Virtual Economy Research Network

I'm writing this at Breaking the Magic Circle, a seminar at the Game Research Lab at University of Tampere, Finland. Overall, it's been an interesting seminar. As is typical of game studies gatherings, we've heard a mixed bag of presentations on diverse topics and from distinct angles. This can be both stimulating and frustrating at the same time.

My own contribution was a working paper titled Virtual Worlds Don't Exist. I got some useful feedback, for which I am thankful. Feel free to drop your own feedback either as a comment on this blog or via email. I'll paste the abstract below. Updated: you can find my presentation slides here.

At some point during the discussion described in the previous post, Joshua Fairfield wanted to contest the status value of high-level characters by arguing that there is no correlation between the the level of a character and the skill of the player. Be that as it may, I think he eventually conceded that there may still be status value, if for no other reason than that the player has spent a lot of time leveling, and is thus a member of what Joshua called "time aristocracy" (which I think is an excellent term by the way).

We can question the status value from our own standpoints ("they are just kids with too much time"), but it is nevertheless real for some MMORPG players and may be worth protecting by operators that wish to cater to that segment. To explore this point a little further, I thought I would re-post a comment I left in a Terra Nova discussion long time ago.