Virtual data

Long before the great journalistic pile-on about Second Life (which of course I participated in), there was already longstanding interest in, study of, and journalistic pile-ons related to the spending of real money in other virtual worlds. I participated in that, too: Here’s an October 2005 Consumed pegged to Sony’s capitulation to such economies in the form of a venture called Station Exchange. I bring this up because in a recent report summarized here by CNet:

Sony Online Entertainment has concluded that so-called real-money trades can be good for both gamers and publishers if handled at controlled locations such as Sony’s own Station Exchange, a 1-year-old experiment to make transactions of virtual goods for real money a direct part of EverQuest II rather than an illicit activity.

That sounds like a somewhat self-serving conclusion for Sony, I suppose, but even alpha virtual worlds thinker Edward Castronova seems pleased that the study was done: “We’ve never had reliable data on this phenomenon at all.” CNnet continues:

During the last year, Station Exchange ran on two of more than 30 EverQuest II servers, allowing players to conduct so-called game asset transactions for real money. Sony Online earned $274,083 from its listing fees and commissions on the 51,680 transactions conducted in the first year. While that’s hardly a fortune, it cost Sony Online almost nothing to run the service.

Julian Dibbell, author of Play Money: Or How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot, is also quoted.

Also: Castronova’s Synthetic World News passes along the Sony press release.