Virtual Economy Booming for 2010

While the RL economy may be stuck in the doldrums, the world’s virtual economies are booming, especially in the US and Asia. A recent BBC article indicates many companies are thriving by selling virtual items in their online gaming environments, with more companies than ever hitting it big. The article highlights Playfish, which has a player base of 61 million people on their 11 games, in which players can purchase virtual items for enhanced online gaming experiences.

Crucial to its success is the sale of virtual goods, ranging from furniture for your pet to menu items for your own restaurant in games like Pet Society and Restaurant City.

Lots of money is changing hands. One of the most prominent venues for casual games is Facebook. The social aspect of playing games leads to lots of hits, and lots of money.

About two thirds of the top 15 applications on Facebook are games, according to analytics firm AppData. Those ten games are said to draw more than 100 million users a month.

Earlier in December, one of the biggest social gaming companies, Zynga, sold a stake in the firm to Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies for $180m (£113m).

And in November, Electronic Arts, agreed to buy Playfish in a $400m deal (£251m).

Proof of how successful the virtual goods business has become is evident in moves by Facebook itself to test a payment system to get a cut each time an online-game player buys a digital tractor or pair of flip flops.

Via Kapp Notes.

References:
Shiels, M. (2009, December 29). The US virtual economy is set to make billions. BBC News. [Online.] Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8425623.stm

Corporate Warcraft: How You Might Play Your Way to Your Next Promotion

Imagine a world where you go to work and help your guild players. Corporate has assigned your guild a quest to deliver the best contract terms for a potential client. Since competition seems to bring out the best in people, corporate has also assigned two other guilds in your company with the same quest.

Your guild leader assigns tasks to various members. Since the company is large, one guild member is in Toledo, another in Vancouver, a third in Dallas. The remainder work in your building, but two are on the road on assignment. Meetings run smoothly though, because everyone shows up with a “walking, talking” avatar in an online three-dimensional conference room. Charlie’s avatar has been programmed to appear similar to his 300 pound frame. Susan has taken the liberty of shaving 20 pounds off her virtual self. Regardless, you know immediately who everybody is, because each avatar has a camera focused on the user’s face which transmits their image into the virtual conference room. When Charlie talks, his avatar’s lips move, and you hear the words from Charlie’s “mouth.”

In no time, your team has formed the nucleus of a plan. You are tasked with appropriating resources for the contract proposal. Your team’s bold idea needs to catch the attention of a trio of VPs to have any success. One VP is in Rio; another is in London. The third is in the office but has a secretary who controls access with a vengeance (and she still remembers that inadvertent insult you handed her at the last Christmas party). You appeal for help far and wide, and pool your guild’s e-mail gold. You send the three VPs an e-mail outlining your guild’s proposal and offer an enticement: 100 e-mail gold if they open and respond to your attached proposal in the next hour. All three respond with valuable advice, which is quickly incorporated into your guild’s proposal.

Corporate examines the proposals and chooses your team’s submission! “Congratulations, team!” the guild leader says at your next virtual meeting. “We earned 20,000 gold and we’ve moved up a level.” You cash in your share to upgrade your office. The senior VP drops by to visit “the outstanding player.”

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Seem far-fetched? This melding of the team aspects found in popular online role playing games is gaining increasing credibility among business school professors and others examining corporate culture. Ever since Harvard B-School Press released Got Game? by Beck and Wade, the idea that advanced gaming holds value in the business world has steadily caught fire with academics and business elites.

Mark Ward, technology correspondent for BBC online, wrote a neat article about the convergence of MMORPG teamwork, academia’s interest, and corporate adoption.

All of a sudden, say academics and researchers, companies have realised that all the time employees spend gaming in virtual worlds is changing them.
Ian Hughes, IBM’s metaverse evangelist, said many organisations were considering ways of harnessing the skills and familiarity their employees have with virtual environments.
This familiarity has driven many organisations to consider virtual worlds as places where employees can meet, mix and get on with the job.
“A lot of people are more accepting of that way of working just because of games,” he said.
“It’s about harnessing that ability to play to get work done.”
The formidable organisational skills needed to run a game team or guild, organise raids involving perhaps 40 people and co-ordinate their different abilities to defeat a game’s strongest foes are all relevant to work, said Mr Hughes.

Ward goes on to mention Byron Reeves, an education prof over at Stanford, whose company Seriosity works on gaming elements for businesses-place productivity. One idea from Seriosity is to instill a virtual currency system on e-mail, resulting in a higher valuation of individual messages than the traditional low, normal, or high priorities found within most e-mail systems.

Convinced that games can help them thrive some companies have turned work groups into guilds, rewarded staff with experience points when they complete tasks, giving out titles and badges when a guild finished a project and portraying objectives as quests.
Some were also considering using a virtual currency as a reward system allowing workers to cash in their savings for benefits or extras for their office space. The top performing guilds also get to do the best projects.

Angela Barron, over at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, had a quote regarding the traditional use of face to face gaming in businesses and B-school applications. She is certainly correct about that. I recall a conversation with a certain business professor at Texas A&M who mentioned that business simulations were nothing new; he had gone through several while getting his Ph.D. in the 1960s.

There has been some blogging buzz about this article. A good entry came from Blue’s News. One commenter pointed out this ExtraLife comic strip by Scott Johnson that shows the hilarity that might ensue if gaming concepts were brought into the workplace.

References
Ward, M. (2007, October 22). When work becomes a game. BBC News. [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7030234.stm

A Third of British Teachers Use Video Games in Class

Here’s an interesting survey from January of last year, reported by the BBC, indicating a third of British teachers use video games in the classroom, with most agreeing that video games are useful in education. Nesta Futurelab conducted the survey:

The survey of 1,000 teachers in England and Wales suggests a quarter also personally use them in their free time.

Over half of the 1000 teachers questioned by Nesta Futurelab said they would use them in future and believed they were a “good motivational tool”.

Read the complete report here. Check out Futurelab’s Teaching with Games site here.