Last month, Electronic Arts shut down Earth and Beyond, a MMORPG. Just days before the closure, players were still paying as much as $3,000 for accounts in the game. Games economist Ted Castronova has a short thought-provoking piece on this in Terra Nova:
Why doesn't EA transfer the title? The previous discussion hung up on the question of value – is it a game, and if so, the things that happen there don't matter, etc., etc. But eBay makes the eocnomic aspect of that discussion moot. Game or not, the economic value is there, it's tangible, it's real.
