{"product_id":"play-money-isbn-9780465015368","title":"Play Money","description":"\u003ci\u003ePlay Money\u003c\/i\u003e explores a remarkable new phenomenon that's just beginning to enter public consciousness: MMORPGs, or Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which hundreds of thousands of players operate fantasy characters in virtual environments the size of continents. With city-sized populations of nearly full-time players, these games generate their own cultures, governments, and social systems and, inevitably, their own economies, which spill over into the real world. The desire for virtual goods -- magic swords, enchanted breastplates, and special, hard-to-get elixirs -- has spawned a cottage industry of \"virtual loot farmers\": People who play the games just to obtain fantasy goods that they can sell in the real world. The best loot farmers can make between six figures a year and six figures a \u003ci\u003emonth\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003ci\u003ePlay Money\u003c\/i\u003e is an extended walk on the weird side: a vivid snapshot of a subculture whose denizens were once the stuff of mere sociological spectacle but now -- with computer gaming poised to eclipse all other entertainments in dollar volume, and with the lines between play and work, virtual and real increasingly blurred -- look more and more like the future.","brand":"Basic Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44891818361061,"sku":"NP9780465015368","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780465015368_54f0cd8f-863c-4b64-a936-1684d260bb39.jpg?v=1771872436","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/play-money-isbn-9780465015368","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}