A new article in The Economist runs down the promising business and entertainment developments in the virtual worlds space -- nothing we've not heard before, such as the Serious Games Institute's virtual learning program, Cisco's internal business development work, and the rise of virtual goods as a viable business model.

The article also runs down some of the challenges we know face virtual worlds today -- disputes surrounding the economics of virtual goods sale and trade, and the vulnerability of such commerce to scammers, and conflicts over unwanted content, like sex tools in Second Life. But the article reveals something interesting about how Sony Online Entertainment decided to regulate undesirable user behavior by decriminalizing it:

"That is the approach taken by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), the company that runs “EverQuest II”, a fantasy world of dragons and busty blondes. It found that some 30-50% of customer-service calls concerned scams relating to real-world trade in virtual items. So it divided the game world in two and made trading legal in one part but not the other; players can choose which to play in. As a result, says Greg Short of SOE, the share of calls relating to scams is now less than 10%."

Still, the Economist points out that the virtual worlds medium is struggling with these same issues -- appropriate content, taxation, crime -- as any new media, like the internet, online auctions and others have confronted in the past. And moreover, the incidences of negative issues are comparatively few, given what they could be.

[Via The Economist]