Loot: real money in virtual worlds
I’ve been meaning to blog this for a few days but life has been just crazy lately! My friend and co-writer at slatenight.com Christy Dena (aka Lythe Witte) was interiewed about Virtual Worlds - specifically Second Life - by ABC Radio National reporter, Cath Dwyer. The link to the mp3 is here.
Cath does a great job of covering an overview of MMORPGs, also interviewing people like Edward Castronova who explains the concept of persistent worlds, the blurring of reality and virtuality, and virtual economy.
Christy talks about Slatenight (yay!) and also the way she networks with business colleagues, and of course, socialises. I loved the description of Christy as “no geeky teen” 
Anyway have a listen, its a great overview I think to help the general public understand what virtual worlds are about. It also features Julian Dibbell whose work I have been following for years, and covers other topics such as gold farming, power levelling and professional gaming companies (”sweatshops”) in China which I found most fascinating of all.