FARMERS AND FARMERS

"Yes, but there are more Texans than there are WoW players."

Four million Americans play World of Warcraft, the online multiplayer fantasy game. I play it, and it's a lot of fun. In the past I spent far more time playing WoW than I should have, it's that fun and compelling. Some even call it "Warcrack" like they called its predecessor Everquest "Evercrack." There are people who even play the game professionally, "gold farmers" that I wrote about last year.

At BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow points out an interesting statistic: there are only two million people working as the more traditional, agricultural farmers in America, according to the USDA. That's half as many people as playing WoW in the country.

Commenters responded to this news:

And more people saw "Transformers" than farm in this country and yet you don't see public policy guided by opinions over Optimus Prime.

Warcraft players only meaningful contribution is making it easier for people who actually want to accomplish things with their lives to do so. Every Orc, Dwarf or Demon is one less script, one less comic book, one less novel, one less body at the market. Thanks for staying inside basking in the glow of electro-fantasy!
-by Garrett


The point is valid, but to be slightly pendantic (OK a lot), there's probably more like 2.5 million Warcraft players in the US now. It was 2 mill back in January when it was 8 million total worldwide (it's now 9 mill)

World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.
-by James AU


I'm not sure why there is all this WoW hate going on. The WoW players that I know are well-educated, work hard, and are generally very productive people. But hey, stereotypes are more fun than reality.
-by Christovir


This seems to set up a kind of weird implied dichotomy, comparing what is essentially a consumer choice with a productive economic activity. It's like saying "ZOMG, there are more Hello Kitty fans than steel workers in the US!!! Why are politicians ignoring this crucial demographic?"

The answer, of course, is that Hello Kitty fans do not vote as a block (bloc?), since their common interest has jack squat to do with what they do every day to survive. As obsessive as some of them may be, there isn't really any political issue that would unite them at the polls. Any politician who honestly thought they would get more votes by lowering tariffs on Sanrio memorabilia than by raising tariffs on imported steel* probably wouldn't be a politician for very long.

I might well end up being proven wrong here. I mean hell, everybody knows that liberals drink lattes and drive Volvos. Does that mean that we'll see Democratic candidates drawing battle lines by coffee preference, trying to court the all-important half-caf-soy-double-mochaccino-with-whip demographic? 'Round about that time would probably be when I'd run off and hide on a small island in the South Pacific, so I really hope that's not the case.

*Of course, you'd be forced to repeal the steel tariffs after the WTO rules that they're illegal, but by that point, you've probably made your political hay.
-by Lolcat Stevens


Hah...WOW a trap....

I am a published author (one book done and volume II in progress), a working blacksmith and I produce a quarterly technical journal.....oh, and I play WOW.

Perhaps one-trick ponies need to feel as if their competition is lulled by a game. Perhaps those who can, do it all.
-by Matamoros Mok'Nathal

Why there's this presumption that because you play an online game then you have absolutely no life or productivity beyond that I can't understand. Yes, there are total addicts that do little beyond play WoW and sleep, piles of pizza boxes and cheeto bags around them. That's true about television, books, golf, you name it. Some people take hobbies to an extreme, becoming an obsession. The fact that doctors like to golf doesn't make them useless in their profession. I watch movies, does that mean I can't write, too?

And, after all... farmers play WoW too.

There's another aspect to this, howeve. this stat comes from a link train that goes through the hapless Paul Krugman, the embittered Malkin-hater Ezra Klein, to a blog called Kung Fu Monkey. What ties them together? Well, President Bush once said, when going back home to Crawford Texas that he was going back to be with "real Americans."

This offended Manhattanites and urban dwellers around the country who were shocked, shocked that President Bush prefers the rest of the country to Washington DC politicos. Several leftist writers instantly took the kneejerk team player response and cried "everyone in America is a real American!" and "farmers? They don't represent us!"

Thus they missed the entire point. In a sense I have some sympathy - not much, but some - because the media immediately went and picked a John Deere-hat wearing farmer out of Iowa and asked him about Real America. See folks, we know where real Americans are, we're not out of touch! The problem here is that's not who President Bush was referring to.

Sure, farmers are included, but his point wasn't "Americans only live in rural areas" it was "the creeps, lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians I'm surrounded by in Washington DC aren't real Americans." And by "real Americans" he's not saying these folks are somehow unamerican - although they might be - he was pointing out that they don't represent the country at large. That they are out of touch and in their own little isolated world. The stats Kung Fu Monkey points out are valid, but irrelevant: it doesn't matter how many people live in what part of the country. It matters that the slice of particular people that the President of the US has to deal with day in and day out are unrepresentative.

There are slices like that all over: Manhattan's uber socialite group, Hollywood's clicque, white supremacists in Idaho, La Raza reconquistas in Los Angeles, and so on. They are little pockets of unreality, people who are out of touch with the nation at large. President Bush understandably likes to get out of that and back to the rest of the country. Some of whom play World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft, Farming, Agriculture