[ExI] The "real" world

[ddraig]

On 22/03/2010, scerir <scerir at libero.it> wrote:
> > I wonder how long it will take for the virtual economy to exceed the
> > "real" economy?  (And for that matter how you would measure it?)
>
> It seems that the total amount of financial derivatives
> is something between 5 and 10 times the GNP of the
> entire world. So, it seems to me that this part of the
> economy is already 'virtual', in some sense.

Yes, I watched with astonishment some of the figures being floated
around at teh height of the GFC. I think it got up to 450 trillion USD
before it either peaked or someone with a clue in the media said "for
God's sake! Stop publishing these numbers!"

There has been some work in comparing virtual economies with real
economies. Some of the larger games either allow you to directly
convert the in-game currency, or else objects are being sold via ebay,
for example, and this has been used as a basis to calculate the
real-world value of the virtual economy.

>From memory this has been done for Eve, WoW, and Second Life, and some others.

I was involved in (what turned out to be a start-up) business which
was developing models of real buildings for Second Life, the idea
being that clients would examine these in SL and then buy them in the
real world. I was amazed that people would spend significant money on
such an object. I left when I realised that nobody had actually
fronted up the money as yet, and instead of my being paid I was going
to be paid... in the future... if anyone paid us... maybe.   I have no
idea if money was actually going to be paid or not, but it seemed that
there was a certain amount of interest from some real estate companies
in paying for virtual models of real buildings.  I seem to recall
someone actually becoming a millionaire via property speculation in
Second Life.


Dwayne
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