The new gold rush is in the virtual hills of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). A robust market in virtual items and character accounts forms around every popular online game, and people pay real money for in-game goods. This market has turned into a big business over the last few years for entrepreneurs who make substantial incomes and for gamers who bring in extra incomes.

Such virtual goods have been dubbed unreal estate, and similar to real estate, the market provides many ways for people to profit. The possibilities range from a single player unloading an extra game item for some quick cash to a full-time broker who bargain hunts for accounts to sell again at a higher price.

Nearly all MMORPGs operate with in-game currencies that players need to function in the game economies, and these currencies are among the most popular items in the online game market. People pay real money to gain in-game currency so they can buy important game items right away instead of slowly earning the in-game currency through hours of play. Entire businesses on the internet revolve around the currency market. Many of them will cater to a specific game, but there exist larger online stores that cover a lot of the market. For example, www.mysupersales.com online since January 2001 buys and sells currency from many of the popular online games such as EVE Online, EverQuest II, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot and many others.

The MySuperSales site also provides a big market venue for the buying and selling of game accounts. A game account contains the character or characters that a player has created, and some of these accounts can fetch prices in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars if they are high level and from a game that is in high demand. Much of this value is based on the time spent to get a character to a high level. Many hours of play are needed to raise a characters level and people gladly trade their money for this time.

People like to buy such accounts so they can enter a game with a powerful character who has many abilities and wealth instead of working up through the game with a fresh character. Also a gaming guild might be in need of a specific type of character with specific powers and possessions, which creates another reason to shop for a game account.

Online game accounts and items are also auctioned continuously at eBay. Browsing the listings for internet games and accounts on any given day will reveal the extent of the market activity and the array of available goods. Another site that focuses entirely on the online game trade is www.playerauctions.com where people can offer their unreal estate to bidders. An excellent resource for researching this business is the guidebook Gaming Pays at www.gamingpays.com that focuses exclusively on the online game market.

Entrepreneurial gamers profit from the various opportunities that sprout from the online game market. Usually they do best by filling a niche in the market so they can focus their game play on, for example, acquiring gold to sell on the World of Warcraft market. Other business gamers specialize in brokering game accounts for specific games or writing and selling gaming guides because there is a big information market as well.