Abstract
In this special edition on virtual-world goods and trade, we are pleased to present articles from a global cohort of contributors covering a wide range of issues. Some of our writers, such Edward Castronova, Julian Dibbell or KZero’s Nic Mitham will be well known to you as distinguished leaders in the field, but it is equally our pleasure to introduce exciting new voices. Here you will find pieces written by academics, practitioners, journalists, a documentary filmmaker and perhaps the youngest contributor to JVWR yet, Eli Kosminksy, who attends high school in upstate New York. We would also point out that this issue extends its format to include Anthony Gilmore’s pictorial story, Julian Dibbell’s audio interview, and Lori Landay’s machinima. In real life, most contributors live in the US, the UK and Europe, and we, the editors, are based in Australia and France. We express warm thanks to the team at the University of Texas, especially to Jeremiah Spence, our editor–in-chief for his guidance throughout this process. We begin with our own thought piece, which is designed to contextualise the deeper contents herein by way of plotting the virtual goods path and placing some historical sign posts along the way.Mandy and Serge
Highlights
This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research
From an etymological point of view, when we talk about economy, we are talking about community management
Economies have scales of their own, so-to-speak, and from the householder opening a wallet at the checkout, to the secretary of the International Monetary Fund loaning money, through to start-ups chasing Venture Capital, we all wrestle with the same issue: dealing with a virtual entity to transform it into realities which, hopefully, makes us live better, or at least helps us face the continuous disruptions of our environment
Summary
Perhaps the explosion of the Internet bubble in 2000 distracted economists from the Internet field They have been slow to return, preferring to analyze the global financial crisis and associated Ponzi schemes than to track the fast-moving virtual economy that propagates on the Internet, and the increasing importance of virtual goods in people’s lives—an importance that, in turn, has an impact on traditional economies. Internet markets have lead to real disruption, in the micro-economic sense (new rules, or rather the return of old rules: peer-to-peer negotiations, village market place, barter); in the usage sense (the explosion of digital goods); and in the macro-economic sense (privately owned parallel currency, such as those in virtual worlds such as Entropia Universe’s PEDS, Linden Dollars, and the Chinese QQ Coins).
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