by Michael Kent

In the late 1980s, multi user dungeons such as LambdaMOO were text-based environments. These computer mediated online spaces drew considerable academic interest.1 The more recent online interactive games are considerably more complex thanks to advances in computing power and bandwidth. Encompassing larger and more detailed worlds, they also enclose a much larger population of players. The first game in the new category of Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) was Ultima Online http://www.uo.com/, which went online in September 1997. While tracing their origins to the more humble MOO these are very different environments. There are currently more than 350 different game worlds. EverQuest http://EverQuest.station.sony.com/ is the industry leader in America, and operated by Sony Online. It has approximately 430,000 players,2 of which more than 118 000 have been simultaneously online at peak periods.3

The largest game by population, Lineage http://www.lineage2.com/, is operated from South Korea and has been reported as having a population of more than four million player accounts4 of which more than one hundred and fifty thousand may be active online at any one time.5

Each of these games renders a distinct virtual world with different themes, activities and objectives for players. Normally players will pay to initially purchase the games software, and then a monthly access fee. Within the game world players are projected as their avatars, digital representations of the characters they play, which are able to gain virtual skills, equipment, and wealth. This type of environment is significantly different from other spaces in the broader Invisible Empire. Each world is limited; it has a scarcity of resources, and abilities. A player’s avatar, and the virtual goods they might come to make or own, share a constancy of production that mirrors off screen goods, as opposed to other ‘normal’ digital artefacts on the Internet that can be easily copied and distributed at minimal cost. While it might be possible to make a digital copy of a character’s magic armour and sword, it would not be possible to do so in the context of the game where the item’s value is activated, without going through a similar process of production, whether it be fighting a virtual dragon, or time spent behind the bellows in the virtual smithy. Throughout history, the view of the best possible world has been one of abundance and ease, yet conversely it is the constraints and limitations of the MMORPG worlds that provide the challenge and appeal to players, as Edward Castronova, Economics Professor at California State University notes ‘people seem to prefer a world of constraints to a world without them’,6 Juul also noted in relation to these limitations that rules ‘offer affordance as well as limitations’7 as quite simple rules can create a variety of potentially complex outcomes’.8

This leads to a situation in some games where simple commodities, that might otherwise have little value to players, take on a much higher economic value, as time and effort must both be spent to produce them. Similarly, characters or avatars that develop virtual skills and abilities over time become more valuable than those that have only just been created. It takes time and effort to ‘grow’ them. This involves not just an expenditure of off screen capital to pay for game subscriptions and Internet access, but also an investment of the player’s time and effectively their labour within these virtual worlds.

As well as goods and avatars that require skill and dedication to build, the MMORPG worlds also contain commodities that hold value not by their production costs but rather their scarcity. There are some virtual items of which there are a limited number, either through the games design, or their production having been discontinued, or in the case of movable error messages in Ultima Online (a highly valuable ‘rare’ in the game) through programming errors. The most common manifestation of this type of resource across the various MMORPG universes is virtual land. Ultima Online produced by Electronic Arts had a land crisis as its virtual world of Britannia became fully occupied, and prices for virtual land began to spiral. In response, the games developers added a new continent to the world. While these electronic fantasy worlds have some similarities to the off screen economy, actions like this electronic version of continental discovery show that the analogy is far from perfect, although the parallel with analogue European colonial expansion is compelling. The resultant land rush as this new continent was opened to sale meant that at one virtual location there were thirteen player’s avatars, each player trying to buy the land by continuously clicking their mouses on the spot while they waited for the ‘option to purchase’ in the game to be turned on. In the end only one player got to build their tower when the option was activated.9 In this case it was time, effort, enterprise and luck that resulted in this virtual wealth. Players generate not just their individual characters skills and possessions but also generate culture and community within the game. Taylor notes that this collective contruction of the game environment is often overlooked.10 Humphrey divides the MMORPG production in the virtual environment into ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ virtual assets.11 Tangible assets are those that can be atributed a value in relation to an indiviual, virtual gold coins, a magic sword, their skill as a blacksmith etc. Intangible assets on the other hand are those that are created by the communities and social environment that the game activates. Humphrey notes that these assets are created through both the paid labour of the games developers, and the unpaid labour of the players as both combine to create the unique text of the particular game. Tangible assets can potentially be transferred from one player to another, wheras intangible assets are the product of the community and the game represent a kind of virtual public good.

