What is a Synthetic Economy?
In gaming and persistent virtual worlds that employ their own form of currency, participants purchase virtual currency with real-world dollars. This generates a synthetic economy within the virtual world. In gaming, users might purchase weapons, secrets, characters, or tools. Other virtual worlds are not created for gaming, but to simulate real life communities. In these virtual worlds, participants might buy clothes, land, or businesses. Considering that many online games and virtual communities have hundreds of thousands of users interacting, buying, and selling, the basic model leads to a synthetic economy within each virtual world with some aspects that reflect real-world economies. Some experts fear that users may sink too much real-world money into a synthetic economy, forgetting that the purchase has no tangible counterpart. Business Week magazine featured one real-estate mogul in Second Life, a virtual world community, who was making several hundred thousand real-world dollars
