"Every World of Warcraft player needs those coins, and mostly for one reason: to pay for the virtual gear to fight the monsters to earn the points to reach the next level. And there are only two ways players can get as much of this virtual money as the game requires: they can spend hours collecting it or they can pay someone real money to do it for them."Now the idea has reached academia. Professor Bloomfield, from the business school at Cornell, is teaching a course on a game called Second Life. He calls the course "metanomics", the economics of the metaverse.
Sounds like an interconnected version of Sim City to me. Virtual simulation certainly offers strategic benefits for businessman and policy makers, but the model is as good as those who build it. Stay tuned!"In his course, Bloomfield says his goal is to get students to understand business and regulatory oversight in the metaverse using thought from the real world. Some students start with what Bloomfield calls the "immersionist" view of Second Life -- using their avatars in the metaverse, as if it were the only universe.
Another perspective he teaches is the "augmentationist" view -- considering the metaverse a new feature of real life and analyzing how the metaverse affects business and policy in the real world."