Plex! Isk! These sound like the noises one makes when hocking water into the sink after rinsing one's mouth to clear up a frantic tooth-brushing session. In actuality, they're a part of the massive in-game economy of the massive multiplayer space simulator, Eve Online. And they've also recently been used as part of a huge virtual donation drive that converted digital currency and goods into real-life cash donations to assist those beleaguered by the recent catastrophic events to hit Japan.

Yes, that's rightin-game currency was used to support a real-world charity drive. But if you're scratching your head to figure out how stacks of virtual cash could possibly benefit a non-gamer, the entire setup is actually quite simple. It's also a fairly rare occurrence in the MMO world.

Within EVE Online is a single currency: ISK. Consider it the digital equivalent to dollars, or the oft-used gold currency or credits that litter most games in the fantasy/sci-fi genre. Players roam around the universe completing quests, trading goods, and killing each other off to generate more in-game cash.

The peculiarity of EVE Online, however, is that one can then use this in-game currency to purchase PLEXotherwise known as a Pilot License Extension. It's basically game time. A seller has to first convert real-life cash into PLEX commodities, which he or she can then sell for any digital price within the game's natural market system. The seller earns virtual cash, the buyer earns more time to play Eve Online, which then allows him or her to generate more digital cash, to purchase more PLEX playing time, to you get the idea.

In regards to EVE's charity drive, players donated both pre-purchased PLEX (2,497 in total) and in-game ISK (totaling 19.6 billion in currency) as part of the game's PLEX for Good initiative. The two-week charity drive netted a total of 2,549 PLEX, which was then reverse-converted by EVE's developer, CCP Games, into real-life cash. Players raised a total of $44,607.50 in US dollars through the campaign (CCP Games absorbed any indirect costs of the charity drive), which will now be sent over to the Red Cross on behalf of the, "EVE Online Community."

"To date, EVE Online players have donated over $108,000 USD (over 6,100 PLEX) to those in need via this program, with almost $155,000 USD being donated by EVE Online players to charity since 2004," reads a post by CCP Fallout, associate community manager at CCP Games.