When Fictional Videogame Economies Outperform Third World Socialist Ones: The Tale of Venezuelan Gold Farmers in RuneScape
This has been an article that I’ve wanted to write for a very, very long time now. This title (or some variation of it) has been floating around in my Medium drafts for maybe two or three years now, but I’ve never gotten around to writing it. Why? I suppose the biggest reason was that I knew this article would require a large amount of research — I had a very shallow understanding of the economic crisis in Venezuela just a couple of years ago. The only thing that drove me to even write the title out was my passion for Old School RuneScape. I might be getting ahead of myself here, so let’s just jump into the facts.
Have I mentioned OSRS before?
I was almost certain that I had mentioned Old School RuneScape in one of my Medium articles before, but after doing a quick “CTRL+F” on my stories, I found nothing. But I decided to do a bit of a deeper dig through the actual content of my writing to see if I had ever mentioned it. Recalling that I had set up an automated workflow for my GitHub profile to contain my five latest blog posts on Medium, I headed over to that YAML code:
Sorry for not including a trigger warning for all of you computer science students out there, but I’m not referencing this code to ask you what it outputs. If you look at line 17, there is a string labeled “feed_list.” This is where all of my Medium content can be accessed in an XML file format. If you’re too lazy to copy and paste it from the above Gist, just click here. This does update regularly, so by the time you click on it, this text that you’re reading right now should also be on there. If you want to learn more about my GitHub profile’s README, check out this story. Getting back to the topic at hand…
After finding my Medium feed, I did another quick “CTRL+F” for “RuneScape” and found that I did mention it — in my post on GitHub Profile READMEs, which was just mentioned. In other words, the GitHub repository that keeps my GitHub profile updated with my Medium content ultimately led me back to the Medium article about that same repository. Confusing.
The string “runescape” appeared once in my Medium feed (although it will occur many more times after this article is published), and only referenced a client for the game, with little information about the game itself. Seeing that I hadn’t given Old School RuneScape a proper introduction in that article, now seems like a pretty good time to do so.
OSRS vs RS3
Old School RuneScape is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG. It was released on February 22, 2013 as an August 2007 version of the original game, RuneScape. Although the two games share the same name, Old School RuneScape (OSRS) is not the same game as what RuneScape, or RS3, is now. Confusing? It should be. The game that looks like this:
Is technically newer than the game that looks like this:
RuneScape was originally planned to be a text-based game called DeviousMUD (Devious Multi-User Dungeon) by the Gower Brothers, three game developers based in the United Kingdom. DeviousMUD ended up becoming much more advanced than initially planned, and RuneScape was released on January 4th, 2001.
RuneScape quickly became popular as more and more households in the early 2000s gained access to the Internet through personal computers. The game was frequently advertised on web-based gaming sites, such as Miniclip, and since the game was free-to-play, children, bereft of financial means, flocked to the game’s servers. RuneScape has had over 200 million accounts created, and is officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest and most-updated free MMORPG.
No game exists without its ups and downs, and on November 20th, 2012, one update transformed the game entirely. The Evolution of Combat was an update that sought to make RuneScape combat more exciting and engaging; it was described as “one of the largest content updates in RuneScape history.” It added new weapons, ways to wield them, combat abilities, and an entirely overhauled hitpoints system. This was piled on top of combat numbers having been scaled up just a few years earlier (such as how much damage was being dealt), hitpoints were renamed to constitution, and the old “point-and-click” combat was entirely changed to a more intensive ability-casting based one, similar to that of World of Warcraft.
The change was too sudden, however, and RuneScape’s player population quickly dwindled. Players wanted the old combat system back. Rather than adapting to the new combat system, many players decided to quit the game.
In the next year, the RuneScape developers at Jagex decided to put out a poll asking if players wanted servers for the old game back again — Old School RuneScape. The number of votes that the poll got would determine the level of investment that Jagex would commit to for the game. The poll fell very close to the 500k vote milestone, which would prevent Jagex from instating a membership fee, so as a kind gesture, Jagex decided to not charge a $5 membership fee for the first six months of the game’s release. As mentioned earlier, OSRS was released in February of 2013 as a copy of the game as it was in 2007.
