UK Bankers Weigh WoW Gold
Dave Birch at the Digital Money Forum recently invited Richard Bartle and Aleks Krotoski to speak to the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation.
There was a lot of talk of virtual property and secondary markets and other such sensible things. . . . I also enjoyed the whole spectacle of people discussing World of Warcraft spot and future gold markets in front of both the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England!
I’d love to hear more about their remarks, and about the reactions of the bankers. (I didn’t know there was a futures market for WoW gold, though it doesn’t surprise me.) It’s good that this kind of information is beginning to filter out to the world of real-world commerce, but more interesting would be to school such august financial types in the more open markets of Second Life and hear their take on that.
Feeds
I talked mainly about game worlds, and Aleks talked mainly about non-game worlds (principally Second Life). One of the themes that arose was that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here: what’s good for SL could be bad for WoW; what’s good for WoW could be bad for SL. Different virtual worlds have different needs, none inherently superior to the others, and it is a mistake to look at virtual worlds - whether from an investment, regulatory or investment perspective - as if they had identikit economies.
Thus, although I’d say yes, these people should be schooled in the markets of SL, they should also be schooled in those of game-like worlds, and should understand their different needs (and the reasons they’re different). I’d also suggest, from their point of view, that gave developers should perhaps be schooled more in the way that the real world organises its affairs; I got the impression that, innovative though it is, the complexity of SL’s economy is as nothing compared to the kind of markets these people are steeped in on a day-to-day basis. They can learn from us, but we can learn a lot more from them.
Incidentally, there were about 30 “august financial types” in the audience, some of very impressive seniority. The most interesting thing was that about a quarter of them /already knew/ what virtual worlds were before I gave them an overview. Amazing!
Richard
Thanks, Richard, for that report. And that is amazing. Did the fine bankerly minds have any reaction?
Futures market for SecondLife now in alpha release:
http://www.virtualfuturesmarket.com
>Did the fine bankerly minds have any reaction?
My talk overran, and although Aleks clawed us back some time we didn’t have a very long discussion afterwards. Offhand, I’d say that everyone in the audience was either bored, bright or both. Some of the questions they did have time to ask were very insightful, and I kept being asked questions as I spoke which I had the answer for on the next slide - they could often see the implications without my having to explain it to them as I would ordinarily expect to have to do.
I don’t suppose I’ll hear from any of them ever again, but you never know…
Richard
Amazingly, some of this exchange has been quoted in a UK newspaper, The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/06/26/cclife26.xml
Richard
Quoted as if they’d spoken to you and without attribution, of course. Doesn’t surprise me, though, the Torygraph isn’t known for its journalistic high standards, is it? The Sunday Sport would have handled this completely differently.
Thanks for the link, Richard.
I really think maybe Blizzard is crazy. In the recent 3 months,Most of chinese wow gold farmer in US servers had suffered seriously from the Blizzard’s account banning actions.
Many ‘world of warcraft’ players may have realized that wow gold price is growing continuously in the whole market. The main reason, whether you know or not, is about Blizzard large-scale account closing. The official of Blizzard announced that they had closed 30000 accounts and eliminated 300 million wow gold which were hard-effort products made by many Chinese wow gamers. In the black July, the crazy closing-account behavior continues. As a result, thousands of farming accounts from China are closed and many game workshops in China are forced to close down. Is Blizzard crazy? Such closing-account behavior will lead to serious shortage of wow gold. Furthermore, many European and US wow players who are not willing to spend time on gold farming will lose much fun in the game because they fail to buy wow gold to purchase equipments in the game. In the end, Blizzard will lose a number of real gamers. Imagine what the Azeroth world would be like without Chinese wow gold farmers! Can a real wow gamer, take you as an example, continue to enjoy virtual life in world of warcraft?