China seriously wants to take the fun out of games. This from the FT: China in web money-making U-turn. The fun bit: Authorities generally take the view that all income from online business should be taxable, even if profits are derived from virtual worlds. But practical ways of collecting those taxes, and valuing virtual assets, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Virtual World Markets'
How to value my flaming sword of death and magic potions … all so that I can then pay taxes on them
November 3rd, 2008 · No Comments · Economics, Virtual World Markets
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Second Life Imitates Real Life, Triggers Real Estate Crash
April 8th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Lazy Blogger Blog Post, Virtual World Markets
Here’s a fun story from Reuters: Linden to increase land supply, drop prices. (Okay, perhaps not a “crash,” but fun to say.) ~alex
Tags:Reuters
Linden Dollars vs Other Currencies
March 16th, 2008 · 4 Comments · Financial Markets, Information Design, Virtual World Markets
It struck me an interesting thing to do would be to compare what would have happened if you had invested your US dollars in Linden dollars versus a variety of other major currencies. Here are the results. NB: finding solid historical data on the Linden $ is hard, so some of the data is “smoothed.” [...]
Virtually Waiting for Your Cash
January 10th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Usability, Virtual World Markets
I’m willing to bet that most people who read (or wrote) about the banning of “unregulated” banks in the virtual world Second Life were concerned with the legalistic, moral, and financial aspects of the story. (Covered in TechCrunch and the FT.) Reading a sentence like this from the FT … There was a run on [...]
Scarcity of Imagination, Not Production, in Virtual Worlds
December 4th, 2007 · No Comments · Virtual World Markets
Scarcity is one of those economic concepts that gets taken for a whirl by virtual worlds. To be as brief as possible, because we can’t satisfy every human’s every need and want, we have scarcity. Some of us will always go without something. The causes of scarcity can be twofold: one, the cost of supplying [...]
Tags:California·server farm·Shanty
Interview with Dan Kelly, CEO of Sparter
November 28th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Financial Markets, Interviews, Virtual World Markets
Dan Kelly, CEO of Sparter, graciously agreed to speak with me over the Thanksgiving holiday. I encourage you to take the time and read this, since Dan spoke about a number of fascinating topics, such as gold farmers, virtual currency arbitrage (or lack thereof), scarcity in Virtual Worlds, and delivery risk. UsableMarkets: How did you [...]
Tags:Asia·Bessemer Venture Partners·Dan Kelly·eBay·Europe·online communities·online community·online games·online games industry·online goods·online marketing·payment systems·Sparter·Thanksgiving·USD·white label solution
Does Ease of Movement = Better Usability = A Better Reality …?
November 21st, 2007 · No Comments · Usability, Virtual World Markets
Fascinatin’ conversation in Second Life the other day between Robert Bloomfield and author / economist Ted Castronova Part of the conversation focused on how virtual worlds are easier to navigate than the real world. An excerpt: Castronova: People in virtual worlds will see similarities between the way virtual worlds operate and the real one does, [...]
Stable Currency as a Product Feature
November 8th, 2007 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Virtual World Markets
Thinking about the stability of your national currency is usually something that’s best left to your macro economists. But now it appears to be something that virtual world and game designers think about as well. Witness this excerpt from the Metaversed blog, reporting on a press conference (virtual, of course) with Linden Lab’s VP of [...]
Tags:banking·Gene Yoon·Hank Paulson·Linden Lab·Linden Labs·overall product
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