http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articl.../1929205&tid=1
Interesting article about virtual property making real money. Some quotes...
#Things got even more interesting when Castronova learned about the
#"player auctions." EverQuest players would sometimes tire of the game,
#and decide to sell off their characters orvirtual possessions at an
#on-line auction site such as eBay. When Castronova checked the auction
#sites, he saw that a Belt of the Great Turtle or a Robe of Primordial
#Waters might fetch forty dollars; powerful characters would go for
#several hundred or more. And sometimes people would sell off
#500,000-fold bags of platinum pieces for as much as $1,000.
#Then he performed one final analysis: The Gross National Product of
#EverQuest, measured by how much wealth all the players together created
#in a single year inside the game. It turned out to be $2,266 U.S. per
#capita. By World Bank rankings, that made EverQuest richer than India,
#Bulgaria, or China, and nearly as wealthy as Russia.
#It was the seventy-seventh richest country in the world. And it didn't
#even exist.
#on average, each of these "residents" possessed virtual goods worth
#about $3,000 U.S. "When you consider that the average real-life income
#in America is only, like, thirty-seven thousand," Castronova tells me,
#"you realize these people have a non-trivial amount of wealth locked up
#inside the games."
virtual property
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