These games are nominally designed to be ‘stand alone’ environments. As such, they have an internal consistency that rewards time and effort on the part of the players. Their borders at first seeming closed, rather are quite porous. These games they exist within space created through the Internet, access to which is a prerequisite to play the games in the first place. The borders of these stand alone environments expand outside the direct control of the games developers as players interact with each other through different applications online. A proportion of the ‘intangible wealth’ created by both the collective group of players and the game developers is manifested in this environment through discussion fora and game-related Web sites.

Given this it is of little surprise to see activities in these out of games spaces having repercussions within the ‘closed’ space of the game.
In October 2000 a long time player of EverQuest had the account for his character ‘Mystere’ suddenly terminated while he was playing. After some investigation, the player found that this action had been taken due to the potentially offensive nature of some ‘fan fiction’, a story he had written about the background to his character, that he had posted on the Elf Lore and EQ Vault online message boards.12 While neither of these sites is affiliated with Sony Online, the company had received complaints about the graphic nature of the story and acted, it said, in order to protect the image of the game.13 In 2003 Peter Ludlow’s Sims Online Character ‘Urizenus’ was a celebrity eviction from that game. He published his own web site the Alphaville Herald named after the main city in that game. His offence was to expose some of the seedier sides to the game including virtual conmen and virtual prostitution, and the fact that both were, according to the Herald, being carried out by underage players off screen. Electronic Arts stated in a letter explaining their actions ‘we feel it is necessary for the good of the game and its community’.14

While both these reactions by the games owners can be understood in terms of their concerns about the off screen image of the respective games, the reaction of the players, and the effect on their on screen image, illustrates the role of the players in creating value through the generation of intangible capital. Players in EverQuest reacted to the eviction of Mystere by closing their own accounts, shutting down their fan sites on the Internet, and writing fan fiction of a more graphic nature than Mystere and then demanding that they too be banned from the game.15 Sony online responded by the CEO of the game, John Smedley, writing a letter officially apologising to the players, and personally calling Mystere’s player to invite him back into the game (he declined). Without the community created by the players, and the revenues from their subscriptions the games resources have no value.

The ‘tangible’ wealth generated by creating goods and developing character abilities, and stored in real estate also manifests outside the closed games environments as it comes to represent off screen value, rather than just being redeemable within the MMORPG worlds for virtual currency. Edward Castronova:
The minute you hardwire constraints into a virtual world, an economy emerges, One-trillionth of a second later, that economy starts interacting with ours. 16

Using the exchangeable value for virtual goods as determined by EBay sales, Castronova estimated the GNP of Norrath – EverQuest’s virtual world – to be $US135 million, which were it an analogue Nation State would place it as the world’s 77th17 richest economy, roughly equivalent in terms of GNP per capita with Russia.18
Players are able to buy and sell goods, character abilities, and real estate through the Internet, as well as through trading in the virtual game.

Ebay category 1654 is reserved for goods from Internet games. In 2003 more than $US9 Million was traded through this service.19 These sales exclude one of the largest of the virtual economies represented by EverQuest.

See: eBay http://www.ebay.com.au/ (accessed 15.1.2005)

This value of tangible virtual wealth is based on the intangible value created by the players and the developers of the various games. As Raphael Koster stated
For every person you see selling an [Ultima Online] account on EBay… there are a bunch of people bidding, too. And they are bidding on intangibles. They are offering up their hard-won real money in exchange for invisible bits and bytes because they see the intangibles of UO as being something worth having. A tower for a sense of pride… I find it odd that people think this cheapens the whole thing. I think it validates it. 20

