By Lauren Gelman on December 20, 2002 at 2:37 pm
"The Unreal-Estate Boom," Wired Magazine
My long-gestating article on the real-world economies of virtual worlds is finally out, on newsstands and online, in the January issue of Wired magazine. It's a heart-warming tale of geekery and commerce, but if you just want the executive summary, it's just about all there in the headline and subhead:
The 79th Richest Nation on Earth Doesn't Exist:
The population is 225,000, the hourly wage is $3.42. Welcome to virtual paradise, where a carpenter can live in the castle of his dreams -- if he doesn't mind an 80-hour workweek double-clicking pig rion and hoarding digital dung.PS: Don't miss the print version, which features, by way of bonus, a small sidebar on the strange case of Black Snow Interactive, the boys who hired Tijuana wage slaves to play Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot for fun and profit. Well, Black Snow's fun and profit, but that, of course, was the point. Who said the New Economy never happened?
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