Sony has provided a rare set of hard figures from the strange virtual economy of massively-multiplayer-online games (MMOGs). Its Station Exchange, the first ‘official’ online exchange for the virtual items in an online game - Everquest II - saw $1.87m worth of items and characters such as Dark Elves change hands in the first 12 months since its launch in mid-2005.

But given that there were - last time I checked - about 13m MMOGH players, that seems a little slim.

One member, Sony says, earned $37,435 in that year — but surely there are B-list bloggers who earn more than that?

Of course, World of Warcraft now eclipses Everquest in terms of players, and, more importantly, there are many unofficial online exchanges for all the elves, gold and swords you could ever wish for. However eBay is no longer one of them - last week it decided to prohibit sales of virtual game goods although it exempted Second Life, saying there was "an open question about whether Second Life should be regarded as a game."

[More analysis of the Station Exchange figures from Ralph Koster and the Indiana University crew. And some good overall MMOGH stats are available here, though they haven’t been updated for several months.]

February 8th, 2007 in Games | Permalink