Stream Your Event | Partners | Speakers CART ITEMS: - | CHECKOUT

Fun Inc.: Games as the Business of the 21st Century

Watch Full Video | previews

The RSA

Info
Bio
Chapters
Preview
Download
Zoom In

Can Video Games Predict the Next Financial Crisis?

02 min 53 sec

Add to Profile

Fun Inc. author Tom Chatfield presents virtual gaming worlds as laboratories for experimenting with human behavioral tendencies.

He argues that in-game economic behavior is a "very, very good model" for real-life financial markets.
Watch Full Program

18 min 21 sec

Add to Profile

There are 4 comments on this program

Please or register to post a comment.

Previous FORAtv comments:

ChristopherAhlin

Posted: 02.20.10, 06:16 AM

Kerryoco: It's depends on what game your playing and when you're looking at their behavior. FOr example if you're looking at how people play Mass Effect 2 or Fallout, of course you're not going to see their true colors because playing "the destroyer of worlds" is much more fun. However there moments in games when fun simply isn't something you're allowed to have. For example, people spend hours analyzing World of Warcraft just to figure out which array of skills and weapons will yield the highest damage output and how much gold/gaming hours are they willing to spend in order to get these things. It's during these parts of the game when people HAVE TO act like real people and that's exactly what economists are looking at.

Kerryoco

Posted: 02.17.10, 03:23 PM

"people are at their most human" when they're involved in play - this is a huge reach IMHO. economic models of games match economic models of real world? really? i would guess people are MUCH more freewheeling in games than the majority of say... the conservative middle class is in real life. some type of research may be possible, but i would doubt that any direct analogies to the real world economy are possible. you are getting a very REPRESSED side of people in games, not a REAL side. also to all the people studying the economy... stop. leave it to the machines.

Jann

Posted: 02.12.10, 10:41 AM

Can Video Games Predict the Next Financial Crisis? Is like asking: can video games predict the next Lotto numbers? This guy obviously never heard of dynamic systems.

fredgleeck

Posted: 02.11.10, 08:46 PM

Interesting material. I'm not a big game player, but I think he is "spot on" that games are highly predictive of other behavior online. http://www.FredGleeck.com