PLAY MONEY

1
PLAY MONEY

• Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions
  Trading Virtual Loot
• By Julian Dibbell

2
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

3
How he didnt 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

4
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?

5
Recommendation

• Yes! If youre 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