While it may seem on the surface that a Virtual World is simply a system of socialization or entertainment, there is much more beneath the surface. One of the key factors that drive many virtual worlds are real world economic factors, to the point that the virtual money in many of these games have a monetary exchange rate. The most infamous example of this is gold farming in World Warcraft, where people play the game as much as possible to make as much virtual gold as they can so they can then sell this virtual money to players who do not have time to play the game as much for hard currency. This is frowned upon most players as cheating and deflates the value of the virtual money, but it is done despite protests.
This belief is not universal among all game companies. Everquest, one of the first virtual worlds has an acution house within the game where players can use real money to bid on ingame items, as well as directly buy games from shops and other players.
The most extreme example of the real and virtual economies colliding is the game Entropia Universe. where every item made by a player or bought by a player is worth exactly 1/3 of a dollar. Players can deposit money into their game accounts to buy more virtual goods and in a strange twist, sell virtual goods off to other players and the game itself for market value to attempt to make a profit
With so much money floating around these virtual worlds, the blurring between real and virtual property will probably continue until there is no distinction.
Gold Farming- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming
Everquest auctions- http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-823260.html
Most valuable piece of online property ever!!-Expensive Island
I have to wonder what Internal Revenue Service thinks about these virtual currencies.
ReplyDeleteAs virtual worlds are the modeled worlds that appear similarly to the real world. How can we bring online role-playing games that is the one type of virtual worlds, to use for educational world more usefully?
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