But we don’t do things because they are easy, hm? We do them because they are profitable!
This text was written for ‘Insert Coin’ (1 Feb — 19 April 2023), a solo-show by Bob Bicknell-Knight at Cable Depot.
Born at the tailend of the 1980s, my introduction to economics was twofold, divided between: small assignments of pocket money issued by my parents; and the in-game currencies encountered on the GameBoy I share with my brother. On first consideration, a couple of pounds (£) to spend in the local corner store has only a visual correlation to the coins collected in Super Mario, yet, I’d like to propose that we might additionally understand them as both operating in an abstract realm. Insulated from whatever economic concerns we may have been facing as a family, my weekly combination of 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p and £1 coins born no relation to our wider economic situation and was purposely kept beyond comprehension. Money operated in isolation, its accumulation equated to either an extra life or a KitKat. Nothing further.
Thirty years later this is far from the case, as Bob Bicknell-Knight’s Insert Coin exhibition at Cable Depot reminds us, we have moved beyond an innocent and innocuous mode of financial awakening and into a pernicious education that addicts children, employs gambling mechanics, and exploits the needs of overstretched parents. Though this text will not linger on the contemporary condition, instead it offers a sketch of the phenomenological evolution of video game money, from an abstract value signifier, to in-game economics being an extended ludic component, and finally into function virtual coin. Consider it a primer. Or a set of moral tales.
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What difference exists between the currency encountered in Super Mario Land and the currency as experienced in Super Mario Land 2? This is not a trick question, it is posed in all seriousness.
Aesthetically their pixelated design is indistinguishable, leading us to assume they were the same currency issued by a Mushroom Kingdom central banking authority.* However, when considered in relation to the design of the game, two major adaptations are noticeable, representing fundamental shifts in the legal operation of finance and the cultural perception of wealth. Firstly, Land levels were strictly sequential, meaning that across the twelve stages a maximum amount of currency could be accumulated. Whereas, the overworld presentation of Land 2 meant that progressional limitations were lifted. To amass a small fortune a player could simply complete a level and re-run it. Secondly, the use of coins differs greatly. Upon collecting 100 coins in Land the player’s holdings are immediately exchanged for a 1-UP, whilst in Land 2 a total of 999 coins can be accumulated and need to be spent in casinos for a chance to win an extra life or power-up.
The earlier game is strictly situated in a metallist ideological frame. The world contains a finite amount of money which appears to be economically anchored to a precious metal, it is tangible and enforces a disciplined restraint. Moreover, a strict exchange rate is set and the currency is immediately circulated back into the wider economy ensuring its continual distribution. Land 2 still obeys the idea that money is real — trade is enacted by an intermediary material — however, in it the state loosens the regulations applied to the market. Money begins to operate in a more elastic way and is suggestive of a shift towards chartalism. On top of this we may even read early hints of neoliberal free market capitalism.
If we were to pin this transition to any human world equivalent, we might choose Nixon’s 1971 ending of the gold standard. The decision signalled that the US’s gold reserves were no longer sufficient to anchor the world economy and laid the groundwork for the types of speculative financial trading that have become commonly accepted today.
*Before anyone says it, I know that Super Mario Land was set in Sarasaland and Super Mario Land 2 took place on Mario’s private island, Mario Land. My running assumption is that they all operate under an EU styled single currency agreement, with the Mushroom Kingdom being analogous to Belgium.
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Though many players at the time were unaware, Grand Theft Auto 3 had a monetary limit. Discovered in 1772, by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, the number 2,147,483,647 (or 2 billion one-hundred and forty-seven million four-hundred and eighty-three thousand six-hundred and forty-seven) was then the largest known prime, only surpassed in 1887. The product of 2³¹, it is the largest number a signed (+/-) 32-bit integer field can hold. Unless an enforced financial cap is instigated, any game running on 32-bit computing will be automatically limited to this figure.
Through various means, determined players could slowly earn towards this lofty goal. In GTA3 you could earn a substantial amount by progressing through the main narrative and completing sub-missions, however, you would never close in on the cap by this route alone. To compliment your earnings you would need to take a job driving an ambulance, taxi or a police car; crash or destroy cars (an inexplicable means of reward); or murder pedestrians for the pills of stacked dollar ($) bills they left scattered around their corpses. Whichever your preferred means, the task was long and arduous, the pursuit of a small subsection of gamers particularly dedicated to the game, often a decade or more after its original release.
