Virtual Economy Research Network

UPDATE: seminar programme details, including the presentation topics, available below.

On Monday, 2nd June, the AVEA project at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) organizes an open research seminar on so-called virtual economies.

In the seminar we focus on the following question: "Why should economists and social scientists be interested in virtual economies?" Through discussion and presentations by academic researchers and industry representatives, we investigate the potential of conducting quantitative research on virtual economies that is of interest to mainstream, "serious" researchers.

I am happy to announce that we are starting a new virtual economy research project at HIIT. The project has an excellent lineup of collaborators from the industry: Nokia Research Center, Finnish digital media company SWelcom, casual game community Playdo, and MMORPG company CCP Games. Below is the press release.

The fourth EVE Fanfest, an event giving the EVE Online players an opportunity to meet each other and the game developers, was held in Reykjavik 1. - 3. November. There were two interesting revelations in the event, which also sparked discussion in panels and roundtables, a part of which I’ll try to summarize here. The first one had to with a soon-to-be-published white paper on the EVE player democracy, and why it actually might not be wise to call it democracy after all. The second was about the soon-to-be-published EVE Online Quarterly Economics Newsletter, Vol.1, No.1.

In addition to these two interesting matters, there’s also the reason why a representative of Helsinki Institute of Information Technology (HIIT) was present at EVE Fanfest this year, namely, a recently formed agreement of research co-operation between HIIT and CCP, the operator of EVE Online.

I am late in relaying this, but Electronic Commerce Research and Journal of Electronic Commerce Research are both planning a special issue on virtual worlds. The CFPs (attached below) sent to the VERN mailing list are so similar that at first glance I thought it was the same journal. JECR's deadline is this Thursday already, but you might consider submitting a modified conference paper. ECR's deadline is December 1st. Both issues should come out in August 2008.

Despite the achievements in immersive virtual worlds and other network-mediated communication, for many purposes there still is no substitute to being there in person. I think this is especially true when making new contacts and when cultural boundaries are crossed. Here is a brief review of some upcoming events.

In my last post, I said I would have a small announcement to make. Well, here it is: our research group at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology has welcomed two new economics grad students to work on virtual economy issues. In the coming weeks, Tuukka Lehtiniemi and Jiaping Xu will be blogging here about their research and things taking place in the field. Let's wish them success in their work.

As for me, I'll be leaving for Tokyo next week to stay there for the spring. My main objective is to dedicate time for writing to get some results published. I will also be visiting Seoul and Shanghai and am always happy to meet people with related interests.

Yesterday's seminar was a great success, thanks to all who participated. A video recording of the presentations is now available through here.

One of the themes was what creates demand for virtual property. For MMORPGs, Professor Sang-Min Whang showed us data from Lineage that linked property value with time required to obtain it. In the social virtual world Habbo Hotel, Sulka Haro told us how Sulake time-limits the supply of certain items to create valuable rares. Sulake does not profit from this directly, as they sell the to-be rares at a mere 4 euros when they are available. However, it makes Habbo's "economic game" of barter exchange more interesting and raises prices in the budding secondary market.

We also heard some fascinating stuff about demand for virtual items in a service that is nothing like a virtual world, but a "flat" community site, similar to MySpace.

Next Tuesday's (Sept. 26) next mini-seminar on massively-multi user services and item payment revenue models will be streamed live over the web. Those watching the stream will be able to take part in the discussion using a chat interface. After the seminar, the video will be available for download.

The stream will be available at http://virtual-economy.org/events/260906. Currently, the address is displaying a test stream, which I recommend you try out now to make sure your software is compatible.

Time: Tuesday, 26. September, 13:00-16:00 (GMT+3)
Location: Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (6th floor), Tammasaarenkatu 3, Helsinki.

On 26. September, the DCC research group at HIIT is organising a mini-seminar under the topic "Massively multi-user services and the item payment model". A keynote speech will be delivered by our visitor from Korea, professor Leo Sang-Min Whang of Yonsei University. Prof. Whang is a leading researcher of the psychology of MMORPGs and virtual items in Korea.

I am happy to announce that the Virtual Economy Research Network website is now ready for action. Welcome!

The purpose of the website is to act as a platform for communication and knowledge dissemination regarding real-money trade of virtual property and related phenomena. In practice, the website has two main features: 1) a bibliography and 2) a blog. In addition, VERN also has an email discussion list.

The purpose of the blog is to relay virtual property related news, announcements and research results from all over the world. This includes material that would not otherwise be available in the English language. Contributors are currently me from Finland/Japan and Jun-Sok Huhh from Korea. We welcome researchers from other countries to join us; please send email to vern (ät) virtual-economy.org if you are interested.