Interesting Stat:
Under The RADAR And Untapped

I’m a big fan of the MMORP game (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing) called World of Warcraft. I like just about everything in the game — endless selections of stories/quests, interesting characters to develop, and absolutely gorgeous images and landscapes to experience.

For the most part, people seem to conduct themselves in the game far better than we’ve come to expect from our fellow citizens in the real world. (Could the game be good practice for practicing goodwill?)

I ran across this stat in Iconowatch (a trendwatching newsletter) and thought I’d post it here for your imaginations to develop into blossoming business ideas.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games have spawned economies that would rival those of a small country but fly largely under the radar of economists, government statisticians, and people beyond the 12- to 35-year-old demographic.
KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON 11.2.05

What business or services could you develop (in real life or in the game) to better serve this community? Another game (EverQuest) has developed the ability to allow characters to order a Pizza Hut pizza from within the game itelf — having a real pie delivered to the door without interrupting the game play until the door rings.

Some entreprenurial souls have developed gold ‘farming’ (farming is the term used for massive collection efforts of any valuable resource; gold, leather, herbs, etc.) and character leveling and sell them through websites and eBay. Game creators, Blizzard Entertainment, are taking steps to defeat these out-of-character businesses, but you can’t actually foolproof anything (the fools are too creative!)

See if you can come up with an idea or two that could both benefit and capitalize on this dedicated group of game players. Submit any concepts to ‘wowideas@dontheideaguy.com’ , and I’ll post the best ones here in a future blog entry.