TinyTroupe’s Hyperreal Economies: A Look at Simulated Agency

TinyGroupe in a virtual environment.

Somewhere in the early 2000s, I heard an economics professor explain how virtual worlds could be used as a laboratory for his discipline. Imagine two game environments with financial markets, identical in every respect except that in one environment insider trading is allowed, while in the other it is not…. Continue reading

Virtual worlds and the Infosphere

This week I learned about information philosophy, most notably the work of Luciano Floridi. In this day and age of data and digitalization, he develops an ontology and ethics based on reality-as-information. Virtual worlds geeks will appreciate how the professor also refers to Second Life (and other virtual environments), for… Continue reading