Slashdot Mirror
Entrepreneur Makes Millions Selling Virtual Land
kkleiner writes "How much would you pay for a piece of imaginary real estate? Anshe Chung has made millions renting it. Today, Anshe Chung Studios has 80+ employees managing thousands of rental properties, helping design new 3D virtual chat rooms, and making tons of money on virtual to real currency exchanges. Anshe was the first person whose virtual property exceeded a real world value of 1 million dollars, and Anshe Chung Studios is perhaps the single largest third party developer of virtual property ever."
Do two scams cancel each other out?
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
A new paradiem for the declining economy.
When I was younger, we called it castles in the sky.
Hey look, these are your VERY OWN 1's and 0's! We are taking painstaking measures to make sure that absolutely NOBODY ELSE has this same arrangement of 1's and 0's. Sure, we could randomly generate them and then check them by md5 sum against all other files in our database, but NO, we design them JUST FOR YOU!
Hurry now and we'll throw in not just one set of 1's and 0's, but we'll sell it at HALF PRICE! That's right call now and only pay $1999.99, that's 50% off the normal price of 3999.98!
But wait, there's MORE.
Call within the next TEN MINUTES and we'll give you not just one set of 1's and 0's, but TWO sets for the same price! That's only 999.995 EACH! Yes, that's 75% off each set of 1's and 0's!
They are virtually PRICELESS!
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I've never been into Second Life, or World of Warