I study games of all kinds. I'm interested in the way people play games and the way games are changing our society. Here's an example: 10 years ago, kids in online games got used to the idea of using gold pieces to buy and sell things. These gold pieces, it turned out, could be traded for dollars on eBay. It was a virtual currency with a real exchange rate. That's a little weird, but how weird is it now that Facebook has a virtual currency called Facebook Credits being used by 500m people in their system? 500m is bigger than the US population. What kind of money is this? Should the Fed be worried? Should you invest in virtual currencies? (My answers would be, real money, maybe, and no).

I'm always working on papers, books, and talks about games and society, and I have designed a few games. I'm not very good at keeping my CV up to date, though. Please email me if you'd like to know I'm working on today. Otherwise, Google can give you a good idea of what people have looked into in the past.

Edward Castronova: Professor of Telecommunications and Cognitive Science, Indiana University. Castronova (PhD Economics, Wisconsin, 1991) is a founder of scholarly online game studies and an expert on the societies of virtual worlds. Among his academic publications on these topics are two books: Synthetic Worlds (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Exodus to the Virtual World (Palgrave, 2007). Professor Castronova teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the design of games, the game industry, and the management of virtual societies. Outside his academic work, Professor Castronova makes regular appearances in mainstream media (60 Minutes, the New York Times, and The Economist), gives keynotes at major conferences (Austin Game Conference, Digital Games Research Association Conference, Interactive Software Federation of Europe), and consults for business (McKinsey, Vivendi, Forrester).