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“He began calculating frantically. He gathered data on 616 auctions, observing how much each item sold for in US dollars. When he averaged the results, he was stunned to discover that the EverQuest platinum piece was worth about one cent US—higher than the Japanese yen or the Italian lira. With that information, he could figure out how fast the EverQuest economy was growing. Since players were killing monsters or skinning bunnies every day, they were, in effect, creating wealth. Crunching more numbers, Castronova found that the average player was generating 319 platinum pieces each hour he or she was in the game—the equivalent of $3.42 (US) per hour. “That’s higher than the minimum wage in most countries,” he marvelled.
Then he performed one final analysis: the Gross National Product of EverQuest, measured by how much wealth all the players together created in a single year inside the game. It turned out to be $2,266 per capita. By World Bank rankings, that made EverQuest richer than India, Bulgaria, or China, and nearly as wealthy as Russia.
It was the seventy-seventh richest country in the world. And it didn’t even exist.
Castronova sat back in his chair in his cramped home office, and the weird enormity of his findings dawned on him. Many economists define their careers by studying a country. He had discovered one.”
View the complete article here.
Original article located at http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2004.06-economics-game-theories/1/.
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It’s all there - the wristband, the retarded expression, the L-shaped ‘loser’ gesture planted to his forehead, and the exclamation: ‘DUDE, where’s your railcard?’. This is the UK National Rail company’s perceived image of all 16-25 year olds?
FAIL.
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Studying for exams is an art. It is a subject in itself on which few books have been written.
One of the skills involved in studying for an exam is deciding what is important (and concentrating on those points) and what can be discarded (as it is unlikely to come up in the exam). Generally, the [...]
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Qatar Airways describes itself as the ‘world’s 5-star airline’. Initially, this arrogant one-liner made me snigger with contempt, but all who have flown on the airline lately know that there is some truth to this statement. On my flight from London to Kuwait I was genuinely surprised to discover they had a spotless, well-kept carpet [...]
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http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
If you haven’t already seen it, open your eyes.
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‘Twas the festive season of 2008 when my housemate, Tanay, and I found ourselves in ASDA doing our weekly shop. We wandered the aisles, knocking item after item in to our trolley when we discovered the Christmas foods on offer. Stuffed turkeys, Christmas pudding, chocolate Yule logs, gingerbread men and mince pies decorated the aisles [...]
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Barcelona Olympics, 1992
The crack of pistol fire whipped the athletes into a sudden sprint. Redmond surged forward, running long athletic strides. The hunger for a medal sent adrenaline streaming through his veins.
50 metres flashed by - the lungs beat out air like the bellows of a blacksmith.
100 metres - the heart pounds like a hammer [...]
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The English Nomad has returned from his Middle Eastern holiday in Lebanon, without even experiencing a single bomb threat - disappointing some would say.Before I arrived, I had stored images in the back of my head of tanks blasting off metal rounds, the rattling of gunfire, and cars being hurled into the air by gargantuan [...]
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The image most foreigners have of a genuine English pub is a cesspit of unsavoury characters guffawing through crooked, yellow teeth over an unsteady pint. Usually in this image, the beer gets sloshed over the table every few seconds as Bill (the local pub hooligan for this example) repeatedly slams his plump, hairy paw on [...]
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Welcome to the sequel of the much acclaimed ‘There Are 5 Types Of Exams…’ article. I first contemplated writing one along the lines of the different types of women, but soon decided against it in the interest of my health.
For some, it is a place of pain and misery, of endless struggle and excruciating [...]
