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"As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells. Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for 'illegally petitioning' the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do."
But is he the Mayor?
This all sounds an awful lot like Cory Doctorow's recent book "For the Win" except that it focused more on kids being forced to gold farm in sweatshops. It's always crazy to see near future dystopias come to be.
@boysplz At least in the gold-farming sweatshops they can quit if they want to. The bit from this NYT Mag piece from a few years ago that stuck with me is that, after their 12-hour shifts are up, the kids go downstairs to an Internet cafe to play more Warcraft off the clock.