Eve Online: Scientific American, In-Game Economies & Eyjólfur Guðmundsson

EVE Online's in-game economist Eyjólfur Guðmundsson is the focus of an article in Scientific American magazine. Indicating that positions such as this are becoming a "serious" job opportunity, SA explained:

Eyjólfur Guðmundsson is the only economist on Earth who spends his days studying the fluctuating cost of warp-disruption batteries and T2 light drones. That's because he's the world's first virtual-world economist.

This past August, Guðmundsson took up residence in EVE Online, a massively multiplayer online game, to report on its economy, research its society and coordinate with academic institutions on their entrance into virtual worlds.

Think Alan Greenspan-only in Battlestar Galactica. In EVE Online players buy, sell, trade, earn, steal and otherwise work to accumulate interstellar kredits (ISKs)-a currency that, officially at least, is only valuable inside EVE. To earn ISKs, players can mine ore from asteroids, process it into salable goods, clear the world of computer-controlled pirates or turn pirate themselves and attack other players.

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