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Virtual Island Sells For $26,500
Aziphirael writes "The MMORPG Project Entropia has just announced that its first treasure island sale via Auction has gone for a grand total of US$26,500. Project Entropia's unique selling point is the ability to convert real money into ingame cash and vice versa. The owner is Zachurm "Deathifier" Emegen who intends to develop the island into a place for the community." From the article: "A large island off a newly discovered continent surrounded by deep creature infested waters. The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property, an old volcano with rumors of fierce creatures within, the outback is overrun with mutants, and an area with a high concentration of robotic miners guarded by heavily armed assault robots indicates interesting mining opportunities."
...to each, his own wishes. On the bright side, this is only a sale of disposition rights to creative property. Much like what we do when we buy music.
I have to admit, though. The price was VERY steep.
Since nobody bothers to RTFA anymore:
The first ever virtual Treasure Island is for sale in Project Entropia, a Massive Multi-Player Online Universe with a real cash economy. This extremely desirable piece of real estate promises to make the highest bidder very rich and very influential within the rapidly growing Project Entropia universe.
So the reason it might be worth paying 26k for this virtual island is that there is a real cash economy in the "game" - in other words, presumably the in-game resources he can extract from his island can presumably be sold or utilized to make items in the game that can be exchanged for real US dollars. So it's a virtual investment, but one that has potential real-world payoff.
I assume the idea is that the new owner can reap real usd profit from subdivision, mining and taxation. what does the irs think about this? foreign income? does the world have an offshore bank? good lord. the devlopers seem to have invented a money printing press...
WTF? My initial reaction: "All I have got to say is that somebody is spending waaaaaay too much time playing games if they are willing to pony up that kind of cash for a virtual island". Then I realized (as I am browsing Slashdot wasting my time) that perhaps his person has plans to be a virtual developer which, while still the type of person associated with developing (build! build! build!) is developing and making money in a virtual world without the real world effects on the environment or populace that "real" developers have. Ah, I say go for it. We all gotta make money somehow, but I feel better telling my grandma I am a scientist as opposed to a make believe developer for a game. He will likely make more money than me anyway.
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For all you guys making fun of this guy, it's possible he expects to make money off it. If he manages to sell resources and land from the island, he could then exchange his profits for US dollars.
According to the article, he will be allowed to sell plots of land on the island worth around $30,000.
He may not be as much of a dolt as you think.
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He could end up making us look like the fools.
It seems to me that this "Project: Entropia" isn't really a game, but instead nothing more than a place for rich pseudo-gamers to show off. In a game, you get ahead through intelligence and talent, both physical and mental, not by how much of your pocketbook you have to spare.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Doesn't this raise a whole host of legal issues? What if the server crashes, can they be sued for neglect since they destroyed someone's property? IIRC other MMORPGs went out of their way to point out that their ingame items have no value and that buying them IRL is not allowed. Not that it isn't common anyway, but do game companies really want to get into property disputes?
English is easier said than done.
We've seen this before, and it usually ends up with quite a lot of people losing not only virtual but real money as well. Heck even with payment systems we've seen that (paypal).
Also, due to the addictive nature of MMORPG's (think everquest), I feel there should be some limmit as to how much a game can affect you in real life, especially involving finances. In the real world you've got all sorts of financial protection (from, for example, pyramid schemes), but in virtual games you've got pretty much no protection whatsoever.
In real life, if you create a playground for kids, and someone gets hurt, you get sued and lose everything you own. See the war in skatepark culture.
The only recourse for people to meet is online games. Things in this new reality is really worth cash. The problem is, people haven't really made stuff *rare* and *desirable* yet in a game with a 20+ year long run. You'll see stuff going for 25 grand *all the time* once game designers get some skills. Its amazing with programmer and artist skills that game designers are still hacks. It really sickens me since I'm good at game design and can't get a job.
God spoke to me.
Some people use this easily gained money to donate to the poor. Its a fun game. Go beat up a few dragons, sell magic swords, then feed some starving kids and build their infrastructure.
God spoke to me.
I'll start to take this seriously when we see a headline that says, "Virtual Island Owner Cashes Out Virtual Holdings for a Real Dollar Profit."
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
What may cause that, you wonder? Our banker character's holdings were zeroed out. That would be $4000 USD, gone. Explanation? Our banker had bought an item (third-hand) from someone who had crafted an item which was fake, somehow. Members of our society were pulling down about $400 a month playing this game. Enough to pay rent to Mom and Dad, I suppose. Sad, pathetic, and lonely in so many ways that matter, but true enough.
One of our businesses was banking. We would trade in-game money for real money, back when PayPal was trustworthy. The makers of PE had something like 10% transaction fees, we charged a much more competitive rate, and managed perhaps 20-30% of the real money going into the game, early on.
As a direct result of this game, I read most of a field guide for geology, learned how to write some pretty solid Active Server Pages, and had some noteworthy personal growth.