In the days following, Marinez continued to hunt herbiboars and spent more than 36 hours engaged in the pursuit with OSRS Gold. "There are times when I can't bear the sight of this game ... however, when it's in exchange for money, I can put up with it for a while," he messaged me in Spanish in the following message, adding "It's just my job. And from it, I'm in a position to live."

Marinez 20, who is twenty aged "does performs services" on behalf of other players in Old School RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online game of role-playing. People from all over the world are able to pay him using Bitcoins, which is usually to go on quests and level up the skills of their characters as miners, fighters, or hunters.

In Venezuela, where in 2019 it was reported that 96 percent of population earned less than the international poverty line which is $1.90 each day. according to an analysis conducted by a Venezuelan university. Marinez has a better performance than many.

In addition to the pocket change that he earns from a nearby pizzeria, he earns about $60 per month on RuneScape that is enough to buy rice and cornmeal for arepas as well as rice for himself and his younger sister. But for Marinez working online isn't only about arepas. It's about escape. believes that the medieval fantasy gaming is dull.

In the midst of one the biggest economic downturns in the last 45 years, without a war, he and many others in Venezuela are turning to gaming on video in order to stay alive and possibly a way to move. The game of video doesn't have to mean sitting on a couch in front of the screen. It can mean movement. Hunting herbiboars in RuneScape can finance today's food and tomorrow's future for Colombia or Chile nations where Marinez has relatives.

Across the Caribbean Sea in Atlanta, close to 2,000 miles from Marinez There lives Bryan Mobley. In his teen years the game he played was RuneScape constantly, he told me in a phone call. "It was entertaining. It was a way for me to avoid homework, and shit like this," he said.

Aged 26 now, Mobley views the game in a different way. "I do not see it as an actual world anymore," he told me. It's for him more of a "number game," similar to virtual roulette. A greater amount of in-game currency is an injection of dopamine.

Since Mobley started playing RuneScape in the aughts, a black market had been bubbling up beneath the computer game's economy. In the land of Gielinor there is a possibility for players to trade in items such as mithril longswords and yak-hide armor with RuneScape Gold, herbs from herbiboars and gold, the in-game currency. Eventually, players began exchanging in-game gold with actual dollars. This is known as real-world trade. Jagex the game's developer is against these exchanges.