Note: this is an overview of our project. In this medium, we talk about the background of our topic, the tools we used during the research, the issues and problems we focused on in the study, and the conclusions we came to. For further details, please visit the particular section webpages.
BGM: "The Dawn" by Dreamtale, very popular song among WOW gamers.
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Virtual Economics:
The Way Virtual Reality Shapes Reality
Questions We Are Going to Answer in This Study
What is virtual economy?
Why is it important?
What are we going to focus on?
What tools did we use?
What did we find?
What's our conclusion?
Introduction
Virtual Economy is the set of artificial economies inside online games, including the artificially scarce goods, currencies, and other intangible commodities, such as human effort, and trading for real money.
Today, the virtual economy is very important; More than 121 million players spend money in this market that today has the capacity of $21.2 billion and is still growing.
Virtual Economy is closely related to the real economy through the trading action between real currency and game currency. What is more, people also use real money direct purchase gears or goods in games.
In our study, we introduce the background of the virtual economy in the introduction page. Then we present the tools we used during the research process in the survey design page and the app design page. The next part is the issues and problems, in which we talk about the three focus of our study. We also set a further reading page to help you finding more related articles and medias. The references page is the bibliography part of our whole website.
Read the introduction to the background of virtual economics>>Tools We Used
Survey:
We designed an online survey to learn about the attitude people have towards virtual economy and virtual properties.
The results show that people do not pay as much attention to virtual economy and virtual properties as we first thought.
Read the survey design and results analysis>>
App:
We designed an app to present the result from our survey in the form of a short quiz. We also introduce the major issues and problems we learned in this study. Our purpose of the app was to help people get an image of what virtual economy is and how it could have an impact upon the real world economy. What is more, we hope to draw attention to the existing issues and problems in this field.
Read the app design>>The Existing Issue and Problems
We present three major issues and problems we find in the field of virtual economy. We believe people need to pay more attention to those issues and the government needs to take action and put regulations in place in order to protect people's rights and benefits.
Property Ownership:
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| The user agreement of World of Warcraft |
Virtual properties ownership is quite clear: they belong to the game companies. Under the agreements set down by these big companies, there's little to nothing that people can do to protect their efforts: they either agree to the terms of service, or are not allowed to have access to the game. These agreements make sure that game companies have the right to do anything they want to the virtual properties: redistribution, revision, or even deleting.
Recall the results from our survey, that most people do not really consider their virtual properties valuable. A very important cause of this is the property ownership; people tend to think that these virtual properties are not consistent, that is, they may have changed by tomorrow morning or even disappeared.
Does this hurt the virtual economy? We believe so. Efforts and creativity are valuable; they are what allow the virtual economy to function and thrive. It was the creativity of people that brought real trading actions into the virtual world and thus created the virtual economy. The goods within this economy are not only made up of the code developed by the gaming companies but also the efforts of users. Property ownership overlooks all of these efforts and creativity and hurts people's rights and benefits. We believe that this issues is important and further regulations need to be developed in order to protect the rights and benefits of players.
Read the article discussing the property ownership and the introductions to related readingsGold Farming
A popular term within the virtual economy is "gold farming". "Gold farming" refers to the actions of repeatedly doing boring jobs, like killing monsters, collecting herbs, or fishing to collect game currency.
This is the second focus of our study. We believe the gold farming actions have already hurt the virtual economy.These actions have set up a vicious cycle and caused the currency equivalent (usually between real money and game money) to become damaged. It is also a cheating action that hurts the fair gaming environment.
However, this action is not drawing enough attention right now. Lots of people purchase golds from gold farmers, and the secondary market (which usually sell golds) is extremely big, like a 800 pound gorilla. It is very difficult for the game companies to fight against this action without hurting themselves and even if they did, the studios who take part in gold farming would only come back later.
This problem needs managing, which might even involve criminal procedure, to prevent the health of virtual economy from being damaged by the gold farming actions.
Read the article discussing the property ownership and the introductions to related readings
Hacking
Hacking has been a nonstop problem since the invention of the Internet; It also exists within the virtual economy and causes endless problems.
According to the results from the World Bank, about 20% of gold sold in the secondary market, is hacked. This also hurts the scarcity of currency, and people's properties. What is more, this hacking problem sometimes causes gamers to become upset and leave the game.
Additionally, the hacking problem today is not only about the accounts but also includes, charters being hacked and the gold, gears, or other virtual properties being stolen. A rising problem is hacking existing in the payment method connecting the real economy and virtual economy. People need to use online services to sell or purchase the virtual goods with real money and now hackers aim at these online payment services. PayPal accounts have been reported as having been hacked and involved in money laundering, which is one of the most terrible financial crimes.
The hacking problem in virtual economy today also relates to some foreign affairs. Reports show that the North Korean government set up an army to raise funds through hacking in games.
The hacking problem, however, has drawn attention and there already exists regulations and laws forbidding such actions. Nonetheless, everyone involved in the virtual economy should notice the significant level of this problem and protect their own information.
Read the article discussing the property ownership and the introductions to related readings
Further readings about our research and topics>>
Conclusions
