Forbes carries an article which suggests that virtual worlds could stand to benefit from the economic slowdown. Essentially its argument is that users may decide to purchase cheap virtual goods in substitution for the more expensive real-world goods which they can no longer afford: "As the 'real world' gets worse, virtual worlds get better," Gaia Chief Executive Craig Sherman told Forbes.com in an e-mail. "As things get worse, people spend more time at movies or spend more time on a site like Gaia Online, which provides a relatively inexpensive respite from the offline world." Gaia, which targets U.S. teens and twenty-somethings, had more than 7 million unique visitors in September.
The argument that microtransactions could see a real boost seems strong to me. It is obvious that not everyone loses out in an economic slowdown; in the real world I would expect Aldi (a discount supermarket) to do very well, and Waitrose (a relatively expensive, high quality supermarket) to perform more weakly at the moment, for example. The same could apply as a user decides not to buy that Nike outfit on the high street, but to buy its virtual equivalent in-world. Microtransactions are very cheap, and still provide a feel-good-factor. Similarly, if virtual worlds can position them as a cheaper alternative to going out in the real world, they could see some benefit from tightening of belts.
The risk, though, is surely that other sources of revenue dry up. Surely it is possible (and perhaps even likely) that significant numbers of users decide to abandon their subscriptions to MMOs. It also seems probable that new purchases will fall. We may see an increase in free casual games as users want to spend their time on the computer more cheaply.
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