Index Page 7 of 10 played by a soldier who is currently stationed in Iraq. Ruttenbur and the soldier have a joint house and property in the game, even though the soldier is married in real life. Such in-game polygamy is common; Ruttenbur has even met her cyberhusband's real-life wife, and says, " She thinks were nuttier han you could imagine. "After playing Ultima Online for five years, Ruttenbur has a huge estate of in game property, including a set of potted plants that goes for an average of $75 in real U.S. dollars on an auction board. Her stash of on-line goods would fetch $15,000 if she sold it Now there's a company rich enough to buy the entire lot. Three years ago, a company called IGE, whose sole function is to buy and sell virtual goods, launched. I met one of the company's founders, Brock Pierce, at a gaming conference in New York. A fresh-faced, blond twenty-three-year-old who is based Boca Raton, Florida, he said IGE has"thousands of suppliers" who scout the games all day long to find cut-rate goods. He has a hundred full-time staff members at an office in Hong Kong to handle customer service. On any given day, he says, they handle"several million dollars""worth of virtual inventory Several million?"We're ten times the size of anyone else, Pierce bragged. Many players call IGE the Wal-Mart of virtual games. But it is more like a Morgan Stanley or a Long Term Capital Management,a company whose holdings are significant enough to singlehandedly affect the cash flow of the markets Of course, every booming economy has not only its white-shoe financiers but also its lowly offshore workers. a few years ago, a company called Black Snow Interactive opened up a"levelling"service for the game Dark Age of Camelot. It had a digital sweatshop in Mexico; there, ultra-low-wage workers would click away at computers, playing the characters twenty-four hours a day to level them up. Mythic the company that runs Dark Age of Camelot, got wind of the scheme and closed down Black Snows accounts and auctions. The operators vanished, and have not been heard of since An even more intriguing financial institution opened for business a few months ago: the Gaming Open Market. Based in Toronto, it is an on-line service that exists solely for trading the currencies of virtual games-Gold/Silver from Horizons, Linden Dollars from Second Life, Therebucks from There. com. If you're a player who wants some quick virtual currency for your favourite game, you can buy it there using real-world U.S. cash. Sometimes people who play several different virtual games use the market to transfer money from one world to another, like travellers at an airport exchanging currencie As on Wall Street, the value of each game currency fluctuates wildly depending on how badly it's needed "It's just supply and demand. If somebody really wants a currency, it can drive the price sky- igh, "says Jamie Hale, the thirty-year-old founder of the Gaming Open Market. The day I spoke to him a single player had bought every Linden Dollar on the market, about $500(U. S )worth. It cleaned out the Market's entire stock and produced a sudden spike in the Linden dollar's value Sometimes Hale himself will jump in to do some quick currency trading if he spots a profitable spread. He admits he has no official training in finance, in fact, he's a programmer by trade, and his co-founder-who helped write the Market,'s software-is an astrophysicist. " We keep a bunch of economics texts on my shelf to appear smart, "he jokes Hales operation is still small, with only nine hundred users. But, as it grows, it could conceivably produce a virtual George Soros--someone who amasses so many billions of units of a currency that he ould provoke a crisis in that game's economy for the purposes of profiting off it, much as Soros destroyed the British pound in September, 1992. "The value of the currency would drop through the floor, Hale notes. "But that's the game company's problem As virtual worlds increasingly mirror the real one, game companies are already dealing with another problem: crime. Indeed, there's even organized crime in The Sims Online, the cyberspace version of the alrusmagazine. com/print pI?sid=04/05/06/1929205played by a soldier who is currently stationed in Iraq. Ruttenbur and the soldier have a joint house and property in the game, even though the soldier is married in real life. Such in-game polygamy is common; Ruttenbur has even met her cyberhusband's real-life wife, and says, "She thinks we're nuttier than you could imagine." After playing Ultima Online for five years, Ruttenbur has a huge estate of in￾game property, including a set of potted plants that goes for an average of $75 in real U.S. dollars on an auction board. Her stash of on-line goods would fetch $15,000 if she sold it. Now there's a company rich enough to buy the entire lot. Three years ago, a company called IGE, whose sole function is to buy and sell virtual goods, launched. I met one of the company's founders, Brock Pierce, at a gaming conference in New York. A fresh-faced, blond twenty-three-year-old who is based in Boca Raton, Florida, he said IGE has "thousands of suppliers" who scout the games all day long to find cut-rate goods. He has a hundred full-time staff members at an office in Hong Kong to handle customer service. On any given day, he says, they handle "several million dollars'" worth of virtual inventory. Several million? "We're ten times the size of anyone else," Pierce bragged. Many players call IGE the Wal-Mart of virtual games. But it is more like a Morgan Stanley or a Long Term Capital Management, a company whose holdings are significant enough to singlehandedly affect the cash flow of the markets. Of course, every booming economy has not only its white-shoe financiers but also its lowly offshore workers. A few years ago, a company called Black Snow Interactive opened up a "levelling" service for the game Dark Age of Camelot. It had a digital sweatshop in Mexico; there, ultra-low-wage workers would click away at computers, playing the characters twenty-four hours a day to level them up. Mythic, the company that runs Dark Age of Camelot, got wind of the scheme and closed down Black Snow's accounts and auctions. The operators vanished, and have not been heard of since. An even more intriguing financial institution opened for business a few months ago: the Gaming Open Market. Based in Toronto, it is an on-line service that exists solely for trading the currencies of virtual games — Gold/Silver from Horizons, Linden Dollars from Second Life, Therebucks from There.com. If you're a player who wants some quick virtual currency for your favourite game, you can buy it there using real-world U.S. cash. Sometimes people who play several different virtual games use the market to transfer money from one world to another, like travellers at an airport exchanging currencies. As on Wall Street, the value of each game currency fluctuates wildly depending on how badly it's needed. "It's just supply and demand. If somebody really wants a currency, it can drive the price sky￾high," says Jamie Hale, the thirty-year-old founder of the Gaming Open Market. The day I spoke to him, a single player had bought every Linden Dollar on the market, about $500 (U.S.) worth. It cleaned out the Market's entire stock and produced a sudden spike in the Linden Dollar's value. Sometimes Hale himself will jump in to do some quick currency trading if he spots a profitable spread. He admits he has no official training in finance; in fact, he's a programmer by trade, and his co-founder — who helped write the Market's software — is an astrophysicist. "We keep a bunch of economics texts on my shelf to appear smart," he jokes. Hale's operation is still small, with only nine hundred users. But, as it grows, it could conceivably produce a virtual George Soros — someone who amasses so many billions of units of a currency that he could provoke a crisis in that game's economy for the purposes of profiting off it, much as Soros destroyed the British pound in September, 1992. "The value of the currency would drop through the floor," Hale notes. "But that's the game company's problem." As virtual worlds increasingly mirror the real one, game companies are already dealing with another problem: crime. Indeed, there's even organized crime in The Sims Online, the cyberspace version of the Index Page 7 of 10 http://www.walrusmagazine.com/print.pl?sid=04/05/06/1929205 10/28/2004