Can Video Games Predict the Next Financial Crisis? - Tom Chatfield

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/01/12/Fun_Inc_Games_as_the_Business_of_the_21st_Century

Fun Inc. author Tom Chatfield presents virtual gaming worlds as laboratories for experimenting with human behavioral tendencies. He argues that in-game economic behavior is a "very, very good model" for real-life financial markets.

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Why should we be taking video games more seriously?

In 2008 Nintendo overtook Google to become the world's most profitable company per employee. The South Korean government will invest $200 billion into its video games industry over the next 4 years. The trading of virtual goods within games is a global industry worth over $10 billion a year. Gaming boasts the world's fastest-growing advertising market.

In addition to these impressive statistics, video games are creating a whole new science of mass engagement which is beginning to revolutionize the way we research and understand economics, human behavior and democratic participation. Games are used to train the US Military, to model global pandemics and to campaign against human rights abuses in Africa.

Journalist and author Tom Chatfield visits the RSA to examine the ways in which virtual game worlds can function as unprecedented laboratories for exploring human motivations, and for evaluating economic theories that it has never been possible before to test experimentally. - RSA

Tom Chatfield is arts and books editor at Prospect magazine, and writes on arts, philosophy, media and technology. His book about video games, Fun Inc., is out now from Virgin Books.

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[return135]

How about looking at the Austrian business cycle theory! The Austrian free market economists have been spot on in predictions!

[Ep1cure]

The virtual and real world:

There are some interesting parallels but there's a big difference in the sense that one's fear of death is laughable in the virtual world, and the opposite is often the case in the real world. Just restart the game...

There are a few other notable differences also. But analysis of virtual behaviour might bring SOME useful insights.

[mikepousti]

great video

[HBSanta]

This guy looks exactly like Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.

[bestplugins]

The only ones who can predict them, are the ones who make them

[TomChatfield]

Remember, money isn't "real" either. It's a grand and very serious game, of belief and counters and values. If nothing else, learning how to handle yourself within game economies can be a pretty brilliant, and painless, education in some vital life lessons about monopolies, scams, scarcity, teamwork, bidding, competition, borrowing, reward, pay, labour, trust, greed…

[Ryosuke1208]

It is the same in many ways but not all, some item that is very common would be a low price, or a weapon that is very hard to get in one world because the players dont have high levels, that weapon will tend to be more expensive that on the other worlds with high-level characters.

[Mastikator]

Details Ninja, details.

[VertNinja]

It's the same? Really??.. I'm broke you wanna send some monsters my way so I can loot their corpses? oh wait this is the real world.... yeah.

[Causa10bserver]

Interesting concept.

[Zubinen]

MMO economies are the same as in real life. Simple as that, morons.