Virtual Money Worlds Hiring Real Economic Gurus
Virtual money online games have become a huge global market. Annual dollar totals are now touching the billion dollar mark. MMOG EVE Online is a vastly popular space game and considered the world’s largest game universe.
It is so popular, that EVE Online has just hired a well known PhD to produce economic information about the massive game world.
“CCP Games, one of the world’s largest independent game developers, today announced the appointment of a in-world lead economist for EVE Online. This is the first time an MMOG has commissioned a dedicated real world economist to operate at this level of economic monitoring and research for a virtual world. The appointment is a real testament to the growing intricacy and strength of EVE Online’s thriving virtual economy.” *ccpgames pr
Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, former Dean of the Faculty of Business and Science at the University of Akureyri, Iceland is now on board at EVE. He has been labeled “a sort of Alan Greenspan for the virtual world”. No indication yet what his avatar looks like.
In his first post for the EVE Insider Dev blog, the Dr. writes,
“In the real world, economic information is the cornerstone for our daily business; everyone takes note when news on inflation, production and interest rates are announced and traders try to predict beforehand what the news will be. There is a constant game between the market and authorities on predicting each other’s move and for that everyone needs information. Though EVE is a virtual world, the basic needs are the same. Players, designers and the company leaders at CCP will all benefit from having a central figure to monitor inflation and trends and provide a focused insight into what is happening within that virtual world so that everyone can make better decisions.
As the lead economist for EVE, my duties will include publishing economic information to the EVE-Online community. My duties will also be to coordinate research cooperation with academic institutions as the academic world has expressed quite an interest in doing research on this phenomenon (which shows how important MMOGs might become in future research into economic and human behavior).”
In the weeks ahead, he will be preparing the game’s first economic report for the 4th quarter of this year.
The big question…will online games such as EVE experience economic downturns like a real country?
