How Modern Gaming reflects Economic Hierarchy

     The Internet with all its nuances is still considered to be one of the last bastions of equality. While the so called real world is replete with intricate stratifications designed for the rich and by the rich;the internet is fairly egalitarian... or so we thought.
     The freemium model of games these days offer a simplified analogy for the transcendence of the economic principles of the real world into this subculture. Why invest hours of gaming into honing your skills when it can do easily be thwarted by purchasing an upgrade costing not more than two large pizzas.
     Your purchases can jack up your capabilities to mindnumbing heights, well beyond the punching area of the average gamer. Your opponent could be the Genghis Khan of gaming but when you call in the artillery, it's literally game over for the little guy.
     Economists have been employing various tools and methodology to determine how the affluence of the 1% are protected and additionally perpetuated. While the economists are boggled down by the vastness of the real world, the comparitively smaller gaming community offers an isolated and a  homogenous pool of participants of target ages who reflect modern society.
     This subculture even reflects the unscrupulous aspect of economics where wealth is gained by ill-gotten means. Most games of the freemium flavor also come with leaderboards which would have, in a utopic world, augured the prestige of the most skilled players of the week/month etc.
     As we all know now by experience, wherever there is ranking, there will be cheaters trying to get ahead by means other than merit. Hackers and by extension also "script kiddies" deliberately alter the game's code to bypass the need to pay actual money to buy those mega upgrades.
     Most games with leaderboards offer some prize for the winners in an attempt to generate gamer interest. The top ranks of almost all leaderboards are now dominated by those who paid and those who cheated the system. This gaming 1% nets in the major portion of the prizes offered while the average gamer seethes in a manner reflective of the Marxian proletariat.
     So, it becomes evidently reflective of our current society where the major proceeds of our economic toil are harvested by a few and there is not much one can do about that.