Dr Phillips, (whom God preserve, of New Jersey) sends us their summary of a piece from Scientific American (sub required for full article).
Key Concepts:
* A new type of service industry has emerged to meet the needs of the millions who play online fantasy games such as World of Warcraft.
* Players called gold farmers amass game “currency” to sell to other players for a fee.
* This controversial practice violates the rules of play but has become a means for hundreds of thousands of developing world players to earn a wage comparable to that of factory workers.
What strikes the good doctor is the parallel between this remarkable trade and the practice of religion. Both require a mass of believers and a group of exploiters like the wily mob in mediaeval times (typified by Chaucer’s Pardoner) who sold indulgences and saints’ relics. Myself, I’d go for a relic, that way you at least get a bit of bone, albeit from a pig. Indulgences you take on trust, and what if you went directly to hell, no hanging about, wouldn’t you spit?
Richard Heeks, a scholar in the field of development informatics, has a piece worth reading on the economics of gold-farming. Another form of wealth transfer from the rich to the developing worlds.
New forms, old (psychological) content? People are suckers for the intangible, more specifically, symbolic systems of reward and status. One example, Louis XIV’s construction of Versailles, with its mandarin protocols, rituals and titles. While the French nobles competed over the position of turd-carrier to the Sun King they weren’t about to go all Frondist on him. Napoleon worked a similar trick with his medals and uniforms for the revolutionary army.
Two older books by Johan Huizinga would bear re-reading in the context. The Waning of the Middle Ages and Homo Ludens were much read in the 1960s, a decade keen on theories of play.