Without the combination of the intangible value from the players of Ultima Online, and the product produced by Electronic Arts that makes game an enjoyable experience the account would have no value. It is only able to realise its off screen value in its on screen context. Without the intangible value created by both the players and owners of a MMORPG the tangible wealth has no foundation.
As Koster recognises, within the game environment, players are divided in their attitude to this cross border trade. This debate can be distilled into one of time against money. Players who have spent time in the various games generating virtual wealth resent others who are able to effectively buy their way into a powerful position in the game with their off screen and out of game wealth.
The argument follows that this disparity allows inequalities in the off screen world to permeate the game world, and works against the leveling effect of each new player entering in the game with the same basic avatar. The counter to this argument is that this situation unfairly advantages those players who have time to spend in the game at the expense of those who have less capacity to play, but often higher disposable income. Vendors of virtual goods refer to this as a need for ‘power leveling’. Interestingly both arguments are premised in the desire for all players in the game environment to be equal. While there is a degree of hostility to ‘power leveling’ or EBaying as the practice is know, there is much less player disquiet about the practice of ‘Twinking’ where a new player is ‘gifted’ equipment and other resourses from an existing charater,21 perhaps due to the transaction occuring entirly within the boarders of the game.

Different games have different attitudes towards extragame trading. Some such as Linden Lab’s Second Life http://secondlife.com/ encourage the growth of the game beyond its virtual borders, and are happy with free trade across their virtual territory. Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab:
It’s great. It’s hyper-liquid. When you reduce trade borders you get faster development.22

Others however are more protectionist and activly work to block this type of trade. EverQuest attempts to keep the game behind closed borders. The Sony end user lisence agreement (EULA), that the players must agree to at the start of each online session states ‘…You may not buy, sell or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction) any Game characters, items, coin or copyrighted material.’23 Sony Online has an agreement with EBay since April 2000 that none of the games virtual goods will be sold through category 1654 (or anywhere else on the auction site)24.

Chris Kramer, Sony Online Director of Public Relations:
The official line is that the selling of characters, items or equipment in EverQuest goes against our end user agreement. It’s currently not something the company supports and causes us more customer service and game-balancing problems than probably anything else that happens within the game.25

For the owners of the games, the time it takes each character to develop both skills and equipment is central to their economic model that requires each player to have to invest time to develop their character, and thus provide revenue from subscriptions. However as Taylor notes, the fact that games, particularly EverQuest, provide mechanisms for trading and sales of items within their ‘closed’ worlds both facilitates the ‘cross boarder’ trading and makes the magnitude of the offence ambigious.26

In 2002, Dark Age of Camelot http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/ owned by Mythic Entertainment, closed the accouunts of Black Snow Interactive for selling large numbers of high level or powerful avatars in their game world and were subsequently taken to court for unfair buisness practices in a case that remains unresolved.

The same Black Snow Interactive was itself unsuccessfully sued by Anarchy Online
http://www.anarchy-online.com/ for ‘grinding’ too many accounts.27 Grinding is the industry phrase for taking basic entry level avatars and playing them until they become more powerful, and then selling them to new players. This process engages an economic constancy of production. Each unit produced requires just as much time and resourses as the unit before, and the unit after. Many of the other tangible goods in the game share a similar production pattern, the same amount of virtual and off screen resources needed to make each virtual product. When this process is conducted in an organised way it generates a fordist mode of production in an otherwise post-fordist casual economy. Similarly for those involved, it crosses the line between these environments marking spaces where the players are engaged in recreational activity, to one where they are involved in virtual labour. As Caillois postulated ‘it may be of interest to ask what becomes of games when the sharp line dividing their ideal rules from the diffuse and insidious laws of dailey life is blured’.28

The role of the multiple actors, both players and developers, involved in the creation of the ‘text’ of each of these games has generated considerable debate about the private ownership of this type of virtual public space. Taylor notes that this is due to the evolution from the essentially public ‘not for profit’ spaces of the text based MUDs and MOOs to the commercialised industry of MMORPGs.29 A number of writers have noted there may be a need for new understanding of intellectual property and copyright to be developed for these environments.30 Although as Castronova31 notes the extensive use of EULAs in this industry heavily favours the owners and developers of the games at this time. These can however also be seen as a kind of explicit social contract that each players agrees to before entering the world.

