Edward Castronova

I would argue that these processes of value creation have advanced so far, even at this early date, that almost everything known as a "virtual" commodity - the gold piece, the magic helmets, the deadly spaceship, and so on - is now certifiably real. Indeed, as I argued in the introduction, the term virtual is losing its meaning. Perhaps it never had meaning. The things happening online have always been literal human things; there was never anything metaphorical, as-if, or subjunctive about them. At first it may have been convenient in many ways to think of networked human interaction as only a model of the real thing. Now, however, and specifically in the arena of synthetic worlds, the allegedly "virtual" is blending so smoothly with the allegedly "real" as to make the distinction increasingly difficult to see. There's nothing revolutionary in this, though. It is merely a recognition that these things were always as real as anything else in the human culturesphere.