During the past few years there have be various news reports of people paying real money for fanstasy items in online games such as Warcraft and Evercrest. Virtual environmetns, rightly or wrongly, have become social enviroments where people chat, fight, and buy and sell items, and suspend belief as they explore the virtual environment and interact.
These games are general all based on the original role playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which has been has now developed into a fully 3D massive multiplayer online virtual world. The biggest is World of Warcraft, which has 6.5 million users worldwide. That population is the same as a small country.
In these games people buy and sell things with virtual money, and build up "characters" that go through certain levels. The higher the level, the more power they have in the game. Having money or items is one way of building up your character faster. For example, if a user has powerful special wand or sword, he can defeat more enemies and rise faster in the game. Higher level people can own a horse, which means they move can faster from one location to another, to be where their friends are. These virtual worlds are several kilometers in size. It's also about prestige and status.
Now all this sounds like uninteresting game talk, but I brought it up because of an interview in this weeks New Scientist (UK's equivalent to Scientific American). The article, entitled "Striking Out for New Territory", by Alison George, features researcher Edward Castronova, who has just been granted $240,000 to develop an online game that will be used as a basis for scientific study.
One of the reasons for the interest is because hard cash is being user by game players to "get ahead" in the game. For example, World of Warcraft allows users to mail virtual money and virtual objects to each other. But there is nothing to stop a player asking for real cash for the virtual objects. The article mentions that today you can buy a gold piece for Warcraft for 9 cents.
Players also sell their online accounts, which may contain a set of high level charcters. The article mentions these accounts can sell for $10000, and it's not uncommon to see them for sale for around $500
I teach Virtual Reality at a college, and I know that some of my students are into this, or have been. I have first hand knowledge that they know people who have sold a character for $200.
Castronova calculated that in Everquest, a single "worker" could make about $3.50 an hour, if the fruits of their labour was converted to real money, which would mean that every citizen of Everquest could produce as much wealth as a small, poor country, and "four times as much as someone in China". (Castronova).
The interview concludes with the question:
"Do you think politicians will have to find ways of dealing with this?"
"There have already been court cases in Korea and China on these
issues. Suppose there's a breakdown in the server, and somebody
logs in one day and all their equipment in the game is gone. They
complain to the company, which says that they have to start over
again. That would cost someone a lot of money and they could sue.
Could a government emerge within those spaces to address these
issues? Maybe. If it did would it be another nation state? That's the
brave new world that I can't get my mind around."
Does anybody know what is going on here, and what, if anything should be done about it?
