economies of online games
I’ve been reading this book, recommended to me by Mike, called The Worldly Philosphers.. It’s basically a history of economic theories, and it’s actually really interesting. The more I learn about economics, the more I like it, and I’m kind of pissed at my high school economics teacher for completely turning me off on the whole subject. Back then, it was taught as fact, focusing on memorization of “laws” — when, in fact, economics is more like “applied philosphy” which, if you think about it, is so farking cool. So yah.. i want to learn more about this stuff..
Anyway, just like how things in my life always seem to intersect, my recent interest in economics has collided with my everpresent dotcomminess in the form of a few articles I’ve read lately. Basically, online games are becoming a great testing ground for testing economic theories…
At star wars galaxies, Raph “Holocron” Koster wrote a large piece describing the intricacies of the SWG economy — as he states, “the game gets more boring when the economy is out of whack”, which incents game developers to create healthy economies.. which in turn, present economists with a really great testbed to try out theories..
And then yesterday, the walrus published a great article about the EverQuest economy — citing Edward Castronova’s 2001 whitepaper about the EverQuest economy, “Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier“. People “playing” these games are creating real wealth and value (about $2,266 US per capita in EverQuest) — making it the seventy-seventh richest country in the world!!
Fascinating stuff..
Anyway.. to top this all off, Gaming Open Market has launched to make a market for the trading of these gaming currencies… CRAZY! So cool!
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