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Sometime today, millions of people - most of them in the U.S. and the Far East - will check out of this world and into what economist Edward Castro nova calls a synthetic world. They are checking into online games including EverQuest, Ultima Online and Mabinogi Gold.
Robert Siegel talks to Castro nova, author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, and Robert Holt, an NPR video game reviewer, about the increasingly popular practice of using real-world money to acquire virtual gold pieces and more powerful characters.
Paying Real-World Money for Virtual Goods
Robert Holt is a manager for NPR.org and an avid player of online games. He reviews games for NPR's All Things Considered. His first online gaming experience was in 1986, playing the strategy game Diplomacy on a computer bulletin board system.
Holt explains some of the terminology and methods of paying to play -- and why he thinks it ruins the gaming experience: Power-Leveling
It is also possible to buy a pre-leveled character -- but what you are actually buying is an account, and each account must pay a monthly subscription fee. This usually only works for players just starting out, or with a lot of disposable income. As you can see, this is a potentially dangerous practice.