I found these article very interesting, one I have read before this “life of a Chinese gold farmer”. First however, I want to talk about the article “Virtual Worlds: A first hand account of Market and Society on the Cyberian frontier” although I found it has some good points I also had some problems with this article. It is true a lot of money is spent on virtual worlds but I feel that this article overstates and exaggerates and assumes more then it shows facts. For example the author states “By all measures, Norrath is richer than many important countries, including China and India.” Lets say for arguments sake that his estimate of Norrath’s GNP at the time was 135 million, China’s GNP in 2000 was 1.3 trillion. Besides the fact that their GNP’s aren’t even close, Norrath’s supposed 135 million GNP I feel is overstated because the author doesn’t take into account that money is lost when players purchase items from non-player characters. Game designers make certain items only attainable from non-player characters so that virtual currency can be taken out of the system to stem inflation.
However,”Virtual Worlds: A first hand account of Market and Society on the Cyberian frontier” does point out some good points. The fact that the average person can make money off these games, which the gold farming article also pointed out. When I couldn’t use bots to run my gold farming business anymore I honestly thought about outsourcing to India because I could of easily paid way more then the average wage, but infrastructure costs would be to high. The low costs of doing business online and access to richer markets allows for people in undeveloped countries to make a living, all they need is a computer and an internet connection and they could be the richest person in town. Selling goods and services in virtual worlds has become so overwhelming that Blizzard Entertainment decided to make a real money auction house in their upcoming game Diablo 3. However Blizzard gets a cut of 30% of whatever you make, I think this will increase Blizzards profits but will most likely hurt gold farmers. One of the main reasons gold farmers could make a large profit is because it took certain resources to pull off, now that anyone can sell items I believe supply will greatly outpace demand and make the money made insignificant.
The article “How Meeting In Second Life Transformed IBM’s Technology Elite Into Virtual World Believers” really showed a brilliant idea. Using Second Life to hold conferences I thought was pretty innovative and at first I thought Skype would be just as effective but from reading the article I think Second Life is better. Second Life gives people a visual representation which I think can make it more organized and easier to follow. You can visual seek out those you want to talk to and easily have group conversations in a relaxed way. Once again doing business virtually is very cost effective and using Second Life this way to have a conference is just as good as having an in person conference if not better.
