Game Theories-
I'll admit, I didn't expect an article titled "Game Theories," by Clive Thompson, to be about economics. When I saw that it was, I was despondent. I was hoping for an article about programming strategies or the psychological implication of playing games. And though I read on begrudgingly, the article became engaging, interesting, and flat funny.
The article focuses on the work of the economist Edward Castronova. A professor at the Fullerton campus of California State University, an academic plateau he hadn't expected to reach at thirty-eight. In his free-time, Castronova began to play a game, Everquest.
Much like the World of Warcraft, which was presented in class, Everquest is a graphic massive multi-player online role playing game, or MMORPG. This game requires a subscription to play, and involves starting a character from nothing, and slowly fighting across the graphic country side, leveling up while amassing treasure and wealth. Castronova noticed the accumulation of wealth, then the trading of goods between players. He realized that Everquest had it's own bustling economy. Not only that, but upon further research he learned about "player auctions" where players could auction off acquired virtual goods and monies for actual U.S. currency. This discovery meant that the currency of Everquest, virtual money, had real world value. Once Castronova collected the data on 616 actions he discovered that the Platinum piece, the base unit of money in Everquest, was "worth about one cent U.S. -- higher than the Japanese yen or the Italian lira."
Though virtual worth may not seem important, the model of Everquest is one of the first clean slates economists can observe. Everquest is "the first egalitarian polity" where every player must start out with the same chances of success or failure. The ability for economists to study this unrestricted society was unheard of prior. As Castronova is quoted in the article ""It undoes all the inequities in society. They're wiped away. Sir Thomas More would have dreamt about that possibility, that kind of utopia." Players build and maintain the economy, unknowingly proving and disproving both economic and psychological theories.
The article continued following economic anomalies that have occurred in the numerous online societies, highlighting currency exchange Web Sites, gold farmers, and even a spattering of organized crime and brothels in some platforms. A short discussion on the ownership of virtual property also ensued, being that virtual property, though not something that can be held, retains a certain amount of wealth. Being that is the case, who owns it, the programmers, or the person who earned or purchased it.
However, what fueled the article remained the same, virtual currency has obtained real world value. Digital wealth is much less stable than that of material wealth however, and the thought of an economy based in a world that could be deleted at any point in time is concerning. However, this raises questions in philosophy that I could not articulate in this short blog, mainly that what we know as reality could be effectively deleted at any point in time, along with some arguments in morality.
4 comments:
I personally found this one of the most compelling articles we've read all semester. I found myself very much drawn to the tangibility of this discussion. Everquest exists and can be studied, whereas many of the authors we've read are speculating on the future of technology, or speaking of current trends as only a piece of the puzzle, and we'll all have to wait to see what it all means. Once again, I can say I'm not much of a video gamer, but I did enjoy Simcity2000 for a while years ago, and I like games like Zelda, Mario64, and the Final Fantasy series. Role playing games have always been much for fascinating to me. I think Castranova and Thomson hit the nail on the head. It is all about economics, about virtual identity, about success and failure. One of the most monumental of all the advances offered by the digital world is the opportunity for anyone with a computer to completely reinvent themselves from the comfort of their living room. While I personally remain unconvinced that a great number of the so-called revolutionary aspects of the digital world are truly anything more than sped-up elements of things we've seen for centuries, I think this is truly the first time a human being has been able to easily and inexpensively obtain a new identity in a new world, with a new job, indeed a new body. In the discussion of There.com being nothing more than a beautified virtual real world, I was reminded of Shatner's TekWar, and how in his vision of the near-future, people were no longer addicted to cocaine or cigarettes, but to a device called "Tek," which was nothing more than a small gadget one wore on their head like Bluetooth headset - and it simply placed them in a virtual world where they were happier. Of course, in sci-fi, Tek users were literally moved into this virtual world. The Tek devices made them actually see and hear this virtual world with their eyes and ears. But how long will it be before There.com users prefer There to here?
I found this article to be absolutely fascinating, and it connnects directly into Thomas and Brown's article as well. The idea that virtual money can transfer into real money is at first glance stunning. I think that it is important to identify the role that Ebay, or online auctioning in general, plays in this. For without systems of online auctioning, I don't believe that there is anyway to affectively buy and sell virtual money and characters at all. Castranova also mentions in his article that he found it fascinating to see how the richest of players operated, in comparison to how he played the game, basically operating on the lowest level of this virtual society. This leads into Thomas and Brown's article, which discusses the ability for an online society to teach a player skills that may help them succeed in real society, IE getting a great job. Who knew that success in these virtual societies could actually translate into real money? Who knew that success in these virtual societies could actually translate into real world success? However, after reviewing this articles i find that it is now not so hard to believe. It almost makes sense.
I think it is utterly fascinating that playing video games has become a full-time job for some people—the one mention of a $3000 sale had me gaping, as I could live for months on such wealth. This made me realize how much of an emphasis our society puts on technology, as the people who buy these characters and items are concerned with appearance only, not taking much pride in patience, or learning strategies (the anecdote of the total n00b getting mixed up with the experts had me laughing) wishing to rush into battle, sometimes with disastrous results. It seems like trading one kind of work for another. Sean’s comparison of there.com and TekWar is beautiful and compelling, although hardly realized at this time.
I have never read TekWar, but I thought of Bradbury's Farenheit 451, where the wife will go put her earpiece in and sit in a room with screens that have different people who talk to her. She is so despondent towards her husband, but calls the people on these large televisions her family.
I also found the idea of online polygamy interesting. The idea for some reason makes me uneasy. I know it is nothing like a real marriage, but the emotional implications of being married can still be explored online. Some people will find their actual spouse online. Does this strike anyone else as odd, or am I just old fashioned this way?
Another interesting point was the fact that economists did not perceive Castronova's article as relevant or useful. He spent the time to write a legitimate scholarly paper, and no scholar will accept is as such. Is it because the idea is so new and revolutionary that the idea is disregarded? If a different marketing campaign was used, would that have led people to understand just what Castranova is implicating?
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