Angry At Politics

Here's an article from the Walrus Magazine that blew my mind. Game Theories

It's all about the developing economics of Massively Multi-user Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). The article brings to light all sorts of incredible things, like that the virtual money in these games is often sold on Ebay for real money. Not only that, but that the per capita GNP of one particular game, EverQuest, is $2,266! The article points out that this makes EverQuest the 77th richest country in the world. Not only that, but the average player could generate virtual money at a rate that would translate to $3.42/hour.

It doesn't stop there though. There are companies that trade solely virtual goods, and who do business in the millions of dollars a year. Naturally, they trade not only items and currency in these MMORPGs, they trade entire inventories of goods, as well as characters who ahve already gained great pwoer, as measured in levels.

But there's another way to get powerful characters besides buying them. Some games sell pre-levelled characters, but for those that don't, there's an ingenious business providing a solution. They've hired Mexican workers across the border to play online computer games in 24/7 shifts! The workers play with the clients' characters until the character gains enough levels, and then control is turned back over to the client.

Two things strike me about this particular scenario. First off, it amazes me how mcuh value these game manufacturers have created that they've spawned an industry to sevice them. But additionally, I thought that I know lots of people in this country who would love to play games and get paid, but not many who do it for less than four bucks an hour. Just another example of how quickly our economy is changing, and how globalism is changing our world.

It also didn't escape my notice that all this value was generated to feed what is only a virtual appetite. But perhaps that's unkind - these online communities are just that, communities. In days when we wept over the death of social clubs in the United States, we dreamt that the internet would solve the problems of time and space that faced these groups.

What does scare me is that all of this value lies in the hands of the companies that created those worlds. If EverQuest were to increase the income players could earn, in essence printing more virtual money, it would cause inflation in prices, and the virtual currency would also drop in value. The actual value of the curency is based on the same thing that US currency is based on - 'full faith and credit.' Which is another way of saying that funny green paper is worth something because we all agree that it does. Should the US government somehow disappear, the money would not retain its value. Similarly, if EverQuest were to suffer from, say, a massive lawsuit that could threaten to close them, the value of its currency would drop. Basically, the companies making these games are now the government of economies and communties on the same scale as countries.

Still reeling from reading that article. Go check it out, and comment here.