State of Play : Social revolutions

The given subject of this post is the title of a quite an interesting conference held at the NY School of Law just a few days ago. It’s about the boundaries between virtual financial markets and the ones offline. Virtual exchange markets have emerged in places like SecondLife, Eve-online and others. The debate is very insightful on what some of the leading game-developers think of doing, improving and extending as to make their virtual markets closer to the reaility with all the regulations imposed for participating. It’s a two-day conference, most of which can be viewed through the website video-cast archives and is strongly recommended for those trying to figure out how and why the virtual worlds are emerging now. The conference would be of interest even from a very scientific point of view about psyhology of the gamers and why the virtual worlds in modern games like World of Warcraft, Everquest etc. are so timely consuming for the players.
In the end it’s the time people have invested in their virtual avatars that matters to so many of the gamers. Some of them find it so precious that they actually put on auction at sites like Ebay their accounts for sale, along with the many other little features and artifacts the virtual world is to offer. For a game developer to be successfull it will make a big difference for them to think how they can engage the player more time online, mainly trying to interact with the other users. As time is so scarce and so precious a game is to be evaluted for its enjoyment by the average time people spend within its boundaries.
Link to the conference: http://www.nyls.edu/pages/3903.asp