Wikipedia is normally a complete reference, so there’s a good chance that the answer to this question may be ‘no’:
Is there a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) that’s about a virtual stock market, or any kind of investment market?
I checked over at this Wikipedia list [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MMORPGs ] and couldn’t find one. The closest match was one game called “Diaspora,” which allowed for virtual merchanting.
There was an online, text based rpg called Lost Power City which had a thriving black market for quite a while that made the game much more interesting to play. Alas, the creator eventually capped various things and restarted everyone’s money to make the game more fair, so I wouldn’t really suggest it for study.
As for MMORPG’s, I haven’t played enough to give an answer, I’m afraid 
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Thanks. I’ve been looking around elsewhere, but haven’t found any that aren’t attached to Second Life.
It seems odd that there aren’t. There have been so many academic experiments along this line, I would think that there’d be several economics-department apps that could be converted into that kind of game.
Like EVE Online?
Here’s a bizarre paragraph from the wiki about Eve Online:
From a technical point of view, the economy in Eve is known as an open economy, that is there is no fixed amount of money or materials in the universe. CCP did attempt to implement a closed economy (that is an economy where there is a fixed amount of currency and therefore materials) early on in the game’s existence; however, it proved too difficult to balance the effects of new players entering the game with the capabilities of older players able to earn more ISK or obtain more materials. The current Open economy is automatically balanced by introducing extra materials in underpopulated areas to encourage an even spread of players.[24]
A fixed amount of currency and therefore materials? Why should that follow?
For years I played an RPG called Asheron’s Call. The point of the game was to level up your character, build guilds, quest, control land, build up a suit of armor, weapons, buy a home, mansion, or villa, ect. The game developed a massive economy using a currency called a pyreal. Items were valued in pyreals and it worked great. The value of the items became so high that people started selling the virtual items on Ebay. At the games peak a player sold his account on ebay (which had a high level character and full suit of armor) for $7,000 Dollars.
The point being that the designers of the game gave the players a currency, and the ability to find, and exchange goods and the players created the economy. It was an amazing experience to be a part of it. You learned how to build wealth and survive like you would have to in the real world.
More along the lines of a market-driven prediction game, only one that uses fictional companies and is detached from real events. You couid call what I’m asking about a “fantasy prediction game.”