Not sure if any of you care, but apparently there's going to be a weekly blog post about all of Valve's virtual economies and whatever.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/
This is just an introduction of sorts, but I really look forward to what comes out of this in the future.
This is how my relationship with Valve began. While a total ignoramus of the world of video games (as per my confession above), the people at Valve and I discerned a double coincidence of interests. My academic curiosity blended nicely into Valve’s burning desire to serve its gaming community better, through the development of services that are in tune with the community’s needs as gamers but also as traders, developers, participants in something much bigger than just video games.
By studying Valve’s economy, we would have an opportunity to enhance the experience of its customers, in addition to sharpening my own thinking about what makes real economies tick. And as if all this were not enough, there was another incentive thrown into the mix: the opportunity to understand better the remarkable social organisation of production within Valve itself. (But more on this in another post…)
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/
This is just an introduction of sorts, but I really look forward to what comes out of this in the future.