There is much debate over who owns the fruits of virtual labour in these virtual worlds. Are the players able to do as they wish with the product of their labour, including exporting it to the off screen world, or is this virtual produce still subject to the copyright of the games owners, and still their (virtual) possession? Are the goods owned by the company that produces the game, the virtual owners of the means of production, or the players that cause the production within the game, the virtual workers, who thus should own the produce of their virtual labour? Within this context, the debates about how the game is ‘played’ take on a classic Marxist
positioning. As Lee Cadwell, Director of Sales at Black Snow Interactive, stated:
What it comes down to is, does a MMORPG player have rights to his time, or does Mythic own that players time?32

The monetary importance of this question is evident by the fact that the trade in virtual goods generate more the US$300 million each year, which is more than double the revenue from subscription payments made by players to the various MMORPG operators.33 While it would seem that the law in most cases would support the ownership of copyright, and enforcement of the end user licences agreements by the developers of the games over the players, courts in China have notably come down in favour of the players ruling that it is they who own the fruits of their labour, perhaps reflecting the State’s communist ideology.34

Julian Dibbell describes the MMORPG economy:
It’s a whole new species of economy – perhaps the only really new economy that, when all has boomed and crashed, the Internet has yet given rise to. And how poetic is that? For years, the world’s economy has drifted further and further from the solid ground of the tangible: Industry has given way to postindustry, the selling of products has given way to the selling of brands, gold bricks in steel vaults have given way to financial derivatives half a dozen levels of abstraction removed from physical reality. This was all supposed to culminate in what’s been called the virtual economy – a realm of atomless digital products traded in frictionless digital environments for paperless digital cash. And so it has. But who would have guessed that this culmination would so literally consist of the buying and selling of castles in the air? 35

The virtual borders of these games are made porous through a number of mechanisms. EBay http://www.ebay.com/, – the online auction site –, has provided one of the main marketplace for exchanges. This is turn is facilitated by fund transfer and trust enabling services such as PayPal https://www.paypal.com/. These services are further aided by the use of email, instant messaging, the World Wide Web, and the telephone service for different customers and vendors to meet in a virtual digital marketplace.

While some trading both within and outside of the various MMORPG environments is done between individuals, there is also a role in this market for traders or merchants to buy and sell goods and act to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers. The tower from Ultima Online’s Britannia was sold along with the rest of the users account for US$500 after the player was unable to find work off screen and needed to realise some of the value of their on screen assets. The tower and land, along with belongings and characters, was put up for auction on EBay, but before the auction took place, the player was contacted by a MMORPG trader, Bob Kiblinger, who broke up the various virtual assets for sale on his web site http://www.l2treasures.com/.36 While these traders were originally individuals, or small teams, there has been an increasing move within the industry towards larger organisations. One of the first of these was the Black Snow Interactive (BSI). This was one of the first major players in the virtual goods industry, and provoked the first set of litigation in this area, both initiated by BSI against Mythic Entertainment, and also directed towards the company from Anarchy Online. However by June 2002, the company and its directors had disappeared, without paying their legal bills (amongst many of the company’s other suppliers), and the case against Mythic was dropped.37

Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE) http://www.ige.com, founded in 2001, has become the largest player in the tertiary virtual goods industry. With its corporate headquarters in the United States at New York and Miami Beach, it has an office in Hong Kong and over one hundred employees, growing at approximately five new staff a week, processing orders for virtual goods.38 While IGE sells a wide variety of virtual goods, there are other companies that are more specialised. Gaming Open Markets (GOM) http://www.gamingopenmarket.com/ provides a currency exchange between different MMORPG worlds, as well as the off screen US Dollar. This service renders the borders of these virtual worlds porous to each other without having to pass through the off screen world for currency exchange. The company tracks the values of different virtual currencies, which fluctuate according to their supply and demand.39

