Virtual item trading platform Live Gamer has announced that the company has added virtual economy authority Villi Lehdonvirta to its advisory board. As a member of the board, she will be tasked with helping Live Gamer leverage academic research on virtual economies, player motivations, and virtual item market dynamics to best meet this objective.

Formerly a game developer, Lehdonvirta currently serves as a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), which studies future information technologies and has carried on a multi-disciplinary research effort into virtual economies since 2004. Lehdonvirta’s research focuses on what motivates virtual consumerism and to what extent it can substitute physical forms of consumption in the future.

Live Gamer provides a turnkey solution for MMOG and virtual world operators to enable real money trading of virtual assets. Backed by $24 million in venture funding, the company recently secured an agreement with Sony Online Entertainment to replace SOE's Station Exchange on EverQuest II servers with its web-based Live Gamer Exchange Service. The company's partners also include Acclaim Games and True Games.

Said Live Gamer co-founder and president Andrew Schneider: “We’re honored to have Vili Lehdonvirta, a pioneering thought leader in virtual economics contribute to Live Gamer’s efforts in developing a safe and secure marketplace for the real money trading of virtual assets. Vili’s experience in virtual consumerism adds a new dimension to our knowledge and skill in this area to the benefit of our publisher partners and gamers.”