Wildcat Currency by Edward Castronova is about real-world currencies versus virtual money
Edward Castronova lives in a fantasy world, populated by Shadow Knights, Beastlords, Berserkers and, one might be forgiven for supposing, socially challenged teenage boys. And yet Castronova is a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University Bloomington – and from out of the depths of this virtual world and its millions of global devotees he has mined a manifesto for a real-world revolution that threatens to expose as illusory one of the fundamental cornerstones of the “real” world in which we live. A self-professed online gaming enthusiast, Castronova has made a reputation and a career out of studying the socioeconomic workings of multiplayer virtual worlds, such as Sony’s subscription-based EverQuest, and it was a slew of real-world headlines about his work in 2002 that got him thinking. What exactly was the difference between “real”-world currencies and their funny-money alter egos in the virtual world? The answer, as outlined in his new book, Wildcat Currency, is both fascinating and, somehow, a little disturbing, as upon it hinges the realisation that money, the ultimate prize after which almost all of us quest, has no greater claim to reality than Station Cash, EverQuest’s in-game currency. ….[READ]
LAVREB Laboratory of Virtual Reality and Economic Behavior 