Real Economies In Virtual Worlds

from the do-they-matter? dept

We've had numerous discussions about legal issues associated with virtual worlds, but there are also plenty of economic issues (which often are related to the legal ones). Wired News is running an article looking at some of the economic info available about various online games and comes to the conclusion that the only thing that really matters is if the game is still enjoyable to its players (which seems fairly obvious). It's not important that a virtual economy be a "successful" economy in the traditional sense as long as it's fun for the players. Of course, a disastrous in-game economy isn't going to be that much fun, which is why many more games (usually from the smaller online gaming companies) are paying a lot more attention to the in-game economic situation.