Virtual economy booms to $5bn and rising

Interesting post over at forbes.com that the $5bn global virtual (items/goods) economy is booming, although the journalist does mention that 80% of it remains rooted in East Asia (Japan, SKorea, China). I would say most of the mobile virtual economy would be firmly locked into the Japan-SKorea zone, considering their love of everything mobile, everything online and everything virtual/gaming.

There is a reason why the virtual economy is locked up in East Asia: imagine a world where your average joe has 100Mbps internet at home since 2005 and within 6 months will have 100Mbps internet on their mobile phone... now stop dreaming. That place is 10 hours flight time away from London, and it's called Japan.

Cue futuristic Denno Coil anime scene with 200 metatags virtual baubles being traded by primary school kids in the backstreets of an LBS-drenched near-future Tokyo? Yes, but people have been living in this virtual economy via online games for quite some time now.

Note the case of one high-ranking female player in the MMORPG World Of Warcraft game who offered sex in return for virtual money to buy a much coveted item in the game. She assembled real-life photos of the contenders, background-checked their characters in the game, demurred and chose the winner for her favours, and demanded the money upfront. The result was that the next day (!!) the player got her virtual money, another player got the sex. And that was April 2007 (2.5 years ago) and the blurring of real and online boundaries is only accelerating... more on the story here.