Πολλές διαδικτυακές πλατφόρμες παρουσιάζουν τεχνητές ελλείψεις, όπου και δημιουργείται μια εικονική οικονομία με προσφορά και ζήτηση. Η δημιουργία νέων ψηφιακών υπηρεσιών και τεχνολογιών για τη παγκόσμια αγορά απαιτεί υποδομές και ανεπτυγμένες δεξιότητες που δεν μπορούν να προσεγγιστούν. Στόχος αυτής της εργασίας είναι να δημιουργήσουμε ένα χάρτη γνώσης του κλάδου. Στην εικονική οικονομία υφίστανται αρκετές μεγάλες επιχειρηματικές ευκαιρίες μέσω των ψηφιακών ελλείψεων, που χαρακτηρίζονται από μεγάλη επιτυχία ακόμη και με αξιοποίηση περιορισμένων δεξιοτήτων και υποδομών, χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα αποτελεί o κλάδος παροχής υπηρεσιών στα διαδικτυακά παιχνίδια και η εξωτερική ανάθεση καθηκόντων στο πλήθος. Έχει εκτιμηθεί ότι 100 000 νέοι, χαμηλών δεξιοτήτων εργαζόμενοι σε χώρες όπως τη Κίνα και το Βιετνάμ κερδίζουν το βασικό τους εισόδημα συλλέγοντας εικονικό πλούτο και παρέχοντας υπηρεσίες σε παίκτες σε δημοφιλή διαδικτυακά παιχνίδια όπως το World of Warcraft. Η ζήτηση για αυτές τις υπηρεσίες προέρχεται από εκατομμύρια παίκτες με χρήματα τους οποίους ενδιαφέρει ο κόσμος των παιχνιδιών και οι κοινωνικές διασυνδέσεις , αλλά η έλλειψη χρόνου και υπομονής να φτάσουν το παιχνίδι σε ανεβασμένο επίπεδο, αρκετές φορές δεν φαντάζει εφικτό. Επίσης, το 2000 εμφανίσθηκε η εξωτερική ανάθεση καθηκόντων σε πλήθος, μέσω ενός ανοικτού καλέσματος μια μεγάλη ομάδα ανθρώπων ή πλήθος αναλαμβάνουν να κάνουν κάποιες εργασίες. Τα πρώτα παραδείγματα έχουν να κάνουν με διαφημιστικές καμπάνιες. Έχει δημιουργηθεί μια αύξηση στην αγορά για τηn εξωτερική ανάθεση καθηκόντων στο πλήθος έναντι αμοιβής. Μια μελέτη αναφέρει ότι τα τελευταία 10 έτη πάνω από ένα εκατομμύριο εργαζόμενοι έχουν κερδίσει $1-2 δισεκατομμύρια. Η πρώτη αγορά στο κυβερνοχώρο με τέτοιου είδους εργασία ήταν το AMT(Amazon Mechanical Turk). / The widespread adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday life and commerce has given rise to new digital problems and challenges. Although information provided by networks is abundant, the human attention required to process it is limited. And although digital resources in principle are unlimited, many online platforms have artificial scarcities built into them as part of their design. The demand for these scarce resources, their supply, and the markets where the supply and the demand meet, constitute a computer-mediated virtual economy. Entrepreneurial opportunities in the virtual economy of digital scarcities have sometimes been successfully exploited, even with limited skills and infrastructure. A prominent example of this is the third-party gaming services industry. An estimated 100,000 young, low-skilled workers in countries such as China and Vietnam earn their primary income by harvesting virtual resources and providing player-for-hire services in popular online games such as World of Warcraft. The demand for these services comes from millions of wealthier players who have a serious interest in the game world and the social connections it facilitates, but lack the time (and patience) to reach far into the game alone. Since early 2000s, a new model called “crowdsourcing” has emerged alongside the traditional BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) model. It entails outsourcing tasks traditionally performed by employees or contractors to a large group of people (i.e. a crowd) through the Internet (Howe 2008).Typically this is done by issuing an open call for contributions on a website. Most early examples of crowdsourcing are extensions of marketing campaigns. A market study estimated that over the past ten years, over one million workers have earned $1-2 billion via crowdsourced work allocation (Frei 2009). The first market in cyberspace with this kind of work is AMT (Amazon Mechanical Market).

