Virtual Ingame Economies

"Ingame Economy," even when you say the words it doesn't sound like something you should take very seriously, but it is something that developers of MMOs take very seriously. Blizzard have announced that they banned 59,000 accounts in June. (It's lucky they've got over 5 million in the pool, however, this does represent approx 1 per cent of their subscription base). Among the reasons given were that some of these accounts were used for farming or utilizing third party software to farm. This shows just how serious the ingame economy is. Farming is defined by Wikipedia as, "A farmer is a general term for a MMORPG player who attempts to acquire ("farm") items of value within a game, usually in order to exploit the game's virtual economy. This is usually accomplished by carrying out in-game actions (such as killing an important creature) repeatedly to maximize income. More broadly, the term could refer to a player of any type of game who repeats mundane actions over and over in order to collect in-game items." Often this is achieved by using third party software to automate the process and allow users to run multiple accounts at the same time in order to farm gold or items. What this does is "deflate" the value of the ingame currency, just as flooding the real world economy with printed money deflate's its value.

It amazes me that gaming has come to this. A virtual economy that is worth money in the real world. The reason why it has come to this is because people sell their ingame items and gold for real world money. Which means that those players who spend their time playing the game legitimately feel that they should have the opportunity to be rewarded financially by selling the spoils of their adventuring. In principle, I don't have a problem with this. People should be able to sell things of value which they have acquired with their own time. However, I do believe that gaming becomes more than just a game and is, in some strange way, a commodity. Commodities can and are exploited in the real world. The world may be regulated, but people find a way around the regulations in order to gain personal profit from it (look at abalone farming). The thing is that games aren't the real world. They are just games. Aren't games meant to be a recreational pursuit? Something which you gain some enjoyment from. Something which takes you away from the real world. While professional gaming is on the rise only a very small percentage of gamers (probably less than the 1 per cent banned from farming) will ever make their living from it. So, why is the ingame economy so important?

What would happen if they let the farming go on? Wouldn't that completely deflate real world money paid for items and make the pursuit of farming, in the end, frivolous? If they allowed the farming then there would be no need to protect the economy. However, there are two aspects to the ingame economy. There is the economy which functions in game and the economy related to the game which functions in the real world. The ingame economy determines the pricing of goods and services in game. Where as the economy related to the game is what people would pay for game items in the real world.

Having said this I don't support ingame exploitation for personal gain, but I do think that the notion of the virtual game economy as being important a joke. They are just games after all. If we play them for personal profit are they games to us any more or work?