Castronova's Notes on Hacker Court

scubacuda writes "Cal State Fullerton's Edward Castronova (who recently wrote an excellent analysis of gender inequality between male and female Everquest avatars) has just updated his notes on 'Hacker Court', a mock trial held at Vegas' Black Hat Conference on whether virtual items destroyed during the hack of an online video game constituted real loss. 'No verdict was reached, but the jury and audience agreed that the damages were real,' says Castronova."

Comments

Not that suprising to me

[Castaa]

You have to look at the buyers of EQ accounts to get the reasons behind the price differences.

A buyer of a high level EQ account is most likely to be a person that wants a position of power and respect in the game. They want the to be the 'best'. Or near the top anyway.

So much so, that they are willing to pay hundreds of real US dollars for it. This type of player is most likely a male player in real life. Power and sense of being respected (looked up to) is more important to male online gamers. A high percentage of male players (over 80%) play male avatars online. So there is going to be a higher demand for high level male avatars for EQ.

In general, women play EQ for more of a sense of community and social interaction. These goals do not require a female player to purchase a high level EQ account. Also, there are only about 15-20% real life female players in EQ. So even if they were looking to buy an account there would be far fewer female buyers compared to male.

Another interesting demographic is that only 1-2% of female EQ players play as males.

Good source of info on this subject can be found here: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/