One of the biggest economic collapses in the past 45 years outside of a OSRS gold, many in Venezuela have turned toward video games as a means for survival and potential relocation. It's not just about sitting on a couch in front of the screen. It can mean movement. Herbiboar hunting in RuneScape can provide the money for today's meals and also the future of tomorrow's to Colombia or Chile nations where Marinez has family.

Over the Caribbean Sea in Atlanta, almost 2,000 miles away from Marinez, lives Bryan Mobley. As a teen playing RuneScape for hours and hours, he informed me in a phone call. "It was fun. It was a means to not do homework, or anything like that," he said.

A mere 26 years old, Mobley thinks differently about the game. "I do not see it as an online world anymore," he told me. According to him, it's a "number simulation," something akin to virtual roulette. An increase in the quantity of currency that is in-game is an injection of dopamine.

Since Mobley started playing RuneScape in the aughts there was a black market that had emerged beneath the game's economy. In the realm of Gielinor the players can trade things like mithril's longswords, yak-hid armor, plants harvested from herbiboars and gold, the in-game currency. Eventually, players began exchanging gold in the game for real dollars, a process referred to as real-world trade. Jagex the game's developer restricts exchanges like this.

Initially, real-time trading occurred informally. "You may buy gold from a person you know at the school." Jacob Reed, an acclaimed creator of YouTube videos about RuneScape who goes by Buy RuneScape gold wrote through an email that I received. Then, demand for gold exceeded supply and some players became full-time gold farmers or players who create on-game currency and sell it for real-world currency.