Capitalism in virtual worlds - Essay
# Reference
- Source:
- Keywords: Cards/permanent notes
- Relevant Notes: #metaverse #games #web3 #capitalism
# Notes
I quickly realized how much extra features the premium members got that I didn’t get. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had experienced ==the social inequality of having to work more time for less pay (through playing the mini-games for in-game currency), while the upper class elite premium members were able to breeze by and purchase their clothing for less with an alternate in-game currency called “e-coins.”==
In order to climb up the social hierarchy to these games without being a “premium member”, I spent more hours playing the mini-games, and making a smaller fraction of the in-game currency as a normal free member for each run-through. I was gated from having the power to purchase goods that were reserved for the elite. I saw value in owning those exclusive jpegs to put on my character, and ==I wanted those jpegs in context because I wanted to be a part of them.==
==Much of this gated access to digital goods reminds me of present day gated online crypto communities.== In Friends with Benefits, a cultural membership-based DAO, you are required to possess set number of tokens to join the community and access the resources within. The value of the community comes from the desire from those outside to be a part of it, and the value is there because of how people place value in it. It’s like “paying the digital rent” to invest in a property as a member of the community and selling it off after leaving the community, with the expectation that the token value will grow stronger with the people and network over time.
On the flip side, my experience in VRChat was much different. In VRChat, you embody a 3D avatar and teleport into 3D worlds that are community-created. There are no classes for digital goods, and anyone can fully express themselves with any avatar available in the community without restriction. My first experience felt unusual because I wasn’t used to everything being ungated and free for use. I realized I had become used to ==better digital goods being gated and inaccessible to the public== when I felt weird taking all the digital goods without pay.
In the digital world of Discord servers, DAOs, and VRChat worlds that represent online cities and countries with tokens or in-game currency as the currency of virtual nation-communities, I==’m constantly reminded that we need not carry the same mistakes of the real world into the digital world. ==Instead, I’m curious on what a model that would not be a repeat of hyper-capitalism would look like. It didn’t take understanding a capitalistic system fully to feel insecure about inequality in my childhood MMOs. I’m continually learning the economics of what the future of organization might look like, and am hopeful that there is a balance between keeping a community in check and in creating inclusion.