Many gamified systems have rewards, things that the players
get and they're often virtual rewards, things like badges.
Well, if those rewards are persistent, if they're
things that endure throughout participating in the activity, especially
if the player goes away and comes back,
then they can start to function as virtual goods.
If the system is designed in a way that gives them
some scarcity value, some of them are harder to get than others.
Some of them are less widely available than others.
Then those virtual goods can appear to have value to
the players, just like a real world physical good does.
The second way to bring in virtual economics, is to
have point systems that involve points that are tradeable or redeemable.
I.e.you can get the points and use them to
buy a variety of different things in the gamified
system, which themselves are virtual goods then, or you
can redeem the points for things in the physical world.
For a coupon or even for money in the physical world.
In that case, we're starting to deal with a virtual currency.
The points now operate like real money.
They're a currency.
They're a medium of exchange.
What is a dollar or a Euro, or a Reminbi?
It's not a thing in and of itself.
It's just an accounting mechanism that's tradeable
for other real world things, that we want,
because people in that society, with the backing
of governments, are willing to make that exchange.
And say, if you give me a certain amount of money,
I will recognize it and give you some other kinds of goods.
So, the same thing can be true of point systems in gamified systems.
If they are exchangeable for other things that
people value, then they can operate like a currency.
And finally, if the system allows transactions, if
participants in the virtual system can trade with each
other, directly or through some marketplace, then potentially we're
in the realm of a full blown virtual economy.
And we've seen this in a variety of massively multiplayer online games.
Things like EVE Online as well as some virtual worlds
like Second Light that are designed to have functioning virtual economies.
And all of these can exist to a greater or lesser extent in gamified systems.
So a couple of examples, virtual goods are
a widespread phenomenon in many social games today.
So games like Farmville.
One of the ways that they were so successful as businesses, was they
recognized that virtual goods could be unlocked as a way to monetize the game.
Doesn't cost anything to play, but in order
to achieve certain things easily in the game,
or to get certain rare goods in the game, you've got to start to spend real money.
So people think of those virtual goods
as being really worth something, either because they
had to pay for them, or because they had to work very hard to get them.