The BBC reports that Qui Chengwei has been sentenced by a Shanghai court to life for the fatal stabbing of Zhu Caoyuan, a fellow player who borrowed a valuable in-game sword, sold it for £480 of real-world money and ran.
In a fit of synchronicity, I've just finished a feature for the Online section on the relativity of virtual trade and in the process asked Ren Reynolds, resident philosopher at virtual worlds forum Terra Nova for his views on virtual property.
Murdering someone for stealing a virtual sword in the massively multiplayer game Legend of Mir 3 is extreme, yet there is no doubt that virtual item trade is unfathomably valuable. Recent estimates indicate that the value of real-money transactions outside of the game world, via online auction sites eBay and others, is approximately US$100 million to US$1 billion. When it comes to less-aggressive examples of virtual property ownership, like the case of David Storey and his USD$26,500 "Treasure Island" in Project Entropia, Reynolds argues that the perceived value of virtual property is relative.
Why is virtual stuff perceived as so valuable? Virtual worlds are largely what people perceive them to be. So, for example, there's a sphere in which I play a role which is valuable, whether I'm a mage in a virtual world or a consultant offline.
Isn't something that's arguably "not real" an obvious limitation to its value? Intangible goods are not actually new; copyright law has been around for centuries. People do embrace virtual property; it's just these specific types of virtual goods that people don't embrace.
Currency is only the tangible representation of value. The pound coin doesn't actually mean anything except what you think it means, and your money is just a bunch of ones and zeroes in a database in a bank. It actually has no value. It's the same with EverQuest money; it's a bunch of ones and zeroes in a database.
Most real currencies are backed with economies which we think will have longevity, but if you look at a country that has a high inflation, like Argentina had in 2001, would you rather be paid in EverQuest gold or Argentinean pesos? At that time, I'd have rather traded in EverQuest gold; it had a much stronger economic backing.
So what can be considered property? There are a number of theories about what property is. The most appropriate is that property is a way of ordering social relations. For the most part, property is an exclusive right in that what property does is that it gives me the social justification that I need to say to you that you can't touch my thing, whatever that thing is. That's really all that property is.
Another example is that in the West human organs aren't property. It's an object that's very physical but isn't owned in the same way as one can own a brick; I can't legally sell my kidneys on eBay. The idea of property isn't anything to with do with physical properties; it's to do with social order.
People get alarmed about this sort of thing because people have rather cosy ideas about what property is. These ideas tend to be reinforced when property has physicality. For example, I can say this is my brick because I can touch it and take it from you and run away. A lot of these virtual property discussions challenge these notions. An Englishman's home is his castle, but the government can still come along and say it's going to forcibly destroy it to make way for an extension of the Motorway. People don't like to think of those limitations to their ownership.
Has there been any effect in "meat" space because of the virtual-world economy? You're getting a growing distortion of the economy. Part of a trivial economy is draining into virtual worlds. 40 hours a week, players' productive work is being put into economies that are not recognised by tax authorities or the GDP. Bits of the world recognise virtual property as something that has economic value and other bits don't. Something has to change there.
What's paved the way to allow the trade of virtual items to come about? The major thing is in the west a shift from a tangible manual economy, rooted in Protestant Work Ethic, where you till the fields and you earn and you buy, and what you buy has value because you earned it. This is slipping away from us as more and more things become intangible. The biggest single economies in our market are banking and leisure. We're becoming a service property marketplace. Is this as good as a manufacturing economy? It doesn't have the moral solidity in a way.
You can kind of see that shift in ethical terms. People would think that stealing an album in a shop is immoral, but stealing an mp3 isn't. The idea of property has become more intangible.
There are lots of social fears that encircle the virtual world properties. What would a UK be like if our chief industry was making things in virtual worlds? Would that be a country to be proud of? We probably wouldn't think much of ourselves.
That's because the idea of gameplay challenges idea of work. The PWE says that work isn't something you're supposed to enjoy. If you look at the gameplay in some of these products, it seems too superficially enjoyable to be work, but 99% of it is clicking repeatedly. Click-slavery.
How will online goods develop a mass-perception of real-world value? It's simply generational. If you look at teenagers, they're entirely comfortable with multiple pseudononymous identity: they're completely comfortable having a name on e-mail, SMS, Instant Messaging services, all different pseudonyms for different aspects of themselves. This population understands the value of downloading ringtones, screen savers and MP3s. We simply have to wait for people our age or just a bit older to die; paradigm change comes with death.
And on that cheerful note, expect more virtual world interviews to be posted over the next week, including one with "Treasure Island" owner David Storey.
