00:00 Every person who's played video games has been told by someone who doesn't
00:04 that we're wasting our time and to every one of those people we can say that
00:08 there's plenty to learn from games and the people who play them. From social
00:12 influence to economics, systems built into virtual worlds are based off of and
00:17 have an effect on real life. Video game researcher Dmitry Williams uses games as
00:22 a tool to study real-world behavior, discovering that people often attach
00:27 similar value and emotion to in-game money as they do to real-world money.
00:31 Like in Destiny 2 which utilizes virtual currencies, prompting players to consider
00:37 their worth and economic implications. Games like World of Tanks enable
00:42 researchers to explore how virtual purchases and player interactions
00:46 influence each other. "We were able to look at when this player buys a virtual
00:51 tank, do their friends then buy the virtual tank?" Williams said in an
00:55 interview with Marketplace. "If they play more, do their friends play more?" And so
00:59 we could find who the influences are in their systems. These virtual worlds offer
01:05 educational opportunities and some students make money for tuition by
01:09 streaming themselves playing video games, indicating that gaming has become a
01:14 source of financial knowledge for younger generations. So the next time
01:18 someone tells you you're wasting your time, you can tell them that the real
01:22 in-game currency is knowledge.
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