Comments for VERN

Comment on 5-year-old VERN moves to a new platform, links broken by Matti

Matti — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:07:28 +0000

The domain http://virtual-economy.org is still the url to find us and all content has been moved to new domain – however any external link to the content might have broken…

Comment on 5-year-old VERN moves to a new platform, links broken by Torill

Torill — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:37:01 +0000

Where have you moved to? Can we get a link?

Comment on 5-year-old VERN moves to a new platform, links broken by 5-year-old VERN moves to a new platform, links broken — Gamified Loyalty

5-year-old VERN moves to a new platform, links broken — Gamified Loyalty — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:49:24 +0000

[...] 5-year-old VERN moves to a new platform, links broken Article written by Virtual Economies [...]

Comment on Follow-up: 20% Tax Rate on Virtual Currency Brokering in China? by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:53:12 +0000

nzzpfD I read online (computer problems) positive feedback about your resource. Didnt even believe it, and now saw myself. It turned out that I was not fooled.

Comment on Dutch teen arrested for Habbo burglary by Jenn

Jenn — Thu, 19 May 2011 23:12:18 +0000

What an intresting artical

Comment on Impact of Cataclysm on Warcraft Gold Farming by Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 06:14:00 +0000

Might be interesting also to study how and to what extent depreciation in USD has affected this, since a significant portion of sellers seem to come from outside US (i.e. costs are same for them while revenue falls).

Comment on Impact of Cataclysm on Warcraft Gold Farming by Vili Lehdonvirta

Vili Lehdonvirta — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 05:54:20 +0000

Great post, thanks! The effect of Cataclysm actually came up in one interview I did for the World Bank study (due to be published next month). A person familiar with the gold farming industry mentioned that they expected a much bigger boost to sales from Cataclysm, but that it had been a disappointment.

My own speculation concerning the reasons:

1) The level cap was raised by only 5 levels, as compared to 10 in previous expansions. Less need for powerleveling (and gold to speed up leveling perhaps?)

2) Gold is becoming less and less important in WoW, as the range of interesting stuff that you can buy with gold is becoming more and more limited. To some extent it is being replaced by a growing number (10+) of micro-micro currencies that are earned in specific ways and used at specific NPC vendors. Often (usually?) these cannot be transferred between players. All this makes RMT difficult.

Comment on Dutch teen arrested for Habbo burglary by Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 03:06:52 +0000

I don’t like the comment on burglary is. Breaking into infrastructure of any kind with fiendish intent should be punishable.

Comment on Sharing in Second Life: Charity in the Virtual Economy by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 02:59:48 +0000

I absolutely agree that there are some really interesting elements of prosocial behaviour that are possible in virtual worlds (and, given the ways in which these worlds are sometimes negatively positioned, they’re really important to look at). It could be interesting breaking down these features a bit more in the ways that you suggest and looking at some of the demographics and other elements that feed in. I’m actually developing some other work in this area right now as well, and look forward to reading you paper when it’s available.

Comment on Sharing in Second Life: Charity in the Virtual Economy by Vili Lehdonvirta

Vili Lehdonvirta — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:01:56 +0000

Hi Jennifer, great article, thanks! I like your analysis of the motivations and how virtual goods relate to them. Reciprocity is one keyword; low transaction costs might be another.

Incidentally, I co-authored a paper on prosocial behaviour in an MMO some time ago, and hope to be able to blog about it soon if it’s accepted.

As you probably know, there’s a big stream of literature on prosocial behaviour and helping behaviour in social psychology. A question often examined is, how individual characteristics (e.g., sex of the helper and helpee) and environment (e.g., city vs. countryside) influence the likelihood of helping. Virtual environments add a new dimension to the environment studies, but I think they can also be used as labs to learn something about the influence of sex, for example.