Ethics of buying virtual currency
I have had difficulty trying to explain a phenomenom to some of my sociology teachers at SFU that I have noticed on the internet. Many of them can't grasp the concept of what is going on and it is very hard to explain to many of them because they simply are not involved in the large online communities and virtual worlds that becoming more and more popular. I am involved in one such community called Final Fantasy XI, not the largest online game by far but I enjoy because it brings a lot of north american, japanese and european players together.
So what is it we do? Well to put it simply it's a virtual role playing game, a cybe dungeons and dragons adventure in which I and 500,000 people share a persistant online world. We band together to fight large beasts or compete against each other for bragging rights. We form a virtual community and produce our own equipment and items in crafts based on real life trades such as blacksmithing and goldsmithing. Many of these games have player run economies with some players have the ability to make items or acquire them from monsters while others offer them virtual money in exchange for the items. This has gone on since the first online role playing game first appeared in the mid 90's, but there has been a growing industry within these games that is not a part of these virtual economies but has grown from a need amongst some of its members. Gamers are now buying virtual currency from people out of the game, and they are buying virtual currency with U.S. dollars.
So how do you explain to someone who doesn't play these games what this phenomenom really means? To most people it seems like a silly way to spend your hard earned money. You buy fake money so you can use it in a game. These games are made by game developers in order to make a profit. Just to enter the world you have to pay a fee and you sign a contract saying that you are in a realm under the control of the company that makes it. That is the first ethical problem with buying virtual currency for real money. It is breaking a legal contract with a game company that you are paying. But with so many players in these games its nearly impossible to be caught buying virtual currency, since the majority of the transaction happens outside of the game, only after you have paid for the amount of virtual currency you want will you see another player, who then gives you the money without a word.
What is the main issue involved here is how something that was considered transient and imaginary is generating real world social value. I can hold a million gold pieces on my character in this game and think "I have the equivalent to fifteen dollars U.S. on me" I can't use it to buy a coke but I can sell it to others so really it is just one step removed from real money. There is a market for these game currencies and it's bigger than you think. The main seller of virtual currencies across over 20 different games is IGE and it makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
But how? How can this company make so much money off of players in these game worlds? Unfortunately there has been absolutely no studies done on the motivations behind purchasing virtual currency, there have been studies of the markets and whether or not we should tax virtual income, but no social researcher has thought to ask the question of gamers, "Why is virtual currency worth millions of dollars to all of you each year?"
What makes this an even larger problem is that IGE and other companies are making very large profits off this market because of the inequities in the global economic system. In China, Russia, India, and anywhere else you can get computer savvy workers for pennies a day you will find virtual sweat shops where people play these games for 12 hours a day, earning up to $60,000 dollars worth of virtual currency and be paid 60 dollars a month for it.
This is a social problem buried so deep within the realm of cyberspace it's hard to decipher, let alone study. I believe there needs to be more attention paid to this problem as it not only affects those rich enough to afford high end computers and the monthly fee to play but also those in poorer countries who are being exploited in order to exploit the wants and desires of the rich by a few very internet savvy businessmen.
So what is it we do? Well to put it simply it's a virtual role playing game, a cybe dungeons and dragons adventure in which I and 500,000 people share a persistant online world. We band together to fight large beasts or compete against each other for bragging rights. We form a virtual community and produce our own equipment and items in crafts based on real life trades such as blacksmithing and goldsmithing. Many of these games have player run economies with some players have the ability to make items or acquire them from monsters while others offer them virtual money in exchange for the items. This has gone on since the first online role playing game first appeared in the mid 90's, but there has been a growing industry within these games that is not a part of these virtual economies but has grown from a need amongst some of its members. Gamers are now buying virtual currency from people out of the game, and they are buying virtual currency with U.S. dollars.
So how do you explain to someone who doesn't play these games what this phenomenom really means? To most people it seems like a silly way to spend your hard earned money. You buy fake money so you can use it in a game. These games are made by game developers in order to make a profit. Just to enter the world you have to pay a fee and you sign a contract saying that you are in a realm under the control of the company that makes it. That is the first ethical problem with buying virtual currency for real money. It is breaking a legal contract with a game company that you are paying. But with so many players in these games its nearly impossible to be caught buying virtual currency, since the majority of the transaction happens outside of the game, only after you have paid for the amount of virtual currency you want will you see another player, who then gives you the money without a word.
What is the main issue involved here is how something that was considered transient and imaginary is generating real world social value. I can hold a million gold pieces on my character in this game and think "I have the equivalent to fifteen dollars U.S. on me" I can't use it to buy a coke but I can sell it to others so really it is just one step removed from real money. There is a market for these game currencies and it's bigger than you think. The main seller of virtual currencies across over 20 different games is IGE and it makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
But how? How can this company make so much money off of players in these game worlds? Unfortunately there has been absolutely no studies done on the motivations behind purchasing virtual currency, there have been studies of the markets and whether or not we should tax virtual income, but no social researcher has thought to ask the question of gamers, "Why is virtual currency worth millions of dollars to all of you each year?"
What makes this an even larger problem is that IGE and other companies are making very large profits off this market because of the inequities in the global economic system. In China, Russia, India, and anywhere else you can get computer savvy workers for pennies a day you will find virtual sweat shops where people play these games for 12 hours a day, earning up to $60,000 dollars worth of virtual currency and be paid 60 dollars a month for it.
This is a social problem buried so deep within the realm of cyberspace it's hard to decipher, let alone study. I believe there needs to be more attention paid to this problem as it not only affects those rich enough to afford high end computers and the monthly fee to play but also those in poorer countries who are being exploited in order to exploit the wants and desires of the rich by a few very internet savvy businessmen.