{"product_id":"play-money-9780465015368","title":"Play Money","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePlay Money  explores the remarkable new phenomenon of MMORPGs, or Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which hundreds of thousands of players operate fantasy characters in virtual environments. With city-sized populations, 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  month .  Play Money  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 otherentertainments in dollar volume, and with the lines between play and wo","brand":"Basic Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51767541170519,"sku":"9780465015368","price":22.64,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780465015368.jpg?v=1758713704","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/play-money-9780465015368","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}