The Economics of Games
Two interesting nuggets in Ezra Klein’s story about studying economics in video games. First, a question I’ve asked myself many times about Facebook and currency:
“Just for example,” Castronova says, “Facebook has an entire currency system that isn’t taxed or regulated. At what point does that threaten what the Federal Reserve does?”
Next it’s a broader point about what effect video games have on the economy-at-large:
There’s also a question of whether actions in online worlds count as real-life economic activity. “Say someone is playing Eve Online for a whole week and not providing services in real life,” Guðmundsson says. “That would hurt GDP [the measure of real-life economic growth], but it would increase the Gross User Product in the virtual world. So did overall value creation really decline?”
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