It seems like most of the buzz around virtual worlds lately has been that virtual world economies are thriving…hmmm…so, why is that?
Even our economy is struggling, I see a positive trend in
virtual world adoption and with that the economies within virtual
worlds budding as well.
"With its users swapping virtual goods and services worth
around $600 million per year, Second Life has the largest economy
of any virtual world - which exceeds the GDP of 19 countries,
including Samoa". Newscientist.com
Second Life Residents spend an average of about 100 minutes in-world per visit So what
are residents doing over this hour and forty minutes? Conducting
business in a virtual world is becoming more and more commonplace.
Although there is a differentiation between
virtual goods vs. physical tangible goods (assets), virtual
goods are being taken more and more seriously. Take a recent example from The New York Times of a
real-life will reflecting virtual goods. Obviously due to the
user agreement in a virtual world, you can't take your avatar with
you when you die nor does your 'virtual' property remain unless
someone is paying the fee to maintain it.
"New Scientist reports that
Americans will spend $621 million (in real dollars) in virtual
worlds this year, while the Asian market is dropping an estimated
$5 billion (which also fuels the Internet addiction rehab
market). Second Life in particular is raking it
in with $144 million in transactions in the second quarter of
2009-a 94 percent increase from last year."(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/10/05/real-economy-still-sucks-virtual-economy-booming/)
"The worth of the U.S. virtual goods market is expected to
surpass $1 billion this year, according to a report released last
month by analysts at Inside Virtual Goods. The global market is
thought to be five or six times as much." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/technology/internet/02assets.html?_r=1
Let's narrow down the term 'virtual worlds' to refer more
specifically to the popular virtual world of Second Life from
Linden Lab, here are a few more relevant stats:
"Over 1050 users spent 1 million Linden Dollars or more,
which translates to about $4,000 USD and up. Just under 60 per cent
of the 475,000 Second Life players spent at least $2 in September,
and the total supply of Linden Dollars is equal to over $26 million
USD." http://www.multiplayergames.com/2009/10/28/users-fork-over-1-billion-in-real-money-for-fake-stuff/
Brian Solis stated on his blog:"Residents create more than
250,000 new virtual goods every day - from clothing to vehicles to
buildings to automatic language translators, and more." http://www.briansolis.com/2009/10/the-second-life-of-second-life/
Virtual economies with make-believe products and goods are
booming, albeit the real-world economy may not be. The United
States is slowly climbing the virtual goods ladder if you will as
Europe and Asia have always led the pack in virtual world spending.
So here's to the future of virtual world economic growth.
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