Social Gold | Virtual Currency. Real Commerce.

Once upon a time, this country ran on an agrarian economy – people grew, raised and mined things, then sold them. That gave way to an industrial economy, in which manufactured goods dominated. Over the last half-century we’ve had a service-based economy, hinging on the personalization of products.

Now, though, we’ve shifted again – or so says Joseph Pine in his book, “The Experience Economy.”

As the title suggests, Pine says that what people want now is experiences – moments that surround them and make them feel good. It’s why people go to Disneyland or Las Vegas for staged experiences, or online for experiences of a different type. People are essentially buying time, plus the feeling that a place or a company can give them during that time.

Take coffee, said Pine during his talk at the TED conference in Los Angeles in early 2009. Beans can be purchased for pennies; slightly more if someone goes through the effort of roasting them for you. Places like the corner diner that brew it can raise the price to a dollar or so per cup.

So how can a place like Starbucks get away with $4 lattes?

It’s because they’re giving you an experience every time you walk in the door. You get the decor and the clientele — whatever it is that makes it a uniquely Starbucks experience.

This is the driving force behind social gaming. Outsiders express disbelief when they hear about people spending real money for virtual goods and services (a gun in Mafia Wars, a tractor in Barn Buddy), but they don’t realize is that it’s not the goods themselves that people covet, it’s the experience that those goods will help them have online. The goods – and the virtual currency with which they buy them – merely enable that experience, that entertainment.

These same outsiders call these games escapism, and maybe they are – but they’re still authentic experiences. Gamers sign up for specific reasons; either their conditions are met or they move on to a different game.

And authenticity, Pine told the TED audience, “is becoming the new consumer sensibility – the buying criteria by which consumers are choosing who they are going to buy from, and what they’re going to buy.”

It only makes sense: The more authentic the experience – in the case of social gaming, the more immersion a game can provide – the more likely that people with stick with it, and subsequently spend money there. This experience is foremost the core element to building your virtual economy.

Social Gold helps you convey an authentic social-gaming experience, by keeping players within your game’s parameters to complete transactions (such as purchasing virtual currency for that online gun or tractor) instead of sending them into a new window, which brings them entirely out of the experience they’re seeking, then forcing them to re-load their game upon returning.

It’s a mechanism for users to plug in real money, bringing in revenue for you. And when it comes to real money, you must ensure that you make the user’s transactional experience as smooth and quick as possible. This is where Social Gold can help – enabling you to bring money in, securely, safely and with ease, all within the game experience.

After all, whether it’s developers or gamers, we’re in this business to help people get the kind of experience they’re looking for.