Gaming Open Markets http://www.gamingopenmarket.com/market.php?symbol=SLL [accessed 21.6.2005]
This company’s operations illustrate the complexity of trading across the many borders between virtual worlds. To bank money with GOM, a player first goes to their Web site and opens an account. They can then book a deposit, when an avatar of one of the company’s agents will arrange a time, and virtual location to meet and transfer the currency. The agent is an avatar of a real person rather than a computer simulation or bot, as GOM does not have access to the computers running the various games in which they operate. The player is told via email of the secret password that the agent will use, so that they know that they are a legitimate employee of Gaming Open Markets and that they are not giving their currency deposit to a fraud.
The player then replies with their own secret password to verify their identity to the agent. This currency, once banked, can then be traded through the company’s Web site. If the player wishes to buy virtual currency for off screen cash, then they make a deposit to GOM using PayPal. For GOM, the danger is that the company running the MMORPG in question will become displeased with their operation, and locate and delete one of the avatars that hold their virtual cash reserves.

However while the company running each game does, as illustrated above, have this sovereignty over life and death of the avatars within its various worlds, they are not omnipresent. Detecting the actual agent could prove problematic. This difficulty is accentuated by the ability of GOM to have multiple agents that join and leave the game and transfer assets between each other.

This type of virtual meeting is a standard part of doing business across the borders of MMORPG worlds. When the tower and land in Britannia was on sold by L2treasures its new owner was delivered the keys by an avatar named Blossom. This turned out to not even be Bob Kiblinger, but his cousin Eugene, who he pays US$10 an hour to make his various deliveries and pickups in the virtual world.40 Blossom/Eugene fulfil the role of customer service in this industry. While requiring a certain level of literacy in the operation, employing agents such as this allows for the more efficient use of those with the stronger literacy required to value, purchase and sell virtual goods, who then can concentrate on this revenue generation.

There is more to this virtual digital economy than this surface view of the MMORPG environment provides. Ken Selden the Chief Economist at Internet Gaming Entertainment:
There’s a relationship between real-life economics and a virtual economy. I happen to believe that these virtual economies are very real, serious economies.41

The Invisible Empire lays down an added layer of disadvantage on that already present off screen. The MMORPG environment becomes a surprisingly good illustration of this. The constancy of production of goods in the virtual games makes them more analogous to off screen goods than other digitised goods and services that can be easily copied and transported. It is of little surprise then to find that the production of these goods comes to mirror patterns found in the off screen environment. The production of goods that require relatively complex skills remains at the core, and to this end the companies trading in virtual goods will purchase rare and expensive virtual items from active players based in the various games. Production that requires relatively unskilled labour can be conducted more efficiently through the exploitation of cheap labour in the periphery.

Black Snow Interactive were the first company to act on this understanding that a form of production that requires time, unskilled labour, and is able to be located anywhere with access to the Internet, would be most efficiently done where hourly wages were low, and then this produce could be sold where money was relatively abundant.42 While the company was claiming in its lawsuit against Mythic Entertainment that it was defending the interests of players in The Dark Age of Camelot,43 it had in fact, rather than merely acting as a trader, also set up its own production facility in Tijuana Mexico. BSI had a production facility with a T1 high bandwidth Internet connection, eight computers, and was running three shifts to keep the operation going 24 hours seven days a week using relatively cheap unskilled Mexican labour to grind characters in the game for resale to American players. This was in the words of Julian Dibbell the world’s first virtual sweatshop,44 where the Invisible Empire and the American Empire interfaced. In the case of the division of labour at Amazon.com the digital core and periphery inhabited the same space in the off screen world. In the MMORPG world with its constancy of virtual production the on screen and off screen periphery and core conflate.
While Black Snow Interactive ceased operation IGE seem to be following a similar business model. The company needs to send it’s avatars into a game where it is trading, and travel in the virtual world, this ‘travel’ however can be based anywhere. The company has thus, already located their distribution operation in Hong Kong, which also runs 24/7. The company describes their suppliers as a group of more than 100 hard-core players who sell the company their excess currency, weapons and other goods.45 However many of these ‘hard core players’ are subcontractors operating in mainland China running operations similar to that at Tijuana, although this time on a much more expansive scale.46 Large ‘farms’ largely based in China, but operating wherever wages are low, house large numbers of computers running ‘bots’ programs that run the various money making activities in each game and overseen by low wage virtual farmers. These workers in China earn around 56 cents an hour.47 In this context China’s laws on the ownership of virtual labour in MMORPGs, rather than protecting a virtual proletariat, may instead be a facilitator for off screen exploitation.
Virtual Sweatshops in Fujian province, China http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815 [accessed 6.7.2005]

