Out of Pod Experience

I've observed that in general people tend to be more entrepreneurial when starting businesses, or engaging in business ventures in virtual worlds. We see this from entire farming/crafting guilds in fantasy MMORPGs to the trade/industrial corporations in hyper - capitalistic games like EVE Online.

However, as a long-time gamer I've also personally observed time and time again how most of these same people do not show this same entrepreneurial zeal in real life, to start their own small firms and partnerships making. Rather, most would rather work for someone else as a fixed - wage employee. Now, I am not saying that this is a bad thing. High risk/higher reward in the case of running your own enterprise, and conversely lower risk/ lower reward in the case of working for someone else, it's entirely an individual's choice to make. It just strikes me as curious that a large proportion of people would showcase such interestingly divergent actions in game and out of it.

Some of my own thoughts on possible reasons why this might be the case:
- Vastly lowered barriers to entry (no red tape, no taxes, no large capital investment) in a game compared to RL
- Artificially lowered risk/reward ratio in a game compared to RL
- Activities in a game are significantly more fun compared to typical business activities in RL
- Social inertia
- There's precious few ways to earn a stable income in a game working for someone else, one is forced to engage in enterprise for his own benefit
- Most gaming enterprises aim at funding some higher goal or the other - Raiding, territorial wars, guild social activities. There's a lack of such an identifiable "End Game" in a real life context, hence less motivation to pursue high risk/high reward endeavours

Has anyone else observed this curious phenomenon, either in yourselves or in others? Any alternate explanations? What thoughts might you have on the subject?

There's a lot to be said for stability.

I used to operate a small business. A shrinking market and increased competition made it harder to make the money I needed, so I gave it up and got a steady-paying job. As much as I miss the joys of being my own boss and all that, I don't miss the months of slow business where you can barely keep the lights on while waiting for demand to pick back up. Now I have a wife and kids and bailing out of a dependable job to pursue something that could leave us with nothing...no, thanks. I'm not risking my kids' well-being to satisfy my desire for adventure.

If you live in the USA, for many people in order to get good health care coverage, out of fear or necessity they feel that they are required to work at some job they don't like, just for the health coverage. Any hopes of doing something better or taking a chance starting a new company is trumped by that simple requirement.

For example, there was a recent worker dispute in California where many of the employees at the supermarket Albertsons stated this very thing. An executive at a health insurance company also admitted that if he ever left his job, he would not be able to get health care coverage again due to his heart condition- thus he feels he must keep his job no matter what, but has his company turn down others in order to make a profit-- he pointed out the irony of that.

In a video game, you do not require health care coverage, money or food to keep your real-life self or family alive. Thus you can follow any risky dream you desire in a game with no reprecussions other than possible real-life divorce if your significant-other gets fed up with your game time.

Incidentally, in most modern western nations you also do not need to worry about this, and can follow your dream job or create fresh new companies/industry without worrying about having health coverage for your family as you struggle with your startup. You are more free to take the risk and potentially reap the reward of inventing some new industry.

The USA is unusual in the modern world for only providing full Universal Health care for Politicians, and military, but not for the general public [with some exceptions in some states]. And ironically, those same politicians turn around and tell everyone how bad unuversal health care is, but refuse to give up their own universal health care when some smart reporter points out how hypocritical they are being.

That's why we make special cookies

As an interesting side note, there is actually a lot of research into the field of motivation and games capture almost the entire point of what motivates the vast majority of us, its not money its mastery and creativity. Games allow the user to show that they can control what they are doing and they do it for their own reasons. There is an interesting video on the subject here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Nice attempt but think of this: even a homeless in Spain has got better health coverage than your average blue collar worker in the USA.

Some good points OP. I think one other advantage of entrepreneurship in games over RL is in game, you know the rules. The game world has a defined framework that you work within. If you don't know something, the rules are in places that you can pretty easily access. In RL, it's not that simple. Finding out what the "rules" are is a lot harder. How do you get funding/start-up capital? What tax rules can help you or hurt you? What local national, state, and local laws apply? What's involved in having an employee? Most importantly, how do you get a steady flow of customers/clients? It's a much bigger and looser "sandbox" to have to explore, and the guidance is harder to find.

That said, from observing my various private enterprise employers, I think once you know the rules, being and entrepreneur is is kind of like playing a game. There's kind of a finite set of things to deal with: finance, facilities, employee matters/human resources, operations, marketing/sales and bookkeeping/taxes. Sure, there are plenty of intricacies and ongoing changes in each, but once you have the framework down, it's just a matter of making decisions and adjustments as you go along.

I've also noticed that people who come from entrepreneur families have a big advantage over people having to learn this stuff from scratch. They know the general framework already, so it's just a matter of plugging in the details. And I've noticed that, once a certain level of financial security is achieved, the owner/entrepreneurs start running the business sort of like they're playing a game. Once they have a good cushion built up, they can twiddle the knobs, take more venturesome risks, and explore different strategies and tactics, without worrying about ending up on the street. So their chances of hitting on something really good are better than those of the little guy who's just brings in enough to live. Such is the power of capital.

2/10 trolling.