…all the synthetic economies put together, with about 10m players, are about the size of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
That is Tim Harford, reviewing Edward Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, from the 14 January Financial Times, p.W5.
Addendum: Here is the recent WSJ piece on economists and TV game shows, thanks to www.politicaltheory.info.
There is an underlying structural problem in all of these virtual economies, because the “central bank” (i.e. the game’s adminstrator) is constantly creating new monsters to be killed and treasure to be found. Therefore, the money supply is infinite, and the value (in real USD or EUR or JPY) of these items will plummet.
An excellent entry in the mises blog spells it out pretty clearly.
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