Since Mobley began playing RuneScape in the early 90s

Now 26 years old, Mobley has a different view of the game. "I don't consider it any longer a virtual space," he told me. To him, it's more of a "number emulator," which is similar to the virtual version of RuneScape gold roulette. A rise in the amount of in-game currency is an infusion of dopamine.

Since Mobley began playing RuneScape in the early 90s the black market has been bubbling up beneath the game's economy. In the land of Gielinor there is a possibility for players to trade items like mithril longswords, yak-hide armor, herbs gathered from herbiboars. They also have gold, which is the in-game currency. In time, players began exchanging gold in the game for actual dollars, a process referred to as real-world trading. Jagex, the game's developer, prohibits these exchanges.

Initially, trading took place informally. "You might purchase some gold from a friend you met at or at school." Jacob Reed, one of the most popular creators of YouTube videos about RuneScape who goes by the name of Crumb, wrote in an email to me. The demand for gold was higher than supply and players began to become full-time gold farmers or those who generate an in-game currency that they can sell to real-world money.

Internet-age miners have always been part of hugely multiplayer games, or MMOs that included Ultima Online and cheap RS gold World of Warcraft. They also worked in various text-based virtual universes, said Julian Dibbell, now a technology transactions lawyer who wrote about virtual economies in his journalistic work.