Getting Out of the Office

Several weeks ago, after reading an item in Ad Age a few about American Apparel having its own island store in Second Life, I decided I had to check it out. “Second Life,” Ad Age explained, “is one of several virtual online worlds where trendsetters are flocking to exchange ideas, egos, and virtual property using IM-equipped ‘avatars,’ or highly customized 3D representations of themselves.” At left is my avatar (avatard? do people say that? is it offensive?) self: Murk Story. Since my readership here is dominated by people I’ve met, who thus know what I look like in real life, I won’t dwell on similarities and differences. I’ll admit, however, that I wanted my avatar’s aesthetic to match that of this site.)

I really am out of the office for the rest of this week, but before I disappear for a few days, I thought I’d post this dispatch from my experience getting out of the office, while I was still in the office….
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Posted Under: Advertising,America,Consumer Behavior,Retail,Virtual Whatever-ness
This post was written by Rob Walker on August 1, 2006 Comments (2)

Archival Consumed: The Buying Game

Station Exchange

Back in 2001, a professor named Edward Castronova began to study the way markets worked in a place called Norrath. Norrath does not exist in a physical sense but is the name of the “virtual world” where the online computer game EverQuest is set. EverQuest is filled with half-elves, castles, sword fights and such, and also involves a fairly complex internal economy, whose currency is platinum pieces used to buy weapons, food and other goods. Although the goods are digital, it’s not quite right to say that they don’t have real value; pretty much from the earliest days of Norrath, Castronova discovered, game players found ways to pay real-world dollars for fake-world things. Read more

Posted Under: Consumed,Virtual Whatever-ness
This post was written by Rob Walker on October 16, 2005 Comments Off on Archival Consumed: The Buying Game
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