Marinez, who is 20 years old "does performs services" for others playing Old School RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online OSRS gold role-playing game. Players across the world pay him, typically through Bitcoin, to embark on quests, and to level up the skills of their characters, whether they are miners, fighters, or hunters.
In Venezuela which, as of 2019 there were 96 percent of the population was less than the poverty standard in the amount of $1.90 for a day. as per a survey conducted by a Venezuelan university. Marinez does better than most.
Alongside the pocket change he gets from a nearby pizzeria, he earns about 60 bucks a month from RuneScape and can afford rice and cornmeal to make arepas for his son and sister. However for Marinez, toiling away online isn't just about arepas. It's about escape. finds the medieval fantasy game is boring.
Over to the Caribbean Sea in Atlanta, close to 2,000 miles from Marinez is Bryan Mobley. As a teen He played RuneScape frequently, he told me via phone. "It was entertaining. It was a means to not do homework, or anything like this," he said.
A mere 26 years old, Mobley has a different view of the game. "I do not see it as an online world anymore," he told me. To him, it's more of a "number simulator" which is similar to virtual Roulette. An increase in the quantity of game currency is a boost of dopamine.
Since Mobley started playing RuneScape in the aughts there was a black market that had emerged beneath the game's economy. In the land of Gielinor it is possible to trade in items such as mithril longswords and yak-hide armor, plants harvested from Buy OSRS gold, the game's currency. Then, players began trading gold in the game for real dollars, which is referred to as real-world trade. Jagex the game's producer restricts exchanges like this.