It has been over 30 years since online virtual worlds have started to emerge in the form of MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). Over this time period several variants of virtual worlds have emerged, with each form having different opportunities and challenges for the developers.
Only in the last five years or so have virtual worlds attained the attention of the general media, where they are often simplistically categorized as virtual realities. The general media then often tries to measure or categorize these virtual realities by finding commonality with real life – trying to understand these new realities by comparing them to our daily lives, our own reality.
This often leads to misunderstandings about what virtual worlds really are. It is true that some virtual worlds are simply an extension of real life. One can even assert that the entire Internet is a virtual world where people come together to share information and to communicate with each other. However, the largest virtual worlds that are out there are worlds that offer you a different experience – giving the user the opportunity to participate in another world, another universe. This participation is just as rewarding and real as the experience that we have in our daily lives but these worlds are not and should not be reality. These worlds are the game worlds of the Internet – massively multiplayer online games or MMOs in short.
MMOs can be defined as closed worlds since they offer access to a fantasy or sci-fi environment that have no direct link to our real life. Hence, these alternate universes are an addition to our real life, not an extension, and they enhance and improve it.
EVE Online is a single shard universe that offers those who participate in that world a rewarding experience. One feature that is often highlighted as the most unique thing about EVE Online is the vibrant economy that thrives within it – often quoted as a realistic experience. Stating that the economy in EVE is realistic is wrong. The economy in EVE is actually just as real as our real life economies, by all measures and definition of economic value based on economic theory. This fact has great implications in terms of how to interpret information from economies in virtual worlds, and shows that economics must be used as a fundamental feature in the design and operation of these worlds.
What makes the economy in EVE real is the fact that without player production of spaceships, ammunition, modules and other items, there would be no EVE. Everything produced and consumed in EVE is based on players' preferences and their valuation of those items. The players are real and hence their valuation is real.
These decisions evolve around production, trade, war and politics – the same ingredients that we have in all other societies created by mankind. EVE is therefore truly an alternate universe where people are making decisions that affect other people who participate in the same universe.
Reader Comments (0)