Who put money in games?

1. ALESHA SERADA
GAMES AND MONEY

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…It’s being knowledgeable about game releases and secrets,
and passing that information on to others. It’s having opinions
about which game magazines are better and the best sites for
walkthroughs on the Internet. Easter eggs gave rise to some of
the earliest gaming capital, and one role of game magazines
was to push the envelope about what could be considered
part of gaming capital.
Consalvo, M. (2009). Cheating: Gaining Advantage in
Videogames. The MIT Press.

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NICHOLS, R. Bourdieu’s Forms of Capital and Video Game
Production. In The Game Culture Reader, 2013, Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, pp. 30–46.

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6. Julian Dibbell
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7. NEW MONETIZATION MODELS LEAD TO NEW BUSINESS MODELS
Fundamental characteristics of free-to-play monetization
▸lack of a starting fee
▸inclusion of voluntary purchases during gameplay (Alha 2020)
*World of Tanks and League of Legends are free-to-play, too!
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What is free-to-play?

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Clark, O. (2014). Games As A Service: How Free to Play Design
Can Make Better Games. Focal Press.
SAVE ON MARKETING AND DISTRIBUTION AND FOCUS ON MOST DEDICATED U SERS
Most Players Never Pay
Seufert, E. B. (2014). Freemium Economics: Leveraging Analytics
and User Segmentation to Drive Revenue. Morgan Kaufmann.

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Democracy vs.
meritocracy

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• The South Korean game industry is one of the
pioneers of today’s free-to-play model.
• The combination of a lack of console games and
a fast internet made online computer games the
most successful products of the South Korean
game industry.
• China not only adapted South Korean games in
the early 2000s, but also built their own free-to-
play game industry.
• Western virtual worlds:
• Neopets (Powell & Williams, 1999)
• Habbo Hotel (Sulake, 2000)
• Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003).
• Users buying digital content from each other
proved to form a significant economy of itself!

11. BUSINESS AND ECONOMY OF SYNTHETIC WORLDS
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Edward Castronova

12. BASIS FOR GAME ECONOMIES SINCE THEIR EARLIER YEARS
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Artificial Scarcity
Castronova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005.

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We can see circulation of
value with the naked eye…

14. IS IT EVEN STILL A GAME?
▸Probably second most popular
(episodically, the most popular)
blockchain-based game
▸The exemplary ‘play to earn’ game
▸A pyramid scheme? A multi level
marketing scheme? An alternative
investments scheme?
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What is Axie Infinity?

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17. EDWARD CASTRONOVA IS NOT AGAINST THE IDEA OF PLAY -TO-EARN
▸ “Now consider the fact that any user’s enjoyment of a synthetic world depends on two things:
the fun they get out of it, and the earnings they get out of it. Earnings (or wages—I’ll use the
terms interchangeably) are the result of labor hours devoted to gathering resources from the
synthetic world; it is expressed in dollars and can be thought of as the dollar price of the
resources, as if that loot were to be sold on eBay. Fun is, well, just fun; some modes of gathering
are entertaining and fulfilling, others are boring. With this in mind, total compensation of a
synthetic world can be expressed as follows:
▸ Total Compensation = Wage + Fun”.
Castronova, E. (2005). Synthetic worlds: The business and culture of online games.
University of Chicago Press.
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Theory of compensating wage
differentials: balance fun and money

18. LITERALLY THE NEXT THING THAT EDWARD CASTRONOVA SAYS IN HIS BOOK
“The theory of compensating wage differentials says that those doing unpleasant jobs
must be paid a higher wage than is otherwise available for someone of that level of skill;
the workers must be compensated for enduring the unpleasant work conditions.
Similarly, a nice job often pays poorly. Just look at professors. They spend most of their
time just thinking and chatting with respectful young people, a kind of job that lots of
people probably enjoy doing. There’s a great deal of supply available to fill these
positions, and not so much demand for people to be doing them, hence the wage tends
to be lower than it would be if the work conditions were not so pleasurable”.
▸ Castronova, E. (2005). Synthetic worlds: The business and culture of online games.
University of Chicago Press.
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It is only fair that university
professors should be paid less

19. BLAZING TRAILS: A NEW WAY FORWARD FOR
VIRTUAL CURRENCIES AND MONEY LAUNDERING
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Michael Bombace
Virtual currencies grew up in virtual worlds. They were
a central element in the game experience.
They remain so and now represent a widespread form
of value exchange on the Internet. They are an
increasingly effective way to monetize games. Because
of their versatility within games as part of game
play and as a monetization method, they are a central
tool of innovation for game developers. In tandem
with their rise in use and complexity come anti-money
laundering concerns. Their use for illegal acts is
predicted to grow.

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Is betting a job?
Is betting a game?

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22. ASERADA@UWASA.FI
T H A N K Y O U !