Businesses are now fascinated with online games. It only took a couple decades, but as the big money begins to flow to the sector, it’s beginning to spark serious study.
Most are impressed with the ability of game designers to induce players to participate so passionately in imaginary worlds. World of Warcraft players devote months of time to solving complex tasks. Players organize, trade, and compete in stunning numbers throughout the developed world.
But I think many misunderstand why so many people devote such unusual amounts of time to mastering game worlds rather than bringing that kind of behavior into the real world.
Online games are effectively anarchist societies. There is relatively little regulation in an online world. While in the United States, you must file for incorporation if you want to start the simplest business, in a game world, there’s no such barrier to entry. At most, you may have to fill out a one-line form in the game world to incorporate or form a “guild.” If you want to trade with someone, there’s no tax form that you need to fill out.
Virtual worlds are societies with minimal friction and few of the onerous laws that regulate human behavior. If virtual worlds were to be subjected to regulations, they would go extinct almost immediately. For example, a miner in EVE will often extract ore from space rocks for far below the minimum wage when considering the value of in-game currency relative to the US Dollar. But they do it anyway, because they enjoy it, and it creates value for others.
These virtual worlds have become grey market havens for human societies. The “virtual” adjective only exists in the mind. Merely because the worlds exist only as markings on a server hard drive and electrons transmitted over the internet doesn’t mean that these societies aren’t real.
It would be simpler for businesses to apply the lessons of virtual worlds on how to motivate people, but the real world is kept under tight control. It’ll take a long time for that to change, if ever.
One Comment
Agreed.