Nos últimos anos Jogos Online Massivamente Multijogadores (MMOG) têm se expandido em popularidade e investimento, influenciado, especialmente, pela evolução da conexão residencial (conexões mais rápidas a preços mais baixos). Com o crescimento dessa demanda, surgem problemas na utilização da arquitetura cliente-servidor, normalmente utilizada em jogos comerciais. Entre as arquiteturas alternativas de suporte a MMOGs estão as arquiteturas peer-to-peer. Porém essas arquiteturas apresentam problemas relativos a segurança, problemas esses que possuem, muitas vezes, soluções de baixo desempenho, sendo impraticáveis em jogos reais. Entre os problemas de segurança mais significativos para MMOGs encontra-se o cheating, ou a ação que um ou mais jogador toma para burlar as regras em favor próprio. A preocupação com cheating agravase quando o efeito desse cheating pode causar danos irreversíveis à economia virtual e, potencialmente, afetar todos os jogadores. O presente trabalho faz uso de uma divisão celular do mundo virtual para restringir o impacto de um dado cheating a uma única célula, evitando que este se propague. Para tanto é realizada uma classificação do estado do jogador e utiliza-se uma técnica de detecção de cheating para cada uma das classificações. Foram realizados experimentos através de simulação para testes de aplicabilidade do modelo e análise de desempenho e acuracidade. Os testes indicam que o modelo proposto consegue, de forma eficaz, realizar a proteção da economia virtual, impedindo que a ocorrência de um cheating atinja todos os jogadores. / In the past few years, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) grew in both popularity and investment. This growth has been influenced by the evolution of residential connection (faster and cheaper connections). With the demand, some limitations imposed by the client-server architecture becomes more significant. Peer-to-peer architectures aim to solve those problems by distributing the game among several computers. However, those solutions usually lack security, or presents low performance. Among the problems, cheating can be considered the most significant to MMOGs. Cheating can be defined as the action taken by a player when this action is against the rules. This may be aggravated when this action can cause irreversible damage to the virtual economy and, potentially, affect all players in the virtual world. This work’s goal is to restrict the cheating impact using a cellular world division. The proposal is to restrict the cheating in a limited virtual space, preventing the propagation. A state classification is presented, and different cheating detection techniques are presented to each element of this classification. Simulation is used to make the experiments aiming to test the performance and accuracy of the proposal. Results indicate that the proposed solution can efficiently protect the virtual economy, restraining the effects of a cheating occurrence to a small portion of the virtual world.

Nos últimos anos Jogos Online Massivamente Multijogadores (MMOG) têm se expandido em popularidade e investimento, influenciado, especialmente, pela evolução da conexão residencial (conexões mais rápidas a preços mais baixos). Com o crescimento dessa demanda, surgem problemas na utilização da arquitetura cliente-servidor, normalmente utilizada em jogos comerciais. Entre as arquiteturas alternativas de suporte a MMOGs estão as arquiteturas peer-to-peer. Porém essas arquiteturas apresentam problemas relativos a segurança, problemas esses que possuem, muitas vezes, soluções de baixo desempenho, sendo impraticáveis em jogos reais. Entre os problemas de segurança mais significativos para MMOGs encontra-se o cheating, ou a ação que um ou mais jogador toma para burlar as regras em favor próprio. A preocupação com cheating agravase quando o efeito desse cheating pode causar danos irreversíveis à economia virtual e, potencialmente, afetar todos os jogadores. O presente trabalho faz uso de uma divisão celular do mundo virtual para restringir o impacto de um dado cheating a uma única célula, evitando que este se propague. Para tanto é realizada uma classificação do estado do jogador e utiliza-se uma técnica de detecção de cheating para cada uma das classificações. Foram realizados experimentos através de simulação para testes de aplicabilidade do modelo e análise de desempenho e acuracidade. Os testes indicam que o modelo proposto consegue, de forma eficaz, realizar a proteção da economia virtual, impedindo que a ocorrência de um cheating atinja todos os jogadores. / In the past few years, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) grew in both popularity and investment. This growth has been influenced by the evolution of residential connection (faster and cheaper connections). With the demand, some limitations imposed by the client-server architecture becomes more significant. Peer-to-peer architectures aim to solve those problems by distributing the game among several computers. However, those solutions usually lack security, or presents low performance. Among the problems, cheating can be considered the most significant to MMOGs. Cheating can be defined as the action taken by a player when this action is against the rules. This may be aggravated when this action can cause irreversible damage to the virtual economy and, potentially, affect all players in the virtual world. This work’s goal is to restrict the cheating impact using a cellular world division. The proposal is to restrict the cheating in a limited virtual space, preventing the propagation. A state classification is presented, and different cheating detection techniques are presented to each element of this classification. Simulation is used to make the experiments aiming to test the performance and accuracy of the proposal. Results indicate that the proposed solution can efficiently protect the virtual economy, restraining the effects of a cheating occurrence to a small portion of the virtual world.

