Virtual world, real economy
Posted on January 29, 2002 @ 10:53 in Research
This is a pretty amazing article. An economist studied the economy of EverQuest by looking at EverQuest related sales on Ebay and found that the GNP per capita is $2,266, putting the EverQuest economy on the 77th place of real world economies, just behind Russia. That's pretty mindboggling. A quote from the article:
Castronova also found that Norrath's virtual currency is more valuable in the US than the Yen. And his research shows that EverQuest players earn an average of $3.42 for every hour spent playing the game. "It's a robust, free-market economy filled with wealthy, hardworking people," Castronova told the online news service CNet. "What you see with EverQuest is that economies happen by themselves. If you get a bunch of people together and they have things they can produce and opportunities to exchange them, you've got the makings of an economic system."
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