V - Virtual currency

Every game seems to have it now.  Is it EA bucks, Acti-Blizz cash, or Steam Pipes?  Does it really even matter?  It isn't buying us anything that we shouldn't already get.

These inflated currencies are the driving market for some pretty big businesses.  Some companies will even sell you the currency themselves to make a buck.  Sometimes you have to risk it just to get a little something extra.  It all seems very sad to me.  Sometimes it isn't even a normal currency.  TF2, for example, had a thriving economy based on HATS.  Now that Valve has pretty much decided to sell everything that kind of economy has dried up, but Valve is rolling in the dough.

I think it might be time to rethink how we allot these currencies and how easy it is to replicate.  If you really want to stimulate an economy you have to make it where people cannot exploit it easily.  You have to offer something just as good, but for free.  WoW has done this with easier to obtain gear and dailies.  Previously gold and item sellers would make a ton of money simply selling off items or gold for money, now that these things are relatively easy to get ahold of, those markets have shrunk.  There are still gold farmers and sellers, but not nearly as much as there once was.

Taking a look at some of the free MMOs you see that they actually sell their own currency.  It is hard to keep an economy honest when at any time you can jump on and turn your real cash into game cash almost instantly.  I make decent money and my wife does even better.  We have plenty of cash and I enjoy a lifestyle that allows me to enjoy new games with pretty decent hardware.  If I chose, I could easily afford loads of virtual currency to spend on whatever I wanted in pretty much any game I played... but I don't do this.  I would much rather save my REAL money to get REAL shit.  I drive a Cadillac and one day I wanna drive a newer and nicer one. I'm gonna save up some money and get this one paid off so that I can do just that.

At the end of the day it is easy for me to distinguish between virtual and real currency.  To some people they are the same thing.  I don't understand why someone would do it, but I do understand making money off of it.  I almost wish I had gotten into this business earlier in my gaming career.  I would have loved to farm gold on the side.  Maybe that could have paid for my Cadillac.