Com125 Assignment 11: Online Economies in Virtual Communities

Pros of Second Life Economy

We are now living in a community which puts us into various ranges of social networks. Traditionally, offline communities have been defined as cohesive units that provide a gathering place for sharing common interests. Whereas, now in information society, the role of offline communities move onto online so called ‘virtual community’. Though we are belonging to our social network physically, we can create and broaden our social ties on the web. A popular online community website called, ‘Second Life’ offers us a public form of visibility. Second Life does not have physical boundaries within interactions between the users, so that makes possible to widen social network through online activities. Also, Second life use to maintain and existing social capital, together with other forms of communicative contact through chat rooms. It also helps increase existing patterns of social contract and civic involvement. Thus, Second Life can boost your existing ties. Not only providing a place for virtual interactions with each other, but also Second Life has an amazing function for virtual economy. Also, the user can explore the virtual world, meet other users, socialize, participate in economic activities such as creating items and trading those items like virtual property from one another.

Cons of Second Life economy

This trading process is exchanged with the online currency called ‘Linden dollar’. Here is the matter. Let’s say you have Linden US$ 10,000. Can you trust the money that you have? Can you consider the Linden dollars as the real US dollars? Even Linden dollar is an exchange tool for buying and selling things on Second Life community, it could be hard to consider the money as a verified trading tool in terms of a real currency. This is due to the lack of safety of online trades. In real life, banks are intermediates between buyers and sellers and also they keep and manage your money. As long as your money is in bank accounts, we believe that we can get the money when we need. However, who plays the role of the bank in virtual community? Does Second Life organization as safe as real banks which we can invest our money online? Online community where the problem of hacking have become a global issue, I doubt the creditability of the 3D virtual economy.

Among numerous happenings of online communities, I remember one which was broadcasted on news few years ago in South Korea. A 14 year-old boy who was addicted to play an online game called Lineage kept spending US$30 for buying game items for his avatar and every month using his mom’s bank account details. Also, a Lineage player’s ID, password and the information of the game server got hacked and his items which was worth more than US$1,000 was sold by a hacker. Even more, according to Korea Information Security Agency (www.kisa.or.kr), approximately 1.2million crimes happened during trading game items and ID/Password hacking. Even though, an online security section called ‘Item Bay’ on Lineage, but the crimes within virtual economy is easily looked down upon in comparison to real life crimes. The online market in virtual community is now more than 100million us dollars. Significantly, this is not only the problem of the US, but is a growing global issue of 3D virtual community. Online open communities like Second Life do not have any boundaries and also it can be spread rapidly online brining economic issues.

Conclusion

All in all, currently what we need to consider is that users of online community such as Second Life should be aware of the possibility of threatening personal identification. In one way, the impact of Second Life has brought us a new meaning of community and built a new public form of global community. But more importantly, the limitations of issues of contact and privacy of Metaverse 3D world still can occur economic and social problems. The appropriate control of the online market, and producing new security program for protecting personal information, and indicating the cautious problem of online market for people in online community. Therefore, all these solutions for the safer virtual community is embedded by not only the network agencies, but also, government and individual’s efforts.