More than 500,000 people are paying $13 a month to participate in a virtual world role-playing game. They choose characters and interact with other players. An interesting thing has happened – a culture is evolving in the game, an economy is being built, and the complexity of the game system is such that anything a player does impacts others. “The intriguing part is that most players expand their assets and abilities not through violence or chicanery, the modus operandi of a typical single-player computer game, but through virtual market transactions.” Economists are fascinated…