Virtual Items Gaining Real World Value

Virtual economies are economies that exist in virtual worlds, particularly Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) like Everquest, The Sims Online, Second Life, World of Warcraft and Lineage. In these games players can exchange characters, weapons, real estate, etc. for other goods or virtual currency. Most game manufacturers, such as Sony Online and Blizzard, actively encourage these virtual economies; however some of these economies have started to spill over into the real world, causing concern for game players and designers.

The growth of online gaming has led to players buying and selling in-game items for real-world money on sites such as eBay. The money changing hands for these items is substantial: a space station in the game Project Entropia recently went for $100,000. This sort of transaction is made possible by the very mechanisms that make a virtual economy possible:

• Software that records the state of the game world and players
• Software that records which items belong to which user and allows users to transfer these items and skills whenever they want.
• Scarcity, which means that users have to use "real" resources, such as time and money, to obtain items and skills
• Specialization, which means that certain resources are only available to certain players

There is active debate in the online gaming community and industry about selling game items for real money. Some feel that since players have spent hours toiling over the game to acquire the skills and items, they should be free to do what they want with them. The game Second Life even recognizes intellectual property rights for assets created in the game. Others believe that the game developers actually own the virtual items and should be able to control any such transactions. Some also argue that allowing players to sell game items for real-world money turns these games into gambling venues. So far, these transactions are not illegal, although they may violate the terms and condition of some games.

One side effect of this practice is a wave of virtual crime that has engulfed the online gaming community. Seduced by the lure of easy money and the blurring of the line between virtual and real money, unscrupulous players have begun forming gangs to extort money from new players, writing computer programs that beat up and rob other characters, and creating online brothels where players pay for cybersex. These trends will only grow as online gaming becomes more popular and the value of online commodities increases.

References

• Internet Gambling Regulation Present and Future: Technology Outpaces Legislation as the MMORPG Problem Emerges 
• Virtual Economies  (Wikipedia)

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