Gaming.. get your moneys worth!

According to Wikipedia, virtual economies are an emergent economy existing in a virtual persistent world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an Internet game. Linden dollars is the official currency used by gamers exchanging things over the web. There are five different characteristics of virtual properties; rivalry, persistence, interconnectivity, secondary markets and value added by users (Wikipedia). When these qualities exist, virtual economies closely mirror contemporary economies.
When you first think of any of the aspects of virtual world, at least for me, they are viewed as fake, only existing for entertainment purposes. However, virtual economies are very real. The existence of economies in online games makes them more like the “real” world, because it makes them actually effect your real life since one uses “real” money to pay for virtual items. This is made very clear in the virtual game Second Life, because it provides users with Linden dollars to real dollars conversion. By providing users with different aspects of real life in the virtual world, these games are no longer seen as virtual reality, for many people virtual communities are their reality.
Second Life actively encourages players to buy and sell virtual property. According to Robert D. Hof, Second Life told users that if they paid them for virtual land, they could build whatever they wanted on the land and then charges others users Linden dollars in order to do things on the land, and then convert the Linden dollars into real money. This way both the owners of Second Life and its users are profiting from the existence of virtual economies in the game.
Every month, millions of Linden dollars are exchanged for goods and services created my Second Life users. One example of a virtual business a user could create is a bar. The person buys land, builds a bar, and then when different avatars come to the bar in order to socialize and meet others the creator of the bar and owner of the land can charge them for entering the bar and if two users are making good conversation one can possible buy the other a virtual drink in order to indicate that they are interested in the other person.
According to Wikipedia, this presented a problem for Second Life developers when Marc Bragg sued them in 2007. Bragg was kicked out of second life and turned around and filed a law suit against the developers because he had purchased virtual land from them when an active user and when he was banned from the game he no longer had access to property that belonged to him. In the end, Bragg was allowed back into the virtual world of Second Life and developers on longer advertised that purchasing virtual land meant that users owned that property.
World of Warcraft on the other hand, does not utilize the existences of a virtual economy. They actively discourage players to buy and sell virtual property using “real” money. Robert D. Hof thinks this is a result of the games long and interesting story lines, users spend all of their time going from one quest to the next. Adding in the element of a virtual economy would just be too much for this game. It isn't neccassary for this game and users enjoy it just as much without it.


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982010.htm November 7, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy November 7, 2008