Baba Sucks

Reuters again! Adam is really on the ball. Edward Castronova, the TerraNova blogger and virtual world economist, comes to Second Life. Update: He still hates Second Life, and is rolling his own VW. Good luck mate ;0

Prof gets funding for virtual Shakespeare world

By Adam Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Indiana University Professor Edward Castronova has made a name for himself as an economist who studies virtual worlds. Now he’s been awarded a US$240,000 grant to create one himself, based on the world of William Shakespeare.

“What we plan to do is have people encounter the texts in Shakespeare and ideas in the text at many points within a really fun, multiplayer game, so without even knowing it, they gradually are learning more about the bard’s work,” said Castronova, (right) author of “Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games.”

But Arden, Castronova’s planned world, will have a hidden purpose beyond teaching: he plans to use it as a Petri dish for testing out economic theories by creating controlled experiments within the game’s population.

^{Read the rest at Reuters}

The Reuters news, about Reuters the news agency, continues to cause waves. Yahoo has a story on their main page covering the event, as do several other major newspapers and online news sites. The barrage of press(mostly Yahoo) has hit the Second Life web-server like a sledgehammer. 

Meanwhile, the techies seem a bit more apathetic to it all if not downright dismissive, "What's next Third Life? lawl." 

Perhaps they're not aware of libsecondlife ( http://www.libsecondlife.org ) just yet.

In response to my post "Breaking News: Congressman buys Girl Bits!" Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ) has issued a statment via Reuters.

Virtual economy tax ‘would be a mistake’ - US Rep

By Adam Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The head of a U.S. congressional committee said it “would be a mistake” if the Internal Revenue Service introduced regulations to tax virtual economies such as Second Life and World of Warcraft.

Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, confirmed an earlier Reuters report that the committee was studying the public policy and tax issues related to virtual economies.

“There is a concern that the IRS might step forward with regulations that start taxing transactions that occur within virtual economies. This, I believe, would be a mistake,” Saxton said in a statement released on Tuesday.

^{Read the rest at Reuters}

3pointD reports that Reuters has come to Second Life, and it seems they plan to stick around. One of their first stories covers the US Congress launching a probe into virtual economies(I'm sure that's not all they're launching *nudge wink*). It's all kind of dry, but if you're interested in virtual world economies, give it a read.

This is an exerpt of the interesting bits,

“I found that talking about this issue with some of the other economists on the committee, they are not really familiar with what a virtual economy is. The idea of Second Life or World of Warcraft or some of these other synthetic universes, they have trouble wrapping their head around it. So there’s an educational hurdle to overcome here,” he said.

However, there are probably some on Capitol Hill who won’t require much explanation.

“I can almost guarantee that there are some members of Congress spending time in Second Life or World of Warcraft,” Miller said.