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Virtual Property Investor Recoups Investment
afaik_ianal writes "Remember that guy who bought a virtual island in "Project Entropia" for £13,700? Well BBC is reporting that that he has managed to make his money back in under a year. According to the article, 'He made money by selling land to build virtual homes as well as taxing other gamers to hunt or mine on the island.'"
Spending big money does seem silly, but spending a few bucks here and there for a virtual subdivision is perhaps not (eg. a $20 gift to that game-nut pal). What this guy has done is create a service whereby he can onsell his asset at a low price point. Not really that stupid after all.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Now they can create another virtual island that's even sweeter and sell it for even more money.
copy virtual_island1 virtual_island2
print money
Not a bad deal for the island-buyer either, as long as they've determined the risks, ie. the game's subscriber base withering away.
So this guy's time and effort are worthless, then? That's not to mention what else he could have done with that money (money market account, CD, etc.).
I'd like to see abundance modeled into more game worlds. I mean there's no good reason (other than familiarity) for virtual realestate to be kept artificially scarce in a game where "space" isn't real -- your 10,000 acre slice of paradise could exist anywhere with multiple doorways between other and a shifting "shared map". Only requires a slight adjustment in thinking to eliminate the old construct.
At least in SecondLife you can dupe your objects as much as you want (within reason) and even assign to them a GPL-ish license. The realestate situation is a bit more artificially limited though.
Power to the Peaceful
William Gibson noted, "cyberspace is where the bank keeps your money." If one's wealth itself is essentially just bits and consensus, why not the real estate?
Because you're only a floating point error away from being a billionaire.
Many have scoffed that this individual paid good money for nothing tangible, and then sold it on to others who also got nothing tangible. This is neither innovative nor new. The currency or futures/options trading markets have been doing this for years. The stock exchange companies even make a cut of each trade---a profit from the intangible profits made from trading virtual or as-yet-non-existant goods.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Not so. The domain name space is stricly limited. But there is an unlimited supply of virtual reality. Therefore: It's just a pyramid scheme in disguise.
Actually this guy is virtually smart but actually stupid, his buyers are actually stupid and virtually stupid as well. In the virtual world they will be investors but in the actual world they are suckers.
Except that this is completely rigged so that you will almost always lose. There is the occasional win (i.e. earning back your money) but this is compensated by other people's losses so that ultimately, MindArk are the only winners.
The tractor will break down soon. In PE:
You will keep having to buy new, expensive ammo to keep your gun usable. You even need to repair your gun sometimes. You can also buy bombs to mine precious metals. Your bombs will not find enough precious metals to make them worth buying.
(...etc...)