PLAY MONEY
Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions
Trading Virtual Loot
By: Julian Dibbell
Overview
JULIAN DIBBELL
Job: Writer for Wired
Magazine
Interest: Making money
in MMOs (virtual worlds,
like Ultima Online)
Goal: Work fulltime in
UO and make millions
trading virtual items
How he didn’t do it
Opened an account on UO
Bought a piece of “property” to
build a house on
Began buying and selling 2nd
hand virtual assets on eBay
Became an official Britannian
gold trader and made thousands
…but not millions
Key Concepts
Could ‘play’ and ‘work’ be one and the
same?
How and why do a virtual items turn into
real cash?
Are there ethics with doing business in
a virtual world?
Is imaginary currency real?
What counts as taxable income and
should virtual economies be subjected
to fiscal regulation?
Recommendation
Yes! If you’re interested in:
MMORPGs (virtual online worlds)
Reading an extremely interesting
story
Analyzing various monetary &
economic aspects of virtual worlds
and relating it to reality
Pondering over thought provoking
questions & concepts