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Macro goals: To alert the telecommunications policy community to the emergence of persistent online worlds as a communications and policy issue. Also to provide game industry decisionmakers with solid economic research on which to base policy decisions. Third, to connect these two communities to each other, for mutual benefit. Micro goals: to conduct a solid cost‐benefit analysis of a knotty problem in game economics: what to do about people who break the rules and use real money to buy game items (swords, wands, gold pieces, etc.)

Traditional cost‐benefit analysis. Consumer surplus analysis of externality effects, with a parameterized estimate of effects sizes.

Real‐money trading acts as a negative externality on the game subscription market. Seems likely to amount to several million dollars per 100,000 users per year.

The effects sizes are simulated only. More data from the game industry are needed before one can put a solid dollar estimate on them. Also, much of the material in the paper had to be really elementary in order for the results to make sense for both policy economists and game industry analysts.

The analysis indicates a prima facie case for public policy intervention to help shield synthetic worlds from the deleterious effects of the global gold farming industry.

Interest in real‐money trade in gaming is growing, as indicated by the extent of online discussion by gaming scholars. Despite this, the literature on the economic and policy issues raised by the topic is limited. The article is an original piece of work that takes understanding forward.

Shows how tweens, ie children between eight and 14 years of age, have developed a fascinating global language which combines icons, illustrations and phrases in a completely new way; the author calls this TweenSpeak, and it is used to communicate over the Internet when playing games in virtual worlds like Norrath, which is part of the EverQuest project developed by Sony. Gives examples of how this grammar‐free language works, for example “CU BACK L8ER” means “Call you back later”. Outlines the BRANDchild study, which suggests that conventional language will be replaced by this language of numbers, catchphrases and icons. Moves on to the huge financial importance of the virtual worlds of computer gaming, avatars and real‐money trading; the amount of time and money expended suggests that online game playing is addictive and constitutes an alternative reality, which can cause problems in real relationships. Analyses the different methods of online communication between tweens worldwide, the numbers of online friends made, and international differences: for instance, Chinese tweens are more likely to rely on the Internet for friends than are Americans.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight emerging threats in cyberspace, with particular reference to financial crime in the virtual world, which have real life implications, as well as to recommend ways in which the threat may be mitigated.

The methodology adopted consisted of an extensive literature review on topics to include cyber crime, virtual worlds, and financial crime.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life play a key role in supporting real world activities such as education, training and business and as such, should not be dismissed purely as a “gaming” environment. In addition, emerging technologies coupled with the lack of legislation and regulation within virtual worlds has created an environment where a variety of crimes can be committed without fear of detection or prosecution. A further concern is its use by criminals as a vehicle to mask real life crimes such as fraud, identify theft and money laundering. The question is to what extent the blurring of the virtual and real life environments can be clarified in order to minimise the risk of abuse of virtual environments by criminal elements, which have direct consequences in the real world.

This paper serves as a useful guide to alert and educate security professionals, the judiciary, law enforcement and policy makers of the significance and the extent of the use of “virtual” environments in cyberspace for criminal means, such as fraud and money laundering. Findings are supported by a conclusion which includes recommendations for tackling these issues.

Tweens (8‐14 year‐olds) comprise a new type of audience – an increasingly powerful and smart consumer group which last year alone spent and influenced an astounding US$1.18 trillion across the globe. They are different in every way. They are more likely to have a friend on the other side of the world than in their own street, they think the television remote is broken when they cannot find the courser on the screen; they drop from existence when the battery in their cell phone is flat. And they know current brand images better than any advertising expert. Based on the world’s most extensive study of tween attitudes and behaviors ever conducted, the author looks at the phenomena behind global children and their relationships with brands and explores why building brands to our future generation no longer is just a child's play.

This is an introductory editorial for Volume 15 designed to challenge current thinking about the future in general and the future of post‐secondary education in particular, at a time when the world wide web is being populated by synthetic worlds.

Using the emerging area of synthetic worlds, the essay challenges the current thinking, not about the virtual space occupied by these worlds, but the very world of the university currently inhabited by both faculty and students.

Currently traditional institutions are changing because of the ubiquity of the internet. The creation of synthetic worlds in the world wide web represents a substantive change similar to the shift in society as the horseless carriage transformed into the automobile.

As the synthetic “worlds” transition, the borders between a country on earth and these virtual environments become similar to today's political boundaries. Yet the physics, biology and social environment can be radically different with, as yet, unknown consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the fast‐growing virtual world, focusing on the appeal of these environments for the “digital native” generation and the growth of Second Life.

The paper examines the latest research on virtual worlds and Second Life, examining the corporate presence “in‐world,” as well as the economic, technical, legal, ethical, and security issues involved for companies doing business in the virtual world.

The paper shows that Second Life and virtual worlds hold great opportunities, along with significant downsides, for companies.

The research is limited by the very fact that this is a fast‐developing, fast‐changing area, constantly generating both new opportunities and new issues/challenges.

With projections that 80 percent of all internet users will be involved in virtual worlds by 2011, it is important that executives and academicians be knowledgeable about these 3D internet environments.

The paper traces the development of virtual worlds in the larger context of the growth of online gaming as a form of entertainment and interaction. It takes an objective look at the benefits and pitfalls for organizations looking to engage in Second Life and other virtual worlds.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue of On the Horizon, which is devoted to the next wave of innovation in online education; analyzes the traditional tension between the realm of books and reality, and to examine ways it which this may be influenced by digital technologies; and reviews possible alternatives to the structure of the traditional classroom for online education.

Building on the work of Hans Blumenberg, this article begins with analysis of the malaise that pervaded literary culture on the threshold of the digital age. It evaluates various educational structures and technologies as attempts to respond to this challenge.

Books not only contain but also structure learning, in fact they condition our expectations of what “knowledge” would be. The world of books has traditionally been opposed to that of “experience,” but digital technologies now provide new means of storing knowledge that transcend this dichotomy. This is a major change in the structure of knowledge, which will eventually transform our institutions of higher education.

This article shows how the development of digital media was not simply driven by technology but was a response to the exhaustion of literary traditions, as thinkers began to doubt whether there was anything more worth putting in print. This perspective enables the article to go beyond the technological determinism that pervades much futuristic writing, and suggest how we may innovate, particularly in education, while retaining continuity with the past.

To share information about this third annual conference on Games, Learning and Society. Increasingly popular and growing in interests among educators and industry leaders who together are trying to develop gaming products that promote learning.

Conference report.

Lots of developments and continued growth in the industry and greater interest among educators and academics about the increased value of games for learning.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) create quasi-real social systems in which players can interact with one another, and quasi-real economic systems where players can consume and trade in-game items with virtual currency. The in-game currency price, an important indicator of a virtual economy, is highly contingent on players’ behavioral interaction in MMORPGs. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a network perspective to examine how topological characteristics of social networks in an MMORPG, namely, network externalities, density, and closure, would exert impacts on the in-game currency price.

Players’ behavioral data were collected from a popular MMORPG in China on a weekly basis for 52 weeks. With a time series analytical approach, the empirical model for the price function of in-game currency was estimated with vector autoregression.

The results show that the number of core avatars and network density are positively associated with in-game currency price, while network closure has a negative effect on in-game currency price. However, in-game currency price is found to have no significant relationship with the trade volume of the currency.

This study fills in an important research gap by investigating factors influencing the in-game currency price of MMORPGs from a network perspective, which contributes to the existing literature of network effects and advances our understanding about how players’ interaction will influence the dynamics of a virtual economy. The findings could offer useful insights for online game companies to better understand their players’ social interaction and consumption behavior.