Reading Edanna’s blog, I bumped into an interesting post (Spanish only) about social networks in the virtual world and how the have an effect on us. In some way, what happens in the virtual worlds have an impact on this one.

Castanova is an economist and sociologist which entered the Everquest online role playing game. He observed very some interesting patterns: Not only it seems there’s an economy with virtual objects and treasures trading achieved by players, but also, since some of those objects are sold in the internet (e.g. at eBay) the have a value in the real world.

Starting from this point he goes deeper into his research and in the end he reaches very interesting conclusions, like, for example the platinum coin (Everquest money) value compared to dollars, or how people does not like egalitarian worlds (like agent Smith said in The Matrix: we like suffering).

In my humble opinion, the value of objects in virtual worlds are based on desire and speculation, but they don’t have a real value. They don’t make real wealth.

Posted by Boriel as Internet, Sociology

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