The not-so-secret trick to succeeding at EverQuest, the popular multiplayer online game, is to hit the black market. In the thriving world of message boards and auction sites, players can buy and sell virtual in-game objects - weapons, currency, even whole characters - among themselves using real cash. But this summer, that market went legit. Sony, the game's publisher, set up two EverQuest II servers where real-money trade (RMT, in game-speak) is kosher.
Sony could have just started selling magic swords directly to consumers. In the future it may - the total annual market for virtual goods is estimated to be $200 million or more. But there'd be consequences. The company might alienate players suspicious of RMT. And when the central bank is also the only manufacturer, and goods can be made for free, you risk hyperinflation. Norrath, the Dungeons & Dragons-esque realm in which EQ takes place, could start to look like Peru in the 1980s. So instead, Sony's site, Station Exchange, hosts player-to-player trade, regulated - something the black markets can't offer.
Die-hard players initially reacted to the new rules with horror. Your annual salary (or trust fund) doesn't affect how much money you get at the start of Monopoly, they argued. Why should it in EverQuest II? Indiana University economist Edward Castronova, a pioneer in the study of online gaming, once described Norrath as a liberal utopia where everyone starts off on a level playing field. If Earth money affected your status, he wrote in a prescient 2003 article, then "living there will no longer be different from living here."
But players spend $1.9 billion a year on EQ and the rest of the genre. For many of them, Norrath already is real life (the game isn't called "EverCrack" for nothing). As one poster on the virtual-world weblog Terra Nova put it, "If someone from the US goes to vacation in Canada, are they expected to go there penniless and broke, get a job there, and work for a month just so they can pay to enjoy their vacation for a few days?"
The old name for titles in this genre was massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. Now they're "virtual worlds." Station Exchange is tacit acknowledgment that Norrath is less Monopoly and more Canada. It's a place, with residents, sightseers, and an economy. It has trade relations with the US. Rather than an escape from ordinary life, it's an extension of it.
Remember, EverQuest II is merely playing catch-up. Virtual worlds from Second Life to The Sims Online seem to have no problem with RMT. That leaves Castronova feeling glum. "What we want is for real life to become more like them," he says. And instead, the online multiverse is becoming less virtual and more world.
- Chris Suellentrop
credit: Roy Knipe
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The Virtual World Gets Real