However, there was unfortunately one snag for these dedicated high-earners. The moment they earned a dollar over 2,147,483,647 an effect called integer overflow was triggered. Picture a speedometer approaching and reaching 999,999 miles or kilometres, as the driver keeps going another digit is added looping the reading back around to 000,000. With integer overflow the same is true, though the loop does not reset the player to $0 but takes them back around to the result of -2³¹. You have successfully earned $-2,147,483,647.
At first I thought about this as representing a financial crash, the result of bad actors and unchecked ambition mixed with capitalist greed. The greed and ambition part is wholly true, though seeing it as a crash in the traditional sense fails to grasp what is actually happening. The overflow effect is a product of limitations coded into the system and a myopic belief in technological determinism.
A financial system unrooted from metallism or chartalism and only responding to the efficiencies of technologically promised unlimited growth. Unrestrained potential. When actually it masked a fatal glitch.
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Grind. /ɡraɪnd/. I / you / we / they grind; he / she / it grinds; past simple ground; -ing form grinding. Few players of GTA3 would choose to grind their way to the maximum earnings cap, though the act of repeatedly slaughtering low-level enemies, smithing steel armour, or fast-travelling between towns to exploit differences in buy/sell rates is a hallmark of many RPGs and especially true of their communal brothers, the MMORPG.
Founded in 2001 by former Mighty Duck child actor Brock Pierce and online gaming aficionado Alan Debonneville, Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE) set out to systematise lucrative grey market economies that were sprouting around popular online role playing games. In the early 2000s in-game economies could be divided into two camps, coin and experience — parallel products of the same actions, completing quests and felling foes, the prior could be used to purchase in-game goods and the latter to level up and invest in skills. Central to the MMORPG financial model was a requisite investment of player time (translated into monthly subscription fees), a slow accumulation of top-tier weapons and armour matched with an advanced and bespoke set of abilities. Attaining these goals conveyed status within the community, ensured participation in elite guilds and allowed the player to contribute to increasing hard raids. Pierce and Debonneville’s insight was to exploit wealthy player’s desires to reach these lofty positions and to off-shore the labour required to get there.
Using distributed teams of low-wage workers in China, IGE offered their services across the virtual worlds of: Diablo 3, Elder Scrolls, EverQuest II, Final Fantasy XIV, Lineage 2 RuneScape, Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Warcraft and more. Though it would be WoW that became their key earner. For as little as 25¢ an hour IGE ‘gold farmers’ would play the games for extended durations, amassing virtual currencies and desirable or rare items. An online marketplace would then facilitate the exchanges for fiat money, earning the company huge sums. According to the Washington Post, the company made $2.7million from four games in April 2004, a year later that same month earned them $6.7million, and in October 2006 they made $8.5million.
Yet the company faced ongoing problems, many of the gaming companies prohibited the sale of virtual goods for real money and actively sought to ban players who engaged in these practices. Related to their pay-to-play subscription model, the option to bypass the grind could be seen as undercutting their market and was also seen to upset carefully calibrated in-game economies. In response, IGE hired Steve Bannon (yes that Steve Bannon) in 2005 to help take the company public through fundraising and brokering profit sharing agreements with the game companies.
Despite Bannon securing a Goldman Sachs spearheaded investment of $60million, the company would enter financial freefall. Blizzard, the company behind WoW, banned more than 30,000 accounts in May 2006. IGE was losing over $500,000 a month. A class-action lawsuit and investigation by Florida’s attorney general followed. What followed was a slow trail of adaptations, new names and change of ownership. Eventually IGE would no longer exist and the company that took its place would pivot operations, however, it would leave a legacy.
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At the opening we called this text a set of moral tales, though charting the trajectory of video game economies it is hard to see where the moral cuts in. An article by the Financial Times traced the ancestry of cryptocurrencies to games such as WoW and Second Life, these roots can be extrapolated into an ideology frame that believes in unlimited virtual expansion and promotes unchecked extractivism. Though gamers may periodically rally against exploitative loot-box mechanics and expensive season passes, it often appears predestined that the microtransaction marketplace will filter into all fields of gaming. This future does not look promising.
Yet, to close on a note of despair ignores the overlooked potential of ludic space as an opportunity to reimagine financial structures. When developing their in-game economies, most developers opt to replicate the capitalist dynamics they observe in meatspace (consider Tom Nook), though this needn’t be the case. A game — single player or massively multiplayer — is a design opportunity to build systems from the ground up. Play can be play testing. And new economic strategies can be prototyped with real time feedback and adjustment. If there is a moral to this story, it is a reminder that virtual worlds can run to different logics.
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