Extra Credit

Thanks to our friends at AOL and WSJ, I read yesterday that things such as unpaid parking tickets or library fines can now affect your credit rating. That’s because collection agencies are getting involved in recovering these debts – their information ends up on your credit report.

How much longer before we read about a gamer losing points on his credit score for not paying off the gold he was loaned by his guild in an online game? I guess what’s even more interesting is to imagine how an agency would go about collecting from someone within the game world. Would they hire über characters who PvP the deadbeats and loot them to recover what they owe? Or maybe the game operators can provide an in-game collection service for a “fee” where they transfer the items or currency in dispute from the player to the original or rightful recipient. At that point I’m sure lawyers would step in and then special interest groups calling themselves “Players for Players’ Privacy” or some such thing, then politicians, the Supreme Court, and finally a Hollywood move about one player’s struggle against the big mean game operators for fairness and privacy.

Now on the other hand, how much would players benefit if their in-game purchase history and net worth counted towards their score for getting a real-world loan? We would need new loan application forms that had a section like “Please list your characters for each online game you play, the major items they own and how much currency they each have.” How funny would *that* be?

Fortunately, games seem to be more sensitive lately to making sure players get their own drops, mostly by instantiating missions for each player or party of players. If not, imagine someone suing another for the real world value of a rare drop. Imagine dialogs like “Hey man! Gimme that back – I’m trying to qualify for a car loan!” or “W007! Got the sword! That’s another point off my mortgage :-)”

If you have an AOL account, you can read the entire WSJ article here .