Thus IGE’s operations in relation to the MMORPG economies stretch from the very core of the Invisible Empire to its periphery. At the core, the various games companies and suppliers of virtual goods fight for control of the discourse of digital sovereignty that will support their understanding of how the capitalist system should operate. In this struggle it is of little surprise to see a division of Sony, a member of the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America central in the fight for ownership and enforcement of game owners copyright.48 The company takes the EverQuest slogan ‘You’re in Our World Now’ quite literally.49 While Sony Online was able to shut down EBay trades in EverQuest virtual goods, this may have helped spawn organisations like IGE which will have far greater influence, both on the game and in their ability to influence the discourse, than a few individual traders might have. More recently Sony have opened to EverQuest II servers to Rela Money Trade RMT, but how this will impact on the existing market for these virtual goods remains to be seen.50

Also close to the core of Invisible Empire are those smaller traders such as L2treasures who are able to exploit their high level of literacy in this area of the digital environment to make a profit. Further from the core, but still a long way from the edges of periphery, are those employed at the intermediate levels of this trade, at the digital semi-periphery. These include the IGE employees in the Hong Kong office engaged in processing customer’s orders and the delivery avatar for L2treasures. Both examples of those employed in virtual customer service. This digital core and periphery is then laid out on top of existing off screen economic relations. Cheap labour in Mainland China is exploited and serviced by companies based in Hong Kong. This labour is then in turn exploited as its production is used to service those in the core of the Empire in the United States.

The players in the game debate whether it is they – the workers – who own the fruit of their labour and thus can take the rewards for this labour outside the game, or bring their external resources into the game, or if it is the companies running the games, the – owners of the means of production – who own what is produced in those games and academics grapple with the question of governance of privately owned public space. While at the periphery, both digital and off screen, and beyond their ability to engage from the digital core, there is exploitation of labour in the grinding of the virtual goods at the centre of these debates. Just as the mills of Manchester used to drive the production of cotton in the colonies of the British Empire, so to the virtual sweatshops at the periphery of the Digital Empire are driven by production at the core.
Spinning the Web: the global cotton industry http://www.spinningtheweb.org.uk/industry/trade.php [accessed 10.11.2004]

In this case, the intangible capital created by both players and game designers in the production of the complex texts of MMORPGs at the core provides the foundation for the value of the tangible assets cheaply mass-produced at the periphery. MMORPGs do not require a high level of literacy to play. This makes them perfect vehicles for the extraction of value by unskilled, low paid workers who inhabit both the off screen, and digital periphery. As with other areas of the digital periphery, these workers cannot be seen, and indeed are not spoken of, in the debates at the digital core. Richard Florida’s distribution of the ‘creative class’51 in this context is reinterpreted and reinforced by the Digital Empire.

