Making Online Game Economies More Real
from the crossing-the-virtual-line dept
We’ve had a number of articles over the years about the economics involved in online gaming. A few weeks ago, we even posted an article about how inflation is threatening the EverQuest economy. Since products don’t degrade, and over time more and more money is created within the gaming environment, inflation can become a real issue. Wired has an article about how the new Star Wars Galaxy game used that knowledge to try to create a more realistic economy where products degrade over time. They did this based on research about online gaming economies. As the economies in the games become more real, they begin to blur the lines between “real” marketplaces and “virtual” marketplaces – especially once people start selling things in the virtual marketplace for real money on eBay and other places. How long until someone becomes a full-time professional online gamer by opening up a shop selling his or her virtual wares?
