Discussing Virtual Finances

Most game widows don’t know they need to talk to their gamers about finances. With money being the number one most embarrassing subject – ahead of sex – for individuals to talk about frankly, even if you’ve managed to cover who pays the bills, or how much allowance to, well, allow…you probably haven’t talked about virtual real estate values or micropurchases. Non-gamers are usually completely unaware that real money is now tied to virtual derring-do. How? In four ways:

At the most basic level, it costs money to buy the hardware and software, not to mention the peripherals, to play video games. You probably talked over the purchase of the new console, but what about the updated motherboard and memory for the PC?

Second, the payout to play doesn’t end with hardware and the game disk. Once logged into some console and PC games, some games require monthly subscriptions to play, and offer players optional items, upgrades and other perks for only a few cents or dollars. These small, regular purchases can add up over time in a way that makes the word “micropurchase” seem like a ludicrous and misleading term. Do you track these?

Third, people, and that includes the gamer in your household, can pay real money for virtual items and sell things they’ve won/made in the virtual world. Did you know your wife’s personal island in Second Life was worth about two grand, U.S. greenbacks? If the current economic mess has you looking for things to sell off, you might not even think of virtual property. Your gamer may think of these properties as strictly personal, but the time is coming when that assumption will be tested in a community property state during a divorce, where the law states that 50% of all assets belong to each spouse. Do you know how much money and property your gamer has, online and off?

Fourth, earnings from the sales of online properties are significant enough to build a business around. There are virtual businesses making real money for virtual goods and services, real businesses built around playing only to acquire valuable virtual properties to sell (called gold farming), and companies that exist only to broker virtual property sales. The business of gathering and trading virtual goods and services for real goods/services is now significant enough to attract the interest of taxing entities. In other words, China just recently decided to officially tax businesses dealing in virtual stuff, and it won’t be long before your taxman follows suit, and decides that individual gamers are worth taxing, too.

Playing video games may be a hobby, but it is a lucrative one. Game companies and software makers who cater to the gamer make billions of dollars per year. But the money can flow back from the game, too. It doesn’t matter how old or young your gamer is…you need to talk about the finances of play, both outgoing and incoming. Further, both gamers and non-gamers should be familiar with the issues and ethics of virtual commerce when it’s tied to real money. The rules don’t change just because the tools do. Sweatshops, theft, and greed are just as real online as they are off, and should not only be a part of the pro-con list of choosing to game, but also under consideration when choosing which games to play.

Ask your gamer about these issues, and make some decisions about how you’ll handle the value of online play. After all, on the modern playground, it’s not just lunch money at stake when for a blurted password, you can get oh, so much more. Know how your money flows, where it goes, and how to protect and manage it. Even if it seems as imaginary and fantastic as the money handled by Wall Street and the U.S. Federal Reserve system.

(Wendy Kays is the author of Game Widow, available wherever books on extremely interesting topics are sold.)