Virtual World Economies- Thriving or Dying?
December 2nd, 2009
It seems like most of the buzz around virtual worlds lately has been that virtual world economies are thriving…hmmm…so, why is that? I don’t think it is simply because our economy is struggling, rather I see a positive trend in virtual world adoption and with that the economies within virtual worlds budding as well.
According to New Scientist: “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”.
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.
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 from Multiplayer Games:“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.”
Brian Solis posted on his blog that: “Residents create more than 250,000 new virtual goods every day – from clothing to vehicles to buildings to automatic language translators, and more.”
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.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Once my paycheck starts getting deposited in my Second Life account, we will have a virtual utopia.