References

1 J. Dibbell, My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
L. Kendall, ‘MUDder? I Hardly Know Er! Adventures of a Feminist MUDder’. In L. Cherney and E. R Weise (eds), wired_women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle: Seal Press, 1996.
E. Reid, ‘Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat: Constructing Communities’. In P. Ludlow (ed), High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1996.
S. Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
C. Kolo & T. Baur, ‘Living a Virtual Life: Social Dynamics of Online Gaming’, Games Studies. November 2004, volume 4, issue 1.
2 J. Dibbell, ‘The Unreal Estate Boom’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
3 M. Jakobsson. & T. L. Taylor, ‘The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games’, Ezine. August 2003, volume 17, issue 18.
http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/jakobsson.htm [accessed 7.11.2004].
4 A. Krotoksi, ‘Real Profits from play money’, The Guardian. 15th April 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1191678,00.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
5 J. C. Herz, ‘The Bandwidth Capital of the World’, Wired Magazine. August 2002. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/korea.html [accessed 30.10.2004].
6 E. Castronova, ‘Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier’, CESifo Working Paper No. 618. December 2001.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828 [accessed 27.7.2004].
7 J. Juul, Half Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Doctoral Dissertation: IT University of Copenhagen. Defended November 12th 2003. http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/half-real_abstract.html [accessed 7.11.2004].
8 J. Juul, ‘The Open and closed: Games of Emergence Games of Progression’ in F. Mäyrä (ed), Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.
The Game of Chess, with its relatively simple rules, yet extremely complex play is a good illustration of this principle.
9 J. Dibbell, ‘The Unreal Estate Boom’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
10 T. L. Taylor, ‘“Whose Game Is This Anyway?: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World’, in F. Mäyrä (ed), Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.
11 S. Humphreys, ‘”You just got better at alterations [135]” The shifting relations of players and developers in multi user online games’, Conference Paper: Internet Research 4.0. Toronto, 2003.
http://www.aoir.org/members/papers42/Sal%20Humphreys%20AoIRS%202003.htm [accessed 6.11.2004].
12 S. Brudage, ‘EverQuest Strips the Dark from “Dark Elf”’, Games.Com. October, 2000. http://www.gamegirladvance.com/mmog/archives/2002/10/21/stripping_the_dark_from_dark_elf_in_eq.html [accessed 8.11.2004].
13 T. L. Taylor, ‘“Whose Game Is This Anyway?: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World’, in F. Mäyrä (ed), Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.
14 F. Manjoo, ‘Raking Muck in “The Sims Online”’, Salon.Com. 12th December 2003. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/12/12/sims_online_newspaper/index_np.html [accessed 16.12.2004].
15 S. Brudage, ‘EverQuest Strips the Dark from “Dark Elf”’, Games.Com. October, 2000. http://www.gamegirladvance.com/mmog/archives/2002/10/21/stripping_the_dark_from_dark_elf_in_eq.html [accessed 8.11.2004].
16 J. Dibbell, ‘The Unreal Estate Boom’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
17 A. Krotoksi, ‘Real Profits from play money’, The Guardian. 15th April 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1191678,00.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
18 E. Castronova, ‘Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier’, CESifo Working Paper No. 618. December 2001. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828 [accessed 27.7.2004].
19 M. Ward, ‘Virtual Cash Goes Live’, BBC News. 7th January 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3368633.stm [accessed 27.4.2004].
20 R. Farmer, ‘KidTrade: A Design for an Ebay-resistant Virtual Economy’, Habitat Chronicles. October, 2004. http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000023.html [accessed 8.11.2004].
21 M. Jakobsson & T. L. Taylor, ‘The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games’, Ezine. August 2003, volume 17, issue 18.
http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/jakobsson.html [accessed 8.11.2004].
22 D. Terdiman, ‘Virtual Cash Breeds Real Greed’, Wired Magazine. 23rd January 2003. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,61999,00.html [accessed 2.6.2004].
23 R. Farmer, ‘KidTrade: A Design for an Ebay-resistant Virtual Economy’, Habitat Chronicles. October, 2004. http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000023.html [accessed 7.11.2004].
http://eqlive.station.sony.com/support/customer_service/cs_EULA.jsp [accessed 8.11.2004].
24 T. L. Taylor, “Whose Game Is This Anyway?: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World’, in F. Mäyrä (ed), Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.
25 D. Terdiman, ‘When Play Money Becomes Real’, Wired Magazine. 7th April 2004. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62929,00.html [accessed 28.4.2004].