Today, OSRS is still extremely popular, and is actually more popular than RS3, or the current iteration of RuneScape. Checking out the player population graphs at misplaceditems, we can see that ever since 2016, OSRS has always had more players online than RS3. In fact, the way the player counts are now, it seems that Old School RuneScape has double or more than double the players of RS3 (labeled as EOC on the graph).
One reason that makes OSRS more popular than RS3 is the in-game polling system, in which players can vote on whether or not content should be added to the game or if developer-proposed changes should be made. Changes require 75% of votes as “yes” to pass into the game. As a result, the game is largely shaped by the opinions of the players, and safeguards the game’s integrity from drastic and controversial updates like the Evolution of Combat.
I could go on and on about the history of RuneScape and how RS3 differs from Old School RuneScape, but there are already some very in-depth videos on RuneScape history on YouTube. I highly recommend Mote Plox’s historical timeline on the game:
It is quite a lengthy watch, but I find that appropriate for a timeline that spans over two decades.
In-game Economy
One of the most unique aspects of RuneScape is its in-game economy. Players can buy and sell items utilizing the Grand Exchange, which is essentially an open market without restrictions (although a small 1% tax was recently instated a few months ago). Players can list their items for whatever price they want, and buyers will bid to purchase those items. Whether it is food, weapons, armor, feathers, or candles, there are thousands of different items that are sold at the Grand Exchange (GE) everyday.
So how does RuneScape’s (specifically OSRS) in-game economy relate to the economic crisis in Venezuela? Well, real world trading (RWT) has always been a problem in RuneScape. Real world trading is trading that is done outside of the game, involving in-game favors or currency. For example, someone purchasing 10 million coins (often referred to as GP, or gold pieces) of OSRS currency for $10 is against the rules. Jagex may not immediately ban a player for this real world trading transaction, but a permanent, unappealable ban is sure to come. Jagex is so strict with RWT because the influence of the real world’s economy on the game puts the integrity of the game and players’ accomplishments at risk. A player could spend years and years playing the game, selling their hard-earned items for GP on the Grand Exchange to become a very wealthy player with a cash stack of 1 billion GP, just as an example. At the same time, someone could go against the game rules and purchase a couple billion GP for a few hundred USD and seemingly achieve an even greater amount of wealth in the game in a matter of minutes — although I’m not entirely sure about the specifics of the timeframe of RWT. I bring this up because I know little about real world trading. But I can assume that transferring GP to another player who has spent real world currency is no simple task.
Even though Jagex’s detection system for RWT is quite polished, those who participate in real world trading still attempt to disguise their attempts to break the game rules. Instead of transferring the aforementioned couple billion GP in just one trade offer, real world traders will split up the quantity into various, smaller trade offers, and even other means of transferring GP. Sometimes, the participants of the trade will meet up in a secretive location in-game, where other players do not frequent, and drop the gold for the other player to pick up. Other times, the seller will fight the buyer in a PvP (player vs player) situation, and purposely lose with the gold in his/her inventory, effectively transferring it to the buyer. These may all seem like clever tactics to avoid detection and being banned by Jagex, but as far as I can tell, real world traders do get caught — it’s just a matter of time. Jagex may not ban real world traders right away. In fact, allowing them to continue real world trading can provide the game developers with valuable data and information about how such players operate, and therefore, how to improve their detection systems for the future.
Although it’s not allowed in the game rules, OSRS GP is quite “stable” when being traded in the real world. One million GP used to be just under $1 (USD), but has declined over the years to around $0.50, according to articles such as this one. Regardless, the currency of OSRS is fairly stable, unlike the currency of third world countries experiencing hyperinflation, like Venezuela.
The Venezuelan Crisis
First, I do not claim to be an expert on the Venezuelan economic crisis. This section will be used in context with the gold farming section that follows; I simply want to describe how extreme the situation in Venezuela is. I will avoid prescribing political solutions, although I will delve into basic political facts if it is crucial for describing the situation.
Venezuela is one of the most tragic stories of riches to rags, instead of the other way around. It was actually the wealthiest country in Latin America following WWI, which significantly bumped up the global demand for oil — perfect for Venezuela, one of the most oil rich nations in the world. But Venezuela’s current conditions don’t necessarily reflect those of a country with the world’s largest oil reserves. Poverty rates are through the roof (~90%), people have resorted to eating rotten meat and even trash, newborns are dying at record rates, access to medication is nonexistent, riots and crime are at all-time highs, and the minimum wage is equivalent to just a few USD per month. How did Venezuela get here? Although the country’s spending habits became questionable in the 1950s, the true descent of Venezuela began with Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. Here’s what happened.
