Play Money explores the remarkable new phenomenon of MMORPGs, or Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which hundreds of thousands of players operate fantasy characters in virtual environments. With city-sized populations, these games generate their own cultures, governments, and social systems and, inevitably, their own economies, which spill over into the real world.
The desire for virtual goods--magic swords, enchanted breastplates, and special, hard-to-get elixirs--has spawned a cottage industry of "virtual loot farmers": people who play the games just to obtain fantasy goods that they can sell in the real world. The best loot farmers can make between six figures a year and six figures a month.
Play Money is an extended walk on the weird side: a vivid snapshot of a subculture whose denizens were once the stuff of mere sociological spectacle but now--with computer gaming poised to eclipse all otherentertainments in dollar volume, and with the lines between play and work, virtual and real increasingly blurred--look more and more like the future.
Price: $3.37
User Reviews about Play Money: Or - How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot
This is a fascinating look at how the virtual and real interact, told through the lens of a man who is trying to make a career selling virtual loot from online video games for real money. The book documents a period from 2003 to 2004, and one of the annoying elements of the book is that I finished it and wanted some sort of update on the current state of things.
Many of the Amazon critics on this book seem to have had problems with Dibbell's philosophical musings, his attempts to place his personal experiment in the grand scheme of the universe, but for me that was one of the compelling elements of it. Toward the end of the book, Dibbell discusses how a blogger commented that he missed the earlier posts, which were full of wit and charm, and the latter ones made it sound like, of all things, work! I agreed. Toward the end, the fixation on the goal was taking a lot of the pleasure out of the discussions behind what was happening ... but I also agree with the blogger that this was understandable, given that he was focused on a goal.
The most intriguing aspect of the book is Dibbell's analysis of what it means to be "real" in an economic sense. Why do things have value? If people work for hours to establish a virtual economy, and that virtual economy has an exchange rate to the real-world economy, then is the virtual economy any less real than the real-world economies? In light of the recent financial crisis, caused in large part by the trading of insubstantial "derivatives" far removed from the tangible home assets that they purport to represent, in some obscure fashion (they actually represent the trust placed in a person to pay the mortgage on a home, not the value of the home itself, after all), Dibbell's questions become even more relevant. Are the virtual economic decisions made by virtual game designers at a gaming company, in regards to how much money to introduce into the economy for example, substantially different from those made by the Federal Reserve? Isn't the only difference one of scale? There are more people affected by the U.S. economy than by the Ultima Online economy, and that's the only sense in which it is "real." Because of when this book was written, these specific questions about the economic collapse are not explored ... but I think the current reader cannot escape them.
The only reason this book gets a four instead of a five are two minor drawbacks: 1) that there isn't much in the way of "how to" here (and if there were it would be outdated) and 2) the title is misleading, since he made nowhere near "millions" in real money from this profession. (His best month cleared a bit over $3,000.) So if you want to "quit your day job and make millions trading virtual loot" this is definitely a book you should read ... but you should do so in order to understand the specific challenges you will face, not necessarily how to surpass them and become successful at the venture.
Anyone who has ever played (or been addicted) to an online multi-user game of any kind can well appreciate the story that Dibbell has to tell, and I would strongly recommend this book for them, not just for prospective virtual entrepreneurs. -- Economics, Sociology, Philosophy, and Just Plain Fun
I read this on a whim -- catchy title, you know? -- but it was actually really good. Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. The whole idea of trying to see if he could make more money killing trolls in Ultima Online than he could as a writer is a great hook not only for the publisher but for the reader as well. Such a weird thing to do, you know? But the whole concept of virtual reality is weird to those who don't partake, and it's a real eye opener to learn that millions of people spend more than 40 hours per week playing these MMOGs, week in and week out, and that some of them have actually made millions of dollars selling real estate that doesn't exist anywhere. And you thought Florida real estate agents were slippery!
Dibbell used to write for Wired, and he's a fluent story-teller. Some of the book drags a bit, but the biographical part -- and the sheer strangeness of the intellectual property rights being discussed -- makes it a fascinating read overall. -- Truly Eye Opening
Really fascinating look into how some folks squeeze the system and turn other's obsession for online games into their own mini Fort Knox. In thurn they mostly become obsessed drones themselves chasing virtual gold. Nicely written book on an offbeat and timely topic. -- Fascinating
I found the book very interesting because I am familiar with many of the people in the book. However, If you do not know what a mmorpg is, than perhaps this is not the book for you. -- Fun for those in the know
You know those books that promise you untold wealth and secrets to make you rich? This isn't one of them, which makes it one of the best reads I've seen in a while. It gives a realistic depiction of making money in virtual economies (which is pretty amazing in and of itself). It even explores and gives some interesting perspectives on work vs. play and the emergence and confidence of virtual economies. -- Not just a bunch of smoke
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