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The Buying Game
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 08:57:35 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> Date: October 17, 2005 8:12:02 AM EDT To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Buying Game Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com[Note: This item comes from reader Monty Solomon. This sort of movement of currency from virtual worlds to the real world is going on in a lot more of these virtual worlds then EverQuest. This classic notion of the 'black market' is in the process of morphing to an entire new dimension. Legitimate governments will have trouble extracting tolls for this new spin on commerce. DLH]
From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com> Date: October 16, 2005 10:11:59 PM PDT Subject: The Buying Game Consumed The Buying Game By ROB WALKER October 16, 2005 Station Exchange Back in 2001, a professor named Edward Castronova began to study the way markets worked in a place called Norrath. Norrath does not exist in a physical sense but is the name of the "virtual world" where the online computer game EverQuest is set. EverQuest is filled with half-elves, castles, sword fights and such, and also involves a fairly complex internal economy, whose currency is platinum pieces used to buy weapons, food and other goods. Although the goods are digital, it's not quite right to say that they don't have real value; pretty much from the earliest days of Norrath, Castronova discovered, game players found ways to pay real-world dollars for fake-world things. These black-market, real-money transactions were frowned upon by the game maker but turned out to be unstoppable. After years of trying to thwart the practice, the owner of EverQuest II, Sony Online Entertainment, capitulated to the realities of the unreal marketplace this summer by creating a site called Station Exchange. Here, gamers can use real money in an auction format to buy or sell Norrath's weapons and scrolls and even fully tricked-out characters. .... <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16consumed.html>
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- The Buying Game David Farber (Oct 17)