Making Real Money in a Virtual Economy
by
Randy Mears
When video games like Ultima Online first appeared, there was much ado about how the economies of the virtual world were able to cross over into that of the real world. It was fascinating that houses and castles purchased in Ultima Online, using Ultima Online gold could be sold on Ebay for real Dollars. This trend, virtual economies crossing over into the real world economy, seems to apply to most online games that are endowed with their own internal monetary systems (virtual stuff). Web based support for these kinds of monetary crossovers have become a burgeoning business.
In addition to Ebay, for many of these games, there are third party web sites one can use to buy and sell virtual items (including gold) and contract virtual labor (to gain virtual experience). For the motivated player, a willingness to spend real world dollars to acquire virtual world items or experience is extremely logical.
So, an ordinary player can hire real labor (by paying real dollars) to play your virtual game character for you until a desired target level of experience is achieved. For most of these games, the more experienced the game character the greater the earning potential. Paying someone to play the game for you allows you to discreetly make your initial entrance with a fully experienced and seasoned game character. For “World of Warcraft,” a third party estimate to raise a character from level 1 to level 60 (Warcraft’s top level) is $261.00. Leveling-up to 60 would take a typical player hundreds of hours of play to achieve.
As for the business of making real money, you could invest in increasing your virtual character’s earning potential by paying for an up-leveling service to max-out your character. With that max-level character’s enhanced earning potential, you can make loads of virtual money that you can then sell for some real world cash on Ebay. Ultimately you could earn your investment back and scale-up to start making a profit (figure out how to automate it, without attracting any attention, and you would rake it in).*
As with any global resource, you better get cracking. I hear that virtual gold-farming is already a popular profession in China!
* There is one thing that I forgot to mention; gold farming and similar practices are generally frowned upon by companies that publish and run online games. Their concern has something to do with "unpredictable effects on internal game economics."