Nos últimos anos Jogos Online Massivamente Multijogadores (MMOG) têm se expandido em popularidade e investimento, influenciado, especialmente, pela evolução da conexão residencial (conexões mais rápidas a preços mais baixos). Com o crescimento dessa demanda, surgem problemas na utilização da arquitetura cliente-servidor, normalmente utilizada em jogos comerciais. Entre as arquiteturas alternativas de suporte a MMOGs estão as arquiteturas peer-to-peer. Porém essas arquiteturas apresentam problemas relativos a segurança, problemas esses que possuem, muitas vezes, soluções de baixo desempenho, sendo impraticáveis em jogos reais. Entre os problemas de segurança mais significativos para MMOGs encontra-se o cheating, ou a ação que um ou mais jogador toma para burlar as regras em favor próprio. A preocupação com cheating agravase quando o efeito desse cheating pode causar danos irreversíveis à economia virtual e, potencialmente, afetar todos os jogadores. O presente trabalho faz uso de uma divisão celular do mundo virtual para restringir o impacto de um dado cheating a uma única célula, evitando que este se propague. Para tanto é realizada uma classificação do estado do jogador e utiliza-se uma técnica de detecção de cheating para cada uma das classificações. Foram realizados experimentos através de simulação para testes de aplicabilidade do modelo e análise de desempenho e acuracidade. Os testes indicam que o modelo proposto consegue, de forma eficaz, realizar a proteção da economia virtual, impedindo que a ocorrência de um cheating atinja todos os jogadores. / In the past few years, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) grew in both popularity and investment. This growth has been influenced by the evolution of residential connection (faster and cheaper connections). With the demand, some limitations imposed by the client-server architecture becomes more significant. Peer-to-peer architectures aim to solve those problems by distributing the game among several computers. However, those solutions usually lack security, or presents low performance. Among the problems, cheating can be considered the most significant to MMOGs. Cheating can be defined as the action taken by a player when this action is against the rules. This may be aggravated when this action can cause irreversible damage to the virtual economy and, potentially, affect all players in the virtual world. This work’s goal is to restrict the cheating impact using a cellular world division. The proposal is to restrict the cheating in a limited virtual space, preventing the propagation. A state classification is presented, and different cheating detection techniques are presented to each element of this classification. Simulation is used to make the experiments aiming to test the performance and accuracy of the proposal. Results indicate that the proposed solution can efficiently protect the virtual economy, restraining the effects of a cheating occurrence to a small portion of the virtual world.

The diploma thesis deals with the virtual world Second Life and in particular with its economic environment. The work describes and suggests business opportunities in the virtual world. It is concerned with education possibilities and proposes its realization. These suggestions also contain an actual enumeration of individual costs and their height.

Thesis advisor: Ryan Chahrour / Virtual Economies present an excellent opportunity to study Economic concepts and phenomena in a controllable environment where perfect data collection exists. This paper uses Macroeconomic data provided by CCP Games on EVE Online to explore how the Quantity Theory of Money holds in a world without finance. The study supports the Real Business Cycle's effects on prices. Furthermore, a quick look is taken on the effects that player imposed borders have on trade within the EVE universe. It appears that, even in a virtual world, borders tend to reduce patterns of trade among neighboring regions. These findings encourage the further use of virtual economies, particularly Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), as petri dishes for the study of macroeconomic theories. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

The thesis is dedicated to the proper virtual economy setup of Massive Multiplayer Online Game to make the game competitive in this area to other products on the market. In addition to setting the economy on the example thesis includes a market analysis of computer and console games, comparison of virtual economy with real and comparison of the selected virtual economies based on defined criteria. The primary goal is to make a procedure for setting up the virtual economy and its verification. Another goals are the analysis of the games market, comparison of the games market economies and a demonstration of web game making. Game making is depended on its feasibility analysis, which is also included in the thesis. The work also verify the correctness of the settings according to the defined criteria.

Dans le contexte économique mondial, l’économie virtuelle et le capital immatériel sont le champ privilégié de la création de valeur, de la différenciation et des gains de productivité. A l'échelle macro-économique c'est le principal moteur d’une croissance aux facteurs nouveaux. Le rôle croissant du capital immatériel pose aussi le problème de sa mesure par de nouveaux indicateurs pertinents, sa valorisation (monétaire et qualitative), son appréciation par les parties prenantes et de son influence sur la compétitivité. D’où notre proposition d’une normalisation ISO et d’un tableau de bord stratégique (prospectif) dans cette thèse. La situation actuelle de pilotage et de sa valorisation n’est plus satisfaisante. D’abord parce que les états financiers ne donnent qu’une valorisation partielle du capital immatériel. Ensuite parce qu’il n’existe ni de définition claire du concept ni de méthode reconnue et partagée pour assurer son pilotage. Enfin, en matière de valorisation et de reconnaissance, si les marchés financiers intègrent d'ores et déjà le capital immatériel dans la valorisation des entreprises, ils ne sont plus efficients car d’autres éléments comme la spéculation mondiale ont une incidence sur les cours des actions. Donc, la valeur de marché ne fournit pas de détail sur les composantes du capital immatériel (humain, marque, recherche et développement, brevets etc.), indispensable au pilotage dans ces économies de plus en plus virtuelles. / In the global economy, the virtual economy and intellectual capital are the privileged field of value creation, differentiation and productivity gains. At the macro level is the main engine of growth to new factors. The growing role of intangible capital also the problem of its measurement by new relevant indicators, its valuation (monetary and quality), its appreciation by stakeholders and its influence on competitiveness. Hence our proposal of an ISO standardization and an array of strategic edge (forward) in this thesis. The current situation steering and its valuation is no longer satisfactory. First, because the financial statements give only a partial valuation of intangible capital. Then because there is no clear definition of the concept or method recognized and shared to ensure its control. Finally, in terms of valuation and recognition, if financial markets already integrate and intangible capital already in the valuation of companies, they are more efficient because other factors such as global speculation affect the prices of actions. So, the market value does not provide details on the components of intellectual capital (human, brand, research and development, patents etc.), essential for driving in these economies increasingly virtual.