When Chávez first took office, he planned to accomplish several things:
- Diversify the Venezuelan economy (domestically produce more than just oil)
- Deal with corruption in the government
- Diffuse the massive oil revenues downwards to the impoverished through social programs, called the Misiones (reduce financial inequality)
The Misiones seemed like a great idea on paper, but it only exacerbated Venezuela’s dependence on oil, thus worsening the first problem that Chávez wanted to tackle. Even so, Chávez took inspiration from the Castro’s social programs instated in communist Cuba, funding such programs with revenue from Venezuela’s oil industry.
Against his own promises of diversifying the Venezuelan economy and reducing imports of basic goods, Chávez brought oil to the forefront of the Venezuelan economy after his reelection in 2006. At this point, Chávez became even more radical, nationalizing everything in Venezuela. He bought out various sectors: electricity, telecommunications, and oil. People were prosecuted for simply trying to run private businesses, and their assets were outright taken by the government. With domestic production being virtually nonexistent, Venezuela began to import more than it ever had before. Clothes, food, medicine, etc. were imported to Venezuela, all dependent on the price of oil. The only way that Venezuela was able to keep this up was through foreign borrowing — so much so that the public debt of the country was multiplied sixfold. But as history has shown with radical nationalization, the government will inevitably run out of investors’ funding.
As for corruption, nothing was really done during Chávez’s presidency . Though difficult to measure, Venezuela did rank number 13 for most corrupt countries by Transparency International. The fact that high-ranking political figures don’t have to worry about food and shelter while nearly the entire population does have to worry about such basic necessities speaks volumes about the problem of corruption in Venezuela.
By the time Chávez passed away, Venezuela’s economy was in the gutter. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, had been left with an economy that was in ruins, and continued Chávez’s legacy by also not addressing any of the nation’s problems.
One contribution that Maduro did make was to Venezuela’s hyperinflation. To pay off the country’s debt, Maduro printed money like there was no tomorrow. The value of the Venezuelan bolivar dropped drastically starting in 2016, with inflation rates reaching upwards of 65,000% in 2017 to 2018. The exchange rate between the bolivar and USD is so extreme that there are videos of people simply trying to exchange $100 with various Venezuelan shopkeepers and failing to do so.
By 2018, it became more economical to use Venezuelan bolivars (the banknotes) as toilet paper, rather than purchasing it. In other words, the utility of the paper that Venezuelan currency was printed on was greater than the value of the theoretical “money.”
In fact, Venezuelan money became so meaningless that people resorted to using the paper for origami and crafts. The value of the art below was far higher than that of the paper as money.
So what can these impoverished people do when they live in a country where doctors make only a few dollars a month? Play RuneScape of course.
Venezuelan Gold Farmers in OSRS
It made sense for Venezuelans to play RuneScape for money. After all, the average salary of college-educated professionals was barely above the minimum wage (only a few USD per month). Word spread around Venezuela that there was a game called Old School RuneScape, in which you could farm gold and then trade it for money in real life.
Venezuelans resorted to create accounts, training their characters, and then performing money making tasks for hours on end, just to make a living. During the period when gold farming in Venezuela was at its most popular (roughly 2016–2018), one million OSRS gold was worth around $0.66 in USD. To give you an idea of what this meant for starving, impoverished Venezuelans, consider the following money making methods, which assume efficient, constant gameplay for 16 hours a day (and conversions to USD):
- Killing green dragons: About 500k GP/hr, or around $150 a month
- Killing Zulrah: Anywhere from 1–3M GP/hr, perhaps around $500–700 a month
- Killing Vorkath: A little over 3M GP/hr, nearing $1000 a month
Most lucrative money making methods involve killing some type of monster over and over again, taking their valuable drops, and selling them on the market. In the case of the latter two methods mentioned above, players need to train their characters to high levels and obtain efficient gear to reach the highest rates of GP/hr while killing these boss monsters. In the case of killing green dragons, however, players can reach a decent half a million gold per hour with relatively low stats and weaponry. Playing just 12 hours a day farming green dragons at 500k GP/hr would already net a Venezuelan an effective $118 every month, ten or even twentyfold times the minimum wage. With such a high “wage,” Venezuelans could get a much better chance to feed and take care of their families than if they worked jobs in the real world.
