![]() ![]() On this summer night in 2006, the game on his screen was, as always, World of Warcraft, an online fantasy title in which players, in the guise of self-created avatars - night-elf wizards, warrior orcs and other Tolkienesque characters - battle their way through the mythical realm of Azeroth, earning points for every monster slain and rising, over many months, from the game’s lowest level of death-dealing power (1) to the highest (70). Twelve hours a night, seven nights a week, with only two or three nights off per month, this is what Li does - for a living. Li, or rather his staff-wielding wizard character, had been slaying the enemy monks since 8 p.m., mouse-clicking on one corpse after another, each time gathering a few dozen virtual coins - and maybe a magic weapon or two - into an increasingly laden backpack. The screen showed a lightly wooded mountain terrain, studded with castle ruins and grazing deer, in which warrior monks milled about. ![]() ![]() ![]() At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him. It was an hour before midnight, three hours into the night shift with nine more to go. ![]()
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