Virtually Rich - Vol. 1 Ed. 47
Jun 14, 2021 9:21 pm
World Builders' Guild Newsletter
Virtual Goods Predate the Zoomers
Right around the turn of the last century, as they have for millennia, people made a living selling real estate and found goods.
Thing is, all of this stuff was virtual. As in, pixels on a screen, numbers in a database. Ephemeral. Imaginary. Not there.
Julian Dibbell predicted that he could contribute enough time and energy to the accumulation of property and items in the popular proto-MMORPG Ultima Online that he could be able to pay his meatspace bills.
The prediction came true. In 2003, Dibbell turned his virtual world experience into enough real-world cash that he had to invent a new job category on his tax return. It was one of the most significant experiments in virtual markets and currency to bear fruit.
I'll Have Seconds, Please
While Dibbell was grinding his way to Ultima fortunes, folks in Linden Labs' experimental, no-holds-barred virtual sandbox Second Life were building pulsing digital casinos, pawn shops, and concert venues.
Every turn of the card, exchange of a low poly saxophone, or live Kurt Vonnegut lecture cost a player a Linden Dollar or two. L$ weren't pegged to fiat, but players exchanged extra currency on a separate currency exchange for real-world bucks.
This led to an estimated economy totally over $6 million USD in 2006 alone.
That's... not virtual currency. (Photo by Nick Chong on Unsplash)
"Stay a while and listen."
Sorry Deckard, I have about sixteen million undead to slay in the next 45 minutes before I have to race off to 7th grade, but boy would that be easier if only I could score a sweet Stone of Jordan without the fuss of re-burying those undead.
Diablo II, like so many other online RPGs of its era, demanded an endless attention span in order to overcome the odds of finding the most coveted and powerful weapons in the game (like the aforementioned Stone of Jordan, which granted a generous boost to every one of the player's stats).
Diablo II, like so many other online RPGs of its era, had a thriving virtual goods black market bustling beneath the surface of the naïve 90s World Wide Web.
Unregulated, no-refunds, all-sales-are-illegal-and-very-final.
Just pray that perfect Mara's Kaleidoscope you bought wasn't a fraud. You could be out your lunch money with no way to explain that bogus charge on your parents' credit card.
How are you winning in today's virtual marketplaces?
To future worlds,
Matt Ventre
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