cyber sabre
Quite a time ago, while drinking beer at a party organised by our students, I told a fellow anthropologist about game-items from Everquest being sold at ebay (see e.g. Castronova ↵2001 and ↵2003). All I harvested was an amused smile and the somewhat depreciatory comment “That’s completely crazy!” Resisting the temptation to answer “And what about ‘your people’? Talkin’ to the Dead! Bah!—Humbug!” (my colleague has done equally extensive and phantastic, simply great fieldwork in Southern India) I instead started to think about the response—I had to think a bit in order to reach the following quite obvious conclusions, for I was at a party drinking beer, remember. Everybody not accustomed to ↵MMORPGs encounters the culturally alien with this stories of selling game-items for hard cash (same with the conversations with the Deceased). Essentially this is because of the non-realization of what this items—or the Dead—are meaning for the everyday-life of the people involved. Now this meaning has manifested itself in the form of a new peak of drama: “Reuters reports that Qui Chengwei loaned Zhu Caoyuan his virtual game sword from the MMORPG Legends of Mir 3 known as a ‘dragon saber’. Zhu then went and sold the sword for 7,200 yuan (US$870). Qui reported the dragon saber to the police as a stolen item but the police said there is no law for protecting ‘virtual property’. So, Qui took revenge into his own hands and murdered Zhu with a real sword.”
via entry at gamersgame and entry at digital-lifestyles