Making real money in virtual worlds: MMORPGs and emerging business opportunities, challenges and ethical implications in metaverses

Today, millions of people from around the globe play online role playing games (MMORPG), in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world, either using their existing identities in the physical world, or more often than not, through new virtual identities that might not even be remotely linked to the identities of the players in the physical world. The number of users is growing at an exponential rate and we are probably on the verge of a new development that is going to be as significant as the Internet itself. This positioning paper will discuss the business opportunities and challenges of such a virtual world, that of Second Life, and will examine the resultant corporate social responsibility implications focusing on the ethical and policy-related ones. This will help to identify important research questions that need to be systematically addressed.