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.

Comments

Invade France

[Anonymous Coward]

"If it was indeed a country, it would rank 77th, just behind Russia."

Must be about time to invade France then. Seems like everyone else does it.

Re:Invade France

[daeley]

Must be about time to invade France then.

Yeah, but the French are saying their Maginot Firewall is completely impregnable! ;-)

Re:Invade France

[nick_davison]

Yeah, but the French are saying their Maginot Firewall is completely impregnable! ;-)


As any MMPORPG player will tell you - look for the gap in the polygons and slip through it. France may appeal to the UN to get you banned from the server but all their bases are belong to you still.

National Export...

[tsmit]

would that be geeks?

Or maybe virgins?

Re:National Export...

[invenustus]

One summer a couple of years ago, my then-girlfriend and I were in different towns, so we spent a lot of time talking online, and eventually we got into MUDding together. We each had two characters that would go around gaining experience and wealth together, and we'd joke about sex a lot.

One night we were going around buying equipment, and we kept kissing each other's characters. So we found a room alone, and I signed off one of my guys, and my remaining guy had a threesome with her two characters. A week later one of her characters took on both of mine.

Boy were we a weird couple.

Duplicate post?

[Blackwulf]

Didn't we just hear about this the other day?

This article references the one we already had about the Norrath Economical Report...

A Bit Misleading

[Geeyzus]

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.

Re:A Bit Misleading

[Will_Malverson]

[On converting items to 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.
You can't "convert" an item to cash. All you can do is sell it to someone else for cash. Do you claim that, say, Egypt doesn't have an economy because the things produced there are rarely sold for dollars?

Here's an example of his argument: The game produces (via spawns or user manufacture) 10 swords of dragonthwacking per day. Those have an in-game value of 5000 platinum pieces. You can exchange pp for dollars on the open (though technically black) market at around 100:1. Thus, there are $500 worth of SoDs produced every day. Repeat these calculations for every item in the game, and from there you can figure out the GNP of Norrath.

Remember, GNP does not have anything to do with exports. GNP attempts to measure the complete value of the production in a country or place.

This is the same way that you can figure out, in dollars, the GNP of a place like North Korea. The closest analog to this would be to try to figure out how many things are sold by USians to USians for dollars in Mexico.

The full research paper

[ehiris]

The full research paper on this can be found here

I tried to post this article last week but it seems like I did something wrong because it got rejected.

Re:sad state of affairs

[Cato the Elder]

Well, it probably does have more money than a few countries, like say, the one that sould the rights to .tv

On the other hand, the article is about "per-captia" income. So what it really says is that people sink more money on average into Everquest than many people have to spend. It doesn't mean they have more money total--most countries have populations larger than Everquest.

On the other hand, it is kind of sad that you can earn more from playing Everquest all day than the people in a lot of countries earn in a week. I wonder if "virtual sweatshops" could actually come into being--people come into work, log on to computers, and make virtual artifacts all day. Hey--probably beats farming.

Ten Thousand Villages new Project?

[Tattva]

Ten Thousand Villages is a not-for-profit store that sells 3rd-world arts and crafts in North America for as little markup as possible. I wonder if it would be more profitable to have some of the 3rd world participants play Everquest and sell their accounts at the stores. $3.42 an hour isn't bad!

Re:Evercrack is addictive

[PD]

Can't blame Evercrack for this. People have been ruining their marriages since waaaay before online gaming. The technique of "incessant yelling and screaming" was patented at about the same time as "nagging the hell out of your husband", "sleeping with the babysitter", and "blowing the house payment on a lifetime supply of pudding."

Per capita?

[the bluebrain]

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 ...

This is the result of double counting...

[StevenMaurer]

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.

errors in research

[Xzzy]

The "research" paper this article is based on has been earning some decent discussion in EQ communities the past week or so. In the ones I participate in, some interesting discredits came to light:

1) The survey was self-selecting. Hardly a valid research tool.
2) Poorly worded survey questions. They were geared towards provoking a specific response.
3) Time. This person played the game for an immensely short amount of time. People have been playing this game for two YEARS. The researcher put in around a week.

There's more, like how his favorite city was Qeynos (definetly not a place anyone sticks around to enjoy, Qeynos is at the butt end of Norrath), but you get the point.

I find it appalling that a "reputable" source like new scientist is actually giving this guy's poor research this kind of air time.

Noteriety in an alternate universe

[mystery_bowler]

As interesting as the talk about the economy of Norrath is, I'm more intrigued by what drives that economy. As a former EQer (although never an addict, per say) and the son of an avid EQ addict, my observations are that the thing that drives the economy of EQ is one of the same things that drives the "luxury" economy of the real world: status.

From a somewhat psychological view, one could argue that one of the primary addictive qualities about EQ is that it allows the player to be represented in a grand, heroic fashion. All the guys are buff and appear strong, all the girls look like a cross between Xena and two coconuts. Riches and adventure are somewhat easy to come by, given that you spend enough time playing the game, so the opportunity to escape one's mundane and unaccomplished life is ample. Given that the rest of the game's world is populated by the avatars of living, breathing human beings, it becomes more than a simple diversion to establish oneself in the society...it becomes a major ambition, just like our normal lives.

Enter the interaction between our real world and Norrath. It is difficult for someone of average income to buy great status. Luxury cars, large homes on prime property...all these things cost tremendous amounts of money. And since most of us did not win the genetic lottery, our appearance will not gain us said status, either (hence, only a tiny portion of the population are models). With the EQ universe, the dynamic is changed. For a mere $100, large sums of game money can be purchased. For your real-world American dollars, you can purchase the most powerful, greatest status symbols of the game. You can walk through the game world boldy, showing off your prized status symbols to other players just as wealthy Americans enjoy going for a drive in their shiny Mercedes.

The ability to re-invent yourself is a major selling point for what is otherwise a chat window with a game around it. Verant, as a business, was very wise to include hard-to-find, rare items that would confer "great champion" status to their owners. It is the same behavior we see in our society, it's just more affordable for the average person.

Re:Russia is not @ 77, it's at 17

[Peyna]

That'd the GDP, not per capita income. They were referring to GNI per capita; how much money each person in the country makes on average. Not how much money the country makes all together. In other words, Russia may be worth a lot of money, but that's just because they have a lot of people.

Re:Do these numbers add up?

[raju1kabir]

First of all, it's the per cap (and not absolute) GNP that was claimed to put Everquest right around Russia. That's pretty meaningless, as it's a self-selected group of people from the richest countries in the world who have a lot of time on their hands. I mean, the per cap GNP of my house is several times higher than that of the richest country in the world. So what?

Secondly, France's GDP in 2000 was $1,448,000,000,000, which is a thousand times greater than the number you posted.

The difference between GNP and GDP in a nutshell is that GNP includes income generated by multinationals based in that country. For instance, Microsoft's worldwide income accrues to the US GNP but only its US income is counted for the GDP.