Dragon slayers for hire: young people in China will play your favorite computer game for you, hour after hour--for a fee. In fact, it's becoming a booming business.

• Author: Barboza, David
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

Wealthy countries like the United States have exported an increasing amount of work in recent years to China, with its vast pool of cheap labor. Now, however, in the latest wrinkle on "outsourcing," young Chinese are being hired to do our playing for us.

From Seoul to San Francisco and beyond, affluent online garners who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of popular computer games, like World of Warcraft or Magic Land, are willing to pay people in China to play the early rounds for them.

GAMING FACTORIES

In Fuzhou, on the southeastern coast, in the basement of an old warehouse, a corps of young people were recently glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards hour after hour. They were working at a gaming factory. Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they fight battles and kill on-screen monsters for hire. The factory not only sells its workers' time at the keyboard, but as the players move through the levels, they wrack up virtual gold coins and other make-believe rewards. These electronic spoils can be sold for real cash, making these games big business.

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," says a 23-year-old garner who works in the Fuzhou factory. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had."

There are now perhaps thousands of gaming factories in China, employing, by some estimates, 100,000 young Chinese full-time. The factories are tapping into the...