The Real World doesn't Exist

This is going to be another response post to something Gevlon has written. I read most of what he writes and usually agree, but I just couldn't help but disagree on his positing about micro transactions.

Most of what I write in this post is actually just blatant plagiarism. I was in the middle of reading a 248 page paper on RMT and virtual worlds by Vili Lehdonvirta
and the timing just couldn't be better. The paper is titled "Virtual Consumption" and examines the phenomenon of paying real money for virtual goods. It is Lehdonvirta's PhD thesis.

I'll let you read the whole paper yourself, but what it argues is that virtual goods are just as real to some people as gardening tools are to a gardener.

"The idea of use-value or practical usefulness seems far removed from these tiny figures on the screen. But if usefulness is understood instrumentally, as the capacity to achieve some separately defined end, then virtual goods can be useful in their own environments, in the same way as the rake is a useful tool in the garden but not much elsewhere."

In a society where people spend more and more time online, the 'material world' does not necessarily take primacy over the virtual one.

"...the position according to which spending real money on virtual goods is insane because the goods “do not really exist” is untenable. Despite their name, virtual goods are “real” in the ontological sense that they exist in the same reality as other goods. They have a physical manifestation, often a visual form, which can be experienced by many people. They also make their presence felt through other mechanisms. Virtual goods are not figments of imagination, although they can give rise to a strong emotional or dream component in the mind of a consumer, in the same way that many brands and consumer goods seek to do. "

"For people who interact mostly in the digital world, it is the living room sofa that lacks presence and impact in most situations. If presence and impact are the measures of reality, it is the sofa that must be termed “unreal” in such a case."

"Miyamoto Shigeru of Nintendo has used the phrase “touchable images” to describe video games (Fukuda 2000, p. 6). Virtual goods are “touchable images”: not just images with meanings, but images that one can appropriate, make one’s own, and attach personal meaning to. Unlike the objects in Nintendo’s traditional video games, these images moreover exist not just on one screen, but in a virtual space where they can touch the lives of many people, and obtain a social life."

You get the idea... reality is in the eye of the beholder. People make decisions on how to spend their money based on what has value to them, not to somebody else.

"The mere fact that the goods and spaces are digital, and are part of something that has been given the label “game,” is irrelevant. Willingness to pay, to sacrifice time and effort, is the ultimate arbiter of significance when it comes to assessments of economic value."

As virtualisation and communication technology improves and becomes more and more widespread, these boundaries between reality and virtuality will only get blurrier.

(clicking these images leads to places)