The problem with killing green dragons is that they are located in the Wilderness, a dangerous area in the game in which players are allowed to attack each other. In most of the game’s map, players can interact with each other through trading, talking, or even playing minigames together. But players are not allowed to kill each other for their belongings. The only exception to this rule is the Wilderness, often referred to as the Wildy. In the Wildy, there are no rules of sportsmanship. If two players run into each other and are in the same combat bracket (they have relatively similar combat stats), there is no gentleman’s book that says one must let the other survive. And sometimes, the one being attacked is a Venezuelan, trying to make enough money to feed his family.
When you die in the Wilderness to another player, almost all of your belongings are forfeited to the other player. This could include the dragon bones that you were farming in hopes of selling on the Grand Exchange for GP, which you would then exchange for stable USD so you could buy dinner for your family, or it could include your valuable sword that you were using to kill green dragons. No matter what it may be, dying in the Wilderness is not fun, and decreases GP efficiency significantly.
You can already see a bit of a moral dilemma forming here. Is it acceptable for OSRS players who kill other players for fun (which is ordinarily not harmful; it’s just a videogame) to kill Venezuelans in the Wilderness? To add on to the complexity of that question, does it matter if the player killer (shortened to PKer) knows that they are killing a Venezuelan gold farmer? Before you even try to answer this question, there is some weight behind this dilemma, as players have sought out to kill Venezuelan gold farmers in particular. Why? It might be out of a hate for “the other,” but it also might just be out of a desire to maintain the in-game economy. Just like the real world, when supplies get scarce, prices go up. When there is too much of a resource, it is less valuable, and thus, prices drop. So when Venezuelans played the game for hours on end, farming the same resource, over and over, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that it dropped prices in the game. Items like dragon bones, green dragonhide, and whatever else was being farmed, had their prices tank. This was not healthy for the OSRS economy.
So some PKers set out into the Wilderness to purposely kill these Venezuelans. Perhaps it would allow prices to return to normal, but at the same time, these PKers might have been taking lives in the real world. It may sound far-fetched, but killing another player in RuneScape could mean that the player in real life wouldn’t be able to eat for the next day or two.
So why do Venezuelans play OSRS in particular? Why not RS3? I can think of a few reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that the graphics in OSRS are simple, and thus, take a smaller toll on the more primitive hardware that is available to Venezuelans. The economy in OSRS is also quite a bit more stable, and I can only surmise that the market for RWT is also more stable as a result. The money making methods in OSRS are also more simple and straightforward. Because of the EOC update, combat in RS3 is much more intensive and engaging. Farming green dragons in OSRS is much simpler, input-wise: Just click on the green dragon, wait until it dies, and repeat. Perhaps click on the loot and eat some food every once in a while — just a few more clicks. This type of gameplay is much more sustainable when trying to make a living; gold farmers would have to play upwards of 12 hours a day, after all.
Hope for Venezuela
I haven’t been entirely transparent about the timeline of Venezuela. In fact, the country is coming out of a very long period of hyperinflation, and the economy is looking a lot better. It also makes sense that gold farming in Venezuela is at an all-time low (perhaps in conjunction with Jagex stepping up their RWT detection).
This video, for example, shows a “luxury market” in Venezuela that is well-stocked, with reasonable prices. Just half a decade ago, supermarkets were practically empty, and Venezuelans would have to dedicate entire days to shopping — this of course, mostly consisted of looking for places with items in stock.
Extra Reading/Watching
There already exists a plethora of resources regarding Venezuela’s crisis and how it relates to RuneScape. What I have discussed barely scrapes the surface of this story. Whether it is the “race wars” that occurred in the Wilderness when Venezuelans realized they could band together and fight back against PKers, or the countless interviews conducted with real Venezuelan gold farmers — there is so much more to learn about this tale. What follows are just a few pieces of media that I recommend taking a look at.
A 22-minute podcast from NPR between a reporter and an OSRS YouTuber. They also introduce a Venezuelan gold farmer to the interview as well.
A very entertaining video summarizing how Venezuelans were hunted in the Wilderness. Includes an interview with a Venezuelan player.
As the title states: A very underground look at how Venezuelans farm gold together to support their families.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/venezuela-oil/
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/122915/worst-hyperinflations-history.asp
