Purchases of in-game virtual goods in digital environments have been growing rapidly. with the rise of social networks like facebook, socially-oriented online games have become a staple activity for users in these communities. revenue models built arround the selling of these non-physical items to casual players are projected to become increasingly dominant. we present a framework to explore the factorsthat motivate the buying of virtual goods by reviewing the literature on purchase behaviors in the massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) domains. we share pleliminary result based on data collection in pet society, a popular social games in facebook, and discuss findings related to users demographic profiles, play frequency, and virtual goods purchasing patterns and motivations.