N

You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

September, 2012

The Economics of Games

Exploring the economic impact of video games, including the unconventional currency systems and potential effects on real-life economic activity.
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?”
September 30, 2012
©
Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.