Final Fantasy. The name has echoed through gamers’ collective imagination for more than 30 years. Born in the smoky rooms of 1980s Japan, the legendary saga has outlived eras and even its own creators, adapting to every technological revolution. 47 games, 15 films and series, 180M copies sold. Behind those dizzying numbers lies a modern mythology with many faces, a pantheon of improbable heroes and fantastical creatures you would recognise anywhere.

Its fourteenth instalment could have been just another chapter. At first, it was a catastrophe. Rushed out in 2010, the game collapsed under the weight of its own ambitions. Archaic interface, wobbly mechanics, servers on their last legs: an industrial disaster. Square Enix, in an unprecedented move, decided to wipe the slate clean. For two years, a team worked in the shadows under Naoki Yoshida, a producer who never hid his contempt for what came before him. In 2013, with perfect symbolism, A Realm Reborn rose from the ashes, a rebirth mirroring its own storyline, in which an apocalypse wipes out the world so it can be rebuilt.

Ten years on, Eorzea is home to 25M souls. Doctors, taxi drivers, students, teachers, the unemployed. All turned warriors, mages or crafters in this second life. People meet up there after work, forge friendships, sometimes romances. They get married in strange but sincere ceremonies, and the tears in front of the screen are very real.

Because this parallel civilisation has its laws, its currency, its economy. Gil flows non-stop, feeding marketplaces where everything is bought, sold and speculated on. Prices move with supply and demand. Player cartels lock down certain sectors, others live off arbitrage, buying here to sell over there. A virtual economy that mirrors ours, with its inflation mechanics, its invisible taxes, its bubbles and its crashes.

Into this already complex world, Square Enix introduced in 2013 something that would upend its social dynamics: land ownership. The announcement was greeted as a revolution.