Sometimes you play a video game and manage to earn $10,000. Oh wait, I guess that never happens, unless you happen to be Diablo 3 player WishboneTheDog, who’s done just that since the release of the real money auction house to Blizzard’s newest dungeon crawler.
How did WishboneTheDog manage to do this? Why, by studying the economy of the game’s marketplace and treating it sort of like the stock market, apparently. Of course, that’s an oversimplification of a process I can’t even begin to comprehend (I’m bad at math), but we’ll just pretend like that’s all it was.
If you’re actually interested in hearing more about the specifics of how this player pulled off such a lucrative feat in one of the year’s biggest games, check out his Reddit AMA, where he details his process, his transactions and his thoughts on video game economies. It’s wild to hear that things like this are happening every day in the games we play — heck, even Valve hired themselves an economist to deal with Team Fortress 2.
What do you guys think about this? Cool? Too nerdy? What do you think about the potential for a video game economy that can actually support multiple players financially? Go!
Source – PCGamesN
Link it up! http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/
I’ve got a gunfriend who was encouraged to sell a rare sword he found in Diablo III for ~$500 irl but refused to do so. It’s the closest thing I’ve heard to anything like this. I don’t think it’s too nerdy or too cool, I just think there will always be someone out there who will buy anything – like blank canvass being sold as art.
Imagine a day when a player made more money selling items than the artist who created the items got paid to create and place them in the game. (Almost like a music store selling music? I just gave myself vomitchills)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVAVaZqNeak