Multiplayer online role playing games create environments with real consequences: there is value in converting different forms of capital into one another, creating utility beyond the marketplace. When players buy and sell virtual items with real money or create machinima "Warcraft Movies," and when real profit can be made by working in and around the game, new social and cultural relationships emerge - the familiar separation of play from productivity seems to disappear. Social and cultural capital are parlayed back to the marketplace in an endless loop. There are now many game-based economies from which people can draw a real-money profit. World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Second Life are familiar examples. However, developer responses are crucial to the facilitation of capital circulation. This project aims to use qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand responses to these phenomena from game developers and players, and to trace a history of what passes for "play" and what constitutes a "game." Results affirm recent scholarship suggesting synthetic worlds have become host to ordinary human interaction, creating intersections between everyday life and the matrix of fiber optic fantasy lands. Emergent play resists classification as work to the extent a plurality of gaming environments provide viable social, cultural, and market reciprocity.