Virtual Economy Research Network

Korea Times and Terra Nova's Korean correspondent Unggi Yoon write about Korean lawmakers' plans to carry out a regulatory precision strike on Bad RMT without inflicting too much collateral damage on Good RMT. The problem is defining what is acceptable real-money trade of virtual property and what is not.

You would think that a simple way to draw the line would be to follow the rules set out in the operator's end-user license agreement: if the operator allows RMT, it's ok; otherwise it's not. There are a some complications, however.

The VERN blog has been quiet this month. Rest assured that the reason is not that we have been inactive, but that we have been busy working. In January I hope to have a little announcement to make.

Meanwhile, Steven Davis at PlayNoEvil has posted three excellent articles on virtual economies and plans to regulate them in the Far East. The first one is a Xinhua report on how virtual Q(Q) Coins are increasingly being accepted as a viable currency by Chinese businesses and how the goverment is reacting to this. The second one refers to a Korea Times story providing new details on Korean lawmakers' plans to restrict RMT. The latest Xinhua article discusses Chinese Ministry of Culture's regulatory ambitions over RMT.

Does regulation mean the party is over? Will governments step in and sever the links between real and virtual economies? Will games and community services go back to being "entertainment and relaxation, and nothing else", as one Chinese MOC official puts it?

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.

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.