hours or more of playing to reach Level Sixty, the highest power plateau of “World of Warcraft.” The entry-level player is capable only of killing piddling little creatures, it seems—the fantasy equivalents of mice or gerbils—and if he kills enough of those he can buy the ability to slaughter trolls or kobolds, and eventually, having pocketed the treasure of his victims and invested it in ever more puissant magical equipment, he finds himself up there on Level Sixty where one can lay waste to whole legions of fire-breathing demons or great tail-lashing dragons or what have you.

I find all this quite astonishing. It seems to me—stodgy non-player that I am—that the whole point of the game, if there is one, is to hone one’s skill through level after level until one has the great satisfaction of reaching maximum power. Thus one demonstrates, at least to oneself, that one has the sort of superior mental powers that a true Cosmomagus of the Vasty Deep ought to have. Great virtual effort brings great virtual rewards, as should always be the case in any kind of endeavor. But no, no: a lot of the players are impatient, it appears, and they go to some anonymous on-line “farmer” and buy his accumulated tokens of power and thereby get a fast-track ascent to big-time wizardry without having to exert themselves at all.

Who are these “farmers” who deal in wizard-gold?

They operate out of China, mainly. Game-farming is big business there. Chinese entrepreneurs have established game-playing factories, hundreds or maybe thousands of them, in which platoons of grim-faced young men earn their livings as full-time gamers, putting in twelve hours a day waging electronic warfare in imaginary kingdoms or distant galaxies. These expert players, as they skillfully annihilate the ogres and basilisks that they confront, pile up huge treasuries of the game-world’s virtual currency—which their employers then sell to foreign geeks eager for an easy ride to the upper levels of their game.

“For the Chinese in game-playing factories like these,” the Times story says, “it is not all fun and games. These workers have strict quotas and are supervised by bosses who equip them with computers, software, and Internet connections. . . . By some estimate there are well over a hundred thousand people working in China as full-time gamers, toiling away in dark Internet cafes, abandoned warehouses, small offices, and private homes. Many of the players here actually make less than a quarter an hour, but they often get room, board, and free computer-game play in these ‘virtual sweatshops.’ ” One of them, a twenty-three-year-old player interviewed by the Times, says he makes about two hundred and fifty dollars a month at it, which he regards as pretty good pay, by Chinese standards. Of course, he works a seven-day week, twelve hours a day; but the upside is that he puts in all those hours sitting at a keyboard playing computer games instead of mining coal or assembling television sets or hauling heavy trays as a waiter in the local noodle house.

Significant amounts of money are involved here. It’s estimated that one hundred million people worldwide log on to play these games each month, and evidently a lot of them are fattening their virtual prestige by purchasing their superwizardhood on the black market. This is, of course, unfair to the players who have acquired the Mask of Invisibility or the All-Conquering Lance the hard way, putting in all those sweaty hours squinting into their screens, and the games-makers are trying to shut down the farmers whenever they can find them. But finding them isn’t easy and there isn’t any simple way for one player to discover that someone else in his game is cheating.

I find the emergence of this kind of geeky cheating very sad. The real pleasure of playing these games, I would think, ought to be derived from mastering the game and deploying your accumulated skills in rising to wizardly greatness, not in attaining instant self-aggrandizement by pulling out your Visa and buying some magical gizmo for your game avatar that you haven’t earned according to the rules. How can you face yourself, you who have bought your way into the Tower of Supreme Omnipotence, when you know that you got there not by battling monster after monster through level after level, but merely by forking over eighty bucks for a pile of virtual doubloons that some unknown Chinese kid in a far-off sweatshop won for you? What’s to be proud of in that? Where’s the fun in cutting a deal with a shaman-for-hire to do all the heavy lifting? What sort of incremental increase in self-esteem does that sort of deal bring? And what do you think J.R.R. Tolkien would say if he heard that Ara-gorn’s sword or even the One Ring itself were for sale to the highest bidder on eBay?

Not only isn’t it sporting, guys, I don’t see where there can be much satisfaction in it. Cheating at a computer game is on a par with cheating at solitaire: who are you fooling?

And it’s a troublesome cultural development. If the notion of buying virtual glory were to spread to other fields, we’d soon be hearing about the tournament chess player who can buy an instant checkmate, or the professional baseball player who, for a sufficient outlay of cash, is given a certificate declaring that he has broken Barry Bonds’ home-run record, or the tone-deaf singer who purchases a starring role at the Metropolitan Opera House. (Or, closer to home, the science fiction writer who buys a Hugo or a Nebula online.) But nobody is likely to do such things, because everyone would see what a hollow triumph is thereby gained. Paying hard cash to become an instant Aragorn seems just as dumb to me. Of course, I’ve never experienced the thrills of game-playing. But I like to think that if I were a gamer, I’d feel abashed, not proud at all, if I had tossed away a few hundred real-world simoleons for the empty thrill of ascending the Throne of Unconquerable Might without having had to waste all that time working my way up through the ranks.