The virtual economy has been gaining attraction since the increase of blockchain and web 3.0technology adoption. However, regarding the rise of web3.0 startups, the corporate pursuing this technology are still limited. Due to the early stage of technology, this research aims to study the critical driving forces in thriving internal capability enhancement and achieving long-term sustainable competitive advantages. Furthermore, the corporate venture builder mechanism will be investigated and analyzed in terms of essential barriers to incubating, accelerating, and successfully spin-off the web 3.0 venture from the corporate. This research aims to identify critical barriers regarding the five following aspects: Governance, Resources management, Corporate venture builder structure and processes, Ecosystem, and Technology and business capabilities. This research extracts empirical data from the semi-structured interviews from multi-stakeholders perspectives and the result shows that most interviewees have a similar understanding of fundamental VB structure and processes, while some details might be adapted based on each corporate’s context, size, prerequisite expertise, and capabilities. Moreover, the critical drivers can be considered a long-term aspiration of sustainable internal capability enhancement and competitiveness advantages. While the leadership in the governance aspect is one of the most critical barriers for a new venture toestablish. / Den virtuella ekonomin har sett ett växande intresse i samband med den ökade adaptionen av blockchain- och web3.0-teknologi. Men när det gäller uppkomsten av web3.0-startups är det fortfarande begränsat med företag som eftersträvar att arbeta med denna teknik. På grund av teknikens tidiga skede syftar denna forskning till att studera de kritiska drivkrafterna för blomstrande intern kapacitetsförbättring och för att uppnå långsiktigt hållbara konkurrensfördelar. Dessutom kommer mekanismen för internt företagsbyggande att undersökas och analyseras i termer av väsentliga hinder för att inkubera, accelerera och framgångsrikt spinna av web3.0-satsningar från företaget. Denna forskning syftar till attidentifiera kritiska barriärer för de fem följande aspekterna: Styrning, Resursförvaltning, Corporate venture builder-struktur och processer, Ekosystem och Teknik och affärs kapacitet. Denna forskning extraherar empirisk data från de semistrukturerade intervjuerna från perspektiv av flera intressenter, och analyserar och kombinerar även de sekundära datakällorna för vidare diskussion. Resultatet visar att de flesta intervjupersoner har en liknande förståelse för grundläggande VB-struktur och processer, medan vissa detaljer kan anpassas baserat på varje företags sammanhang, storlek, förutsättningsexpertis och kapacitet. Dessutom kan de kritiska drivkrafterna betraktas som en långsiktig strävan efter hållbar intern kapacitetsförbättring och konkurrensfördelar. Medan ledarskapet i förvaltningsaspekten är en av de mest kritiska barriärerna för att en ny satsning ska etableras.

This thesis explores economic aspects of virtual worlds by focusing on a specific massively multiplayer online role-playing game, RuneScape. In particular, it examines the similarities and differences between the virtual economics and real world economics, the economic understanding of RuneScape players and the possibility of using virtual worlds as a laboratory for testing economic behavior and theory. This thesis uses a versatile methodology that includes texts, direct observation, self-reports, and other reports to investigate the research questions. Virtual economics in general and RuneScape in specific are understudied so far and this study fills a gap in the literature. The unique contributions of this thesis are: a comprehensive survey that reveals player perceptions of economics, a new equation useful for modeling money supply, and a new use of faucet-drain economy in massively multiplayer online games. The results indicate that virtual economics of RuneScape partially reflects real world economics, player perceptions of virtual and real world economy are surprisingly complex, and virtual worlds can be used to study real world economics. Game developers, players, economists, educators, researchers, and individuals who are interested in massively multiplayer online games and economy in general can benefit from this study.