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A Real Living With Virtual Goods

Posted by michael on from the pulling-one-over-on-the-wife dept.

RussHart writes "The BBC is reporting on a Julian Dibbell who has quit his day job to sell items from Ultima Online in the real world, hopefully making a living on which to support his wife & daughter."

8 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Older article from someone doing this by jeroenb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    was on K5 a while ago, it's basically a HOWTO.

  2. I played, I sold, I quit by MasterSLATE · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I played UO back in the day (around 2000) and I managed to sell my account for about $500 (US dollars).

    Personally, I can't understand how someone can actually quit their job to sell game items. To me, it's just not enough money for the work that must be done. What if the game goes under? Here's a whatever year old man with no job. Good luck getting a job, considering the market. What's he gunna do, move on to another game?

    --

    [sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
  3. Re:Problem with it is ... by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Bet you anything he works longer hours than he did at his 'real job' to make anywhere near as much money.
    I wouldn't be so sure. When I was playing UO actively (I sold my accounts in July 2002, only to open a new one earlier this year, though I haven't logged in for months) there was already a buzzing business surrounding ingame items. At the time, the exchange was generally something like:

    1) Buy 10 million gold on eBay for ~$100
    2) Go to uo.tradespot.net and sell it as 10 lots of 1 million gold at $15 a pop
    3) !!!Profit!!!

    Or:

    1) Buy 10 million gold on eBay for ~$100
    2) Go to uo.tradespot.net and buy up tens or hundreds of thousands of pieces of cut leather with the gold you got from eBay,
    3) Sell the cut leather in lots of 60,000 on eBay
    4) !!!Profit!!!

    Often the deals wouldn't involve eBay, you'd just arrange 3 or 4 in-game bulk trades at bargain prices for some item, and then resell smaller quantities of that item right back on Tradespot for a higher price.

    The people who are really making money from UO aren't the ones sitting around mining all day. They're the ones who spend a few hours making smart trades. It's sort of like the stock market; the guys working the factory are making minimum wage, but people trading that company's stock are the ones making real money.

    Oh, and blockquoth the article,
    "It has more than 225,000 active players, who spend up to 20 hours per week in Britannia."
    Geez, I used to spend 10 or more hours a day playing UO. I guess that qualifies me as a reformed addict...
    --
    "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
  4. Re:Problem with it is ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nope, he's a trader. He doesn't play the
    game, but instead buys accounts from teens
    who get bored with characters, and pieces
    out the account items. He makes back 3x
    what he pays for the account.

    So no, he's not spending 24x7 slaying
    monsters to build up an inventory.

  5. Re:Working at home by Catharz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have a friend who spent a year playing EQ day after day. He racked up over 100 days of playing time during that year.

    Did he miss out on friends, family, etc? Not to any great extent.

    Was he lonely? Definitely not.

    You end up creating some great friendships out of games like this. I've been half way around the world and visited people I've known from EQ. My friend eventually gave up EQ and moved from Austraila to the US where he's now happily married to one of the people he spent much of that time playing with.

    At the time he quit EQ, his character was one of the most uber necros on the Tunare server but worth at most $1500 USD at that time.

    You can certainly make money from these games, and you won't necessarily become a lonely hermit while doing it. But your social life will suffer and it will take a lot of work to make the same money.

    --
    To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
  6. Woah, Hey now. by Jason+Scott · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This makes it sound like Julian Dibbell isn't what he is, a hack writer who mines the online communities he can find for grist. His article on MUDs (which he later expanded into a book was a complete smear job, a non-insightful overview of the MUD world intended to turn a small little molehill into enough of a mountain to get his paycheck. He writes self-indulgent overviews of his online comings and goings, each one crafted as if he has expertly stumbled into a forbidden cave of insight and perspective. No doubt this current project is the most recent seed for whatever next article or tome he will lure a credulous publisher into foisting on us. Take a pass, friends.

  7. Re:Problem with it is ... by evslin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Also true - but I can guarantee you that if you do something for 60 hours a week you're going to get sick of it, regardless of what it is. Don't forget in addition to having to play the game to generate these items, he has to spend time outside of the game arranging transfers, setting up auctions, etc. He's also got something else to consider: If he sells too much (or if he has competition) the market could get saturated to the point of him not being able to sell anything else - can he afford to live without income until things get better?

  8. Child labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "The producers are the teenage kids that have a lot of time on their hands but no money so they go out and hunt and loot and craft and produce the stuff that I am buying and selling," he says

    So isn't he (amongst others) using child labor? How ingenious to make work look like play.

    A joke, of course, but the thought of having UO sweatshops where kids can play UO as long as they give the owner a share of the loot, is not far. :-)