Creative Economy

The focus of this week's articles on money in a virtual setting was really fascinating to me. The one exception might be the first section of Chapter 8 in Coming of Age in Second Life. If anyone understood all of those long words and references, hit me up because it sounded like complete nonsense to me.

Excluding that, Boellstorff's concept of "creationist capitalism" or an economy no limited by resources but by creativity and skill of the prosumer was really fascinating. I actually this phenomenon is becoming more and more commonplace in the technological age. Industries like app design, despite having no resource limitations, quickly became oversaturated with ideas. The concept of only being limited by our creativity is a very American one, and thus it is not surprising to see it play out in an American-made game. As Boellstorff points out in subsequent parts of the chapter focusing on governance, the Second Life landscape is very influenced by American Ideals and even (see Chapter 4) American time.

The property-based economic system in second life was particularly reminiscent of the Western notion in times past that only landowners had a vote. This notion stretches all the way back to Roman times, and though it is often seen as democratizing, both then and in SL it is also limiting. In Roman times this excluded women and slaves and in the online world it excludes the perhaps more casual user from participating in economic activities like building.

Another instance of online economy was seen in the Chinese Gold Farmers. One thing I found particularly interesting as well as troublesome was the hate directed at the industry. As the most visible extensions of the gold-farming system, the gold farmers were often the target of other players’ outrage and harassment, but ironically the gold farmers were also its greatest victims. Comparisons of these companies to sweatshops did not seem misplaced, especially after I saw the living quarters of employees at the A Bao company in the video. Though some of the “farmers” interviewed in the article and the video seemed to enjoy their job or at least consider it better than most, it was also clear that too many the job was physically and mentally draining with little reward. It also seemed clear from Julian Dibbell’s description of the raiding parties, that the job was most enjoyable when it preserved some of the creative aspect that Boellstorff describes and that makes video games and online interactions a recreational activity in the first place. One of the points Boellstorff makes is that in the creationist capitalist society, the reward for labor is two fold: monetary profit and enjoyment in the actual process of creating. That is one thing at least, both the gold farmers and the SLers share.