Is World of Warcraft the Biggest Company?
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Determining what actually is the world's largest company is far from an exact science. Do you measure it by annual revenue, in which case it's ExxonMobil, which pulled in about $400 billion in 2007? Perhaps counting number of employees makes more sense, in which case it's Wal-Mart, which has 1.7 million blue-vested souls on its books. Maybe market capitalization, a measure of the public opinion of the value of a company, is what matters most, in which case it's probably ExxonMobil again.
No matter how you slice it, most of the same names come up time and again -- a cabal of the world's most powerful private economic entities. They include petroleum giants like BP, Shell and ExxonMobil and manufacturing powerhouses like Toyota and General Electric. Some, like HSBC and Citifinancial, are fiscal giants; others, like Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, have fingers in all kinds of pies. One thing's true of them all, however: none have very much in common with World of Warcraft, or its creator, Blizzard Entertainment.
Or do they? You may not be able to buy shares in your Warcraft server, but you can certainly invest in its future. Even continuing to play on a particular server is in a sense an expression of confidence. Unsuccessful online games, like floundering companies, are bound to have the plug pulled on them at some point. As you play, your character accumulates value via experience points, equipment, currency and commodities. What do you get if you total that value across the game's whole population?