26 T. L. Taylor, ‘Whose Game Is This Anyway?: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World’, in F. Mäyrä (ed), Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.
27 A. Krotoksi ’Real Profits from play money’, The Guardian. 15th April 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1191678,00.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
28 R. Caillois, Man Play and Games. United States of America: Thames and Hudson, 1962, p. 43.
29 T. L. Taylor, ‘The Social Design of Virtual Worlds: Constructing the User and Community Through Code’, in M. Consalvo, N. Baym, J. Hunsinger, K. Jensen, J. Logie, M. Murero, and L. Shade, (eds), Internet Research Annual, Volume 1: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conferences 2000-2002. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.
30 S. Brudage, ‘EverQuest Strips the Dark from “Dark Elf”’, Games.Com. October, 2000. http://www.gamegirladvance.com/mmog/archives/2002/10/21/stripping_the_dark_from_dark_elf_in_eq.html [accessed 8.11.2004].
E. Castronova, ‘On Virtual Economies’, Games Studies. December 2003, volume 3, issue 2. http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/ [accessed 7.11.2004].
R. Farmer, ‘KidTrade: A Design for an EBay-resistant Virtual Economy’, Habitat Chronicles. October 2004. http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000023.html [accessed 7.11.2004].
S. Humphreys, ‘”You just got better at alterations [135]” The shifting relations of players and developers in multi user online games’, Conference Paper: Internet Research 4.0. Toronto, 2003. http://www.aoir.org/members/papers42/Sal%20Humphreys%20AoIRS%202003.htm [accessed 6.11.2004].
M. Jakobsson. & T. L. Taylor, ‘The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games’, Ezine. August 2003, volume 17, issue 18.
http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/jakobsson.htm [accessed 7.11.2004].
T. L. Taylor, ‘“Whose Game Is This Anyway?: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World’, in F. Mäyrä (ed), Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.
31 E. Castronova, ‘On Virtual Economies’, Games Studies. December 2003, volume 3, issue 2. http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/ [accessed 7.11.2004].
32 M. Slagle, ‘Online Games Pay Real Cash for Virtual Objects’, AP Online. 25th March 2002. http://www.detnews.com/2002/technology/0203/25/technology-448554.htm [accessed 22.7.2004].
33 J. Dibbell, ‘The Unreal Estate Boom’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
34 M. Russell, ‘New Industry: Scavengers collect virtual booty in online games and sell it for real cash’, Newsweek International. 11th October 2004.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6161530/site/newsweek [accessed 8.11.2004].
35 J. Dibbell, ‘The Unreal Estate Boom’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
36 J. Dibbell, ‘The Unreal Estate Boom’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
37 The company’s two principles may not have represented the most proprietous of business operators previously having been fined $10,000 by the US Federal Trade Commission for auctioning non-existent computers.
38 D. Terdiman, ‘When Play Money Becomes Real’, Wired Magazine. 7th April 2004. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62929,00.html [accessed 28.4.2004].
39 MMORPG worlds are notorious for periods of hyperinflation when software bugs are discovered that allow for unchecked production of virtual currency.
40 J. Dibbell, ‘The Unreal Estate Boom’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html [accessed 27.4.2004].
41 D. Terdiman, ‘When Play Money Becomes Real’, Wired Magazine. 7th April 2004. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62929,00.html [accessed 28.4.2004].
42 Or at least were the first company to have been exposed in the process of engaging in this process.
43 Of whom there are approximately 250,000.
44 J. Dibbell, ‘Serfing The Web: Black Snow Interactive and the World’s First Virtual Sweat Shop’, Wired Magazine. January 2003. http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/blacksnow.html [accessed 22.7.2004].
45 D. Terdiman, ‘When Play Money Becomes Real’, Wired Magazine. 7th April 2004. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62929,00.html [accessed 28.4.2004].
46 J. Dibbell, Play Money, Meet Big Money. 18th November 2003. http://www.juliandibbell.com/playmoney/2003_11_01_playmoney_archive.html [accessed 28.4.2004]
J. Lee, ‘Wage Slaves’, Computer Gaming World. 5th July 2005. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815 [accessed 7.5.2005].
47 J. Lee, ‘Wage Slaves’, Computer Gaming World. 5th July 2005. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815 [accessed 7.5.2005].
48 Not to mention one of the companies funding the Music Industry Piracy Investigation (MIPI) within Australia.
49 T. L. Taylor, ‘“Whose Game Is This Anyway?: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World’, in F. Mäyrä (ed), Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.
50 C. Suellentrop, ‘The Virtual World Gets Real’, Wired. August 2005, p 30.
51 R. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. Australia: Pluto Press, 2002.
R. Florida, The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent. New York: Harper Collins, 2005.