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EverQuest and the UN
maddugan writes "NewScientiest.com has a
piece on how EverQuest has spawned an economy with a per-captia income comparable to that of a small country. Mostly from profiteering on eBay. If it was indeed a country, it would rank 77th, just behind Russia." It'll be quite interesting to see
what happens as MMORPGs gain popularity and absorb more and more man hours.
Wow, A game has more money than a country? What a shitty world we live in these days.
Sent from your iPad.
This article is quite misleading.
Basically, he calculated the approximate real-world worth of people's items, as sold on eBay, and this figure (GNP of Norrath 77th worldwide) would be correct if everyone sold everything they own on eBay, at these prices.
Quote from the article : However, he notes that not all the assets are converted into real-world cash.
Of course they aren't! If they were, the price for each item would be significantly lower, and the real GNP would be nowhere near what he is quoting. So in reality, if Norrath was a country, the GNP would not be as high as his estimate.
Still an interesting thought though.
This indicates just how wealthy we are in the United States, that our play money has real worth.
It said that the platinum piece is on par with the Yen or Ruble, about one U.S. penny.
Since when was Russia a small country?
Call me anal retentive, but "per-captia income comparable to that of a small country"?
...
Heck - I've got a per-capita income comparable to a small country: my income devided by one.
Well, I guess it is "New Scientist", and not "New Economist", but still...
Gross income? Net income? Anything
yes, we have no bananas
If you take the hobbies of rich people (and folks, most people posting on this site are generally rich by world standards), you can get a high "per-capita" economy for just about anything. Like:
Economy of California
Economy of luxury goods.
Economy of oversized boats and cars
Trouble is, it's all double counting. Those people's incomes are already counted as part of the US GDP. You don't get to count them again.
guys, copyright may not be your favourite word, but I dont believe this article is not meant to be ripped like this.
It is after all, provided completely free, courtesy of New Scientist. Have some respect, and simply link to it, rather than ripping it (without even a magazine credit), or they may stop putting stuff up.
> Castronova says that EverQuest's economy can be studied like any normal economy, even though Norrath is a fantasy world. This is because of the social importance attached to the game by its players.
Castronova believes that virtual worlds like Norrath could eventually become more closely linked with the real world. "Virtual worlds may be the future of e-commerce, and perhaps the internet itself," he says. "Ordinary people, who seem to have become bored and frustrated by ordinary web commerce, engage energetically and enthusiastically in avatar-based online markets."
Jesus christ. I feel sick to my stomach. Can be studied like a normal economy? Hello? Can we start killing off the players when they run out of virtual water and food? Can we cut a few of their virtual legs off and then tell them they cant play the part in EQ that they want to?
I mean, does anyone actually believe this? Are we all so wealthy that we can't understand the significance of scarcity, poverty, inequality, yadda yadda in the (earth to Castronova) real world? The idea that when you can't get your next meal, you're unlikely to be fit enough to run the capitast race?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Keep in mind that this is not insinuating that EQ is more valuable than a country, or more viable.
EQ has a virtual economy, we can agree on that.
A fraction of players buy/sell virtual items/money for real world money.
This is wta they base the per-capita income on.
The fact is, if everyone in the game started selling things IRL, the value would probably drop to zero.
It's similar, in a way, to large shareholders of companies. Like.. say, Gates.
You have a value on paper, but you can't just sell it all and get cash.
Correct me (politely, please!) if I'm wrong, but isn't modern economic theory based on the scarcity of goods? If nothing else, the last time this story got posted, we should have realized what a load of bunk this is.
/. oxidant "Eric S Raymond" and poof! Flames.
I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure that if I went and crunched them we would see that assuming growth trends remained the same the per-capita of Norrath would soon (5-10 years) be higher than all real countries. That is, assuming their economic model doesn't implode because they're stuck with surplusses.
Wait a minute! Maybe this isn't so irrelevant to real life after all. All I have to do is, while stating the obvious, use the magic words "Gift culture" and "software paralells" in the same sentence as the magic
On second thought, I kindof prefer having a high karma than a real discussion here. Perhaps some AC will do the honors?
Do you like Japanese imports?
Any authority on counterfeitting will tell you: Money has nothing to do with any 'gold standard', and everything to do with the faith people put in it. Governments can form things like the gold standard, but its still just a matter of putting your (albeit, well-justified) faith in currency. The collapse of the Silver Standard about 80 or so years ago puts this case in point; when dealing with money, what people think is much more important then what governments do.
What I find curious about this system is that it developed so fast, so well, with so narrow a list of products, and it is neither a corporation nor a nationalist movement. Does anyone else find it interesting that a bunch of geeks on computers could form an economy more stable and successful then many nations with far greater populations and natural resources?
(Incoming free speech!!)
What does this say about the values and states of those nations, and the people that populate them?
The low supply of people selling accounts serves to set an intially inflated exchage rate.
The self-fulfilling desire for traders to get those high initial prices motivates some to buy virtual crap for resale purposes, thereby maintaining those high prices.
20 years from now (or much sooner), all the accounts and virtual items will be worth exactly 0$.
Sometime between now and then, the number of players joining the game will be less than the number abandonning the game. A rapid deline in the value of the currency will result when those abandoning the game dump their accounts.