{"product_id":"9780465003679","title":"Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot","description":"\u003ci\u003ePlay Money\u003c\/i\u003e explores the remarkable new phenomenon of MMORPGs, or Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which hundreds of thousands of players operate fantasy characters in virtual environments. With city-sized populations, these games generate their own cultures, governments, and social systems and, inevitably, their own economies, which spill over into the real world. The desire for virtual goods-magic swords, enchanted breastplates, and special, hard-to-get elixirs-has spawned a cottage industry of “virtual loot farmers”: people who play the games just to obtain fantasy goods that they can sell in the real world. The best loot farmers can make between six figures a year and six figures a \u003ci\u003emonth\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003ePlay Money\u003c\/i\u003e is an extended walk on the weird side: a vivid snapshot of a subculture whose denizens were once the stuff of mere sociological spectacle but now-with computer gaming poised to eclipse all otherentertainments in dollar volume, and with the lines between play and work, virtual and real increasingly blurred-look more and more like the future.","brand":"Basic Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47121893785840,"sku":"9780465003679","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780465003679_p0.jpg?v=1763705682","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780465003679","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}