00:00Every person who's played video games has been told by someone who doesn't that we're wasting
00:05our time. And to every one of those people, we can say that there's plenty to learn from games
00:10and the people who play them. From social influence to economics, systems built into virtual worlds
00:16are based off of and have an effect on real life. Video game researcher Dimitri Williams uses games
00:22as a tool to study real-world behavior, discovering that people often attach similar value and
00:28emotion to in-game money as they do to real-world money, like in Destiny 2, which utilizes virtual
00:35currencies, prompting players to consider their worth and economic implications.
00:40Games like World of Tanks enable researchers to explore how virtual purchases and player
00:46interactions influence each other. We were able to look at when this player buys a virtual tank,
00:52do their friends then buy the virtual tank? Williams said in an interview with Marketplace,
00:56if they play more, do their friends play more? And so we could find who the influences are in their
01:02systems. These virtual worlds offer educational opportunities and some students make money for
01:08tuition by streaming themselves playing video games, indicating that gaming has become a source
01:14of financial knowledge for younger generations. So the next time someone tells you you're wasting your
01:20time, you can tell them that the real in-game currency is knowledge.
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