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Real Problems, Virtual Solutions
A few months back I wrote an article responding to people who were comparing the economy of SecondLife to that of developing countries like Burundi, Liberia, DRC and Zimbabwe. My argument was that there is simply no scarcity in a virtual world, making any comparison null and void. This article from VentureBeat echoes my point, that virtual economies simply defy the realities of real world economics.
However, because SecondLife (and games like it) are completely controlled environments, if one wanted, they could introduce artificial scarcity, rules, governments etc. Has anyone experimented with a virtual ‘model’ of a developing country? Or perhaps even a whole continent like Africa? At the blog Alice and Kev, Robin Burkinshaw created a family of homeless Sims and proceeded to recount their tale of strife and struggle as a daily narrative…garnering compassion and empathy usually not even reserved for real homeless people!
Could recreating economies in Second Life that suffer some of the traits of developing countries (over population, job scarcity, corrupt leaders, weak economy, optimistic expats etc.) offer a way of studying development? Are there any groups out there experimenting with such a method? I did head over to SecondLife looking for anything remotely like this but only found people modeling tourist destinations and a few NGO virtual offices.
Photo: by damastarrostin used under the creative commons.