Measuring virtual wealth in virtual worlds

Abstract

This article presents pioneering research on measuring virtual wealth in an open virtual world for diagnosing the health of virtual worlds. It proved the existence of an open virtual world by proving the existence of a free choice of virtual currencies for virtual goods between distinct virtual worlds. By discussing the features of open virtual world in a circled networked organization, the article devised a virtual wealth measuring scheme, called Gross Virtual Product (GVP), for any virtual world.Based on this scheme, it suggested an accountability matrix to account for a changing virtual world regarding its total virtual wealth, profitability, user participation and happiness. To demonstrate the suitability of GVP scheme and accountability matrix, the article has conducted a case study on SecondLife.com, which showed the appropriateness of the proposed scheme and matrix. The research made in this article is very important. The proposed measuring scheme and matrix help virtual world participants perceive the possible risks of the participated virtual worlds in advance to make better decisions on virtual business.

‘I Create Therefore I Virtually Exist’: Digital Content Creation, Virtual Consumption, and Motivation in Second Life

“…Virtual markets enable transactions associated with virtual goods or specific digital entities, which in turn have the ability to satisfy a wide range of user needs (Mitham, 2009). It is important to note that in contrast with offline consumption, virtual world inhabitants have no physical needs to satisfy, and thus virtual products tend to have predominantly recreational value (Guo & Gong, 2011;Lehdonvirta, 2009;Welch, 2009;Castronova et al, 2009). Nonetheless, beyond their immediate impact over the respective local markets, virtual economies can be linked to offline economies, given that virtual currencies can be exchanged to real life currencies (Reynolds, Ishikawa & Macchiarella, 2010).…”

Identifying Influential Factors of Knowledge Sharing in Emergency Events: A Virtual Community Perspective

“…A virtual community (VC) is a cyberspace supported by information technology (Tan et al , ; Xu et al ., ; Chaudhry et al ., ; Guo and Gong ; Cao et al ., ; Ren et al ., ). It relies on the communication and interaction of participants to generate specific domain knowledge.…”

Introduction: advances in E-business engineering

“…E-business is one of the most exciting and challenging research areas [9,10,14]. Today, not only large companies, but also medium or small-sized companies are learning that e-business is a required component of doing business.…”

“…9 [19]. These conferences plus workshops organized by IFIP and IEEE have provided an international forum for researchers in academia and industry to present their most recent findings in e-business engineering.…”