Whatever Happened to Playing Monopoly? Virtual Worlds: Too Much For Me To Handle.

My least favorite high school classes: Politics and Economics. Conveniently our most recent blog topics, you can imagine that I have been struggling to put all of the pieces together. So, my way of understanding new concepts is to really simplify and make elementary school comparisons. . . work with me here.

Going into this week's topic of virtual worlds I was clueless other than my freshman year experience of watching a kid down the hall become addicted to World of Warcraft. I laughed at Levy's reference to the term 'Warcrack' in his article when he discusses the addiction and excessive time consumption of the players in virtual worlds. The photo below was actually taken last year during one of our very own (attempted, yet never successful) Richmond 2nd Floor WoW Interventions.



So, that was then. I thought that after reading about World of Warcraft and Second Life that I would come to some profound realization of how or why these worlds well, become like crack (or 'Warcrack') to users, yet I'm still not there yet. This is how my brain works:

First I think that sure,back in the day I would put my Barbie in her convertible and push her around my room, which you could say became my own little world. But like most, I grew out of that phase in my life and I crossed over from pretend to reality. (even though I spent my high school years driving my mother's mini van and not a convertible, you get the picture)

Then I look at my brother, a 21 year old senior here at UB, who proudly still plays video games and yells at the screen, something I'm not sure that he will ever grow out of. But thankfully this does not take up the majority of his day and he is capable of returning to the real world.

Now, I am just starting to scratch the surface of the lives of virtual world residents and avatars. Some users are spending 12 hours a day or more trying to advance and reach goals in their virtual worlds (Barboza 2005). I read all of the articles and the only reasons for participation that made sense to me were those based on financial gain...the real kind, not the virtual kind. I understand that social scientists can do a lot of research by observing virtual worlds (Giles 2007), however where interpersonal aspects would usually interest me, it is the economic aspect of virtual worlds that are more intriguing to me.

The question was to compare an open virtual economy like that of Second Life, to that of a closed virtual economy like World of Warcraft. Whether declared open or closed by creators, it is being proven that even an attempt at a closed virtual economy will make its way into the 'real world.' Andrea's blog really helped me to understand the features and possibilities involved with Second Life's open economy, especially the video she posted of her Professor's research with creating a virtual sweatshop. Clearly society has moved on from simple games such as Monopoly and The Game Of Life which used simulate 'another world.'


Looking at online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, Ultima, and Everquest, which strive to maintain a closed economy, companies are straying away from intertwining real currency (other than what users pay in subscription costs) and virtual currency. This is becoming more and more difficult to do as 'black markets' have been created so that users are now not simply bartering inside the walls of the online world, but using sites like Ebay to purchase with real money items that are not even tangible such as virtual goods, armor, skills, and property.

"There are dozens of people out there making a real living selling virtual goods. . ." (Dibbell 2004)Those who provide these goods and resell them in accounts are kind of like the drug dealers of the virtual world I suppose. Dibbell recognizes one man who does just that, Bob Kiblinger, a chemist who quit his job and works full-time buying and selling virtual goods. He says in the article that he is making more doing this than what he was making at Procter & Gamble.

Another crazy off branch of what is supposed to be a 'closed' virtual economy are the businesses being generated in China. Groups of 18-25 year old men in China are spending 12 hours a day or more, 7 days a week, and getting paid about $250 a month to find valuable virtual goods and create accounts that surpass entry levels, that will then be sold to other users. (Barboza 2005)

"For the Chinese in game-playing factories like these, though, it is not all fun and games. These workers have strict quotas and are supervised by bosses who equip them with computers, software and Internet connections to thrash online trolls, gnomes and ogres." - Barboza

What I have learned is that pretend worlds are creating real economies, whether their creators want them to or not. Imagination and make-believe worlds have come a long way since Barbies, Monopoly, and MarioKart, that's for sure.

Sources:

Lynch, T. (1996). DS9 trials and tribble-ations review. Retrieved
October 8, 1997, from Psi Phi: Bradley's Science Fiction Club
Web site: http://www.bradley.edu/campusorg/psiphi/DS9/ep/
503r.html

Barboza, David. (2005). Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese. Retrieved November 6, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html

Levy, Steven. (2008). World of Warcraft: Is is a Game? Retrieved November 6, 2008. https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_61661_1%26url%3d

Dibbell, Julian. (2004). The Unreal Estate Boom. Retrieved November 6, 2008. https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_61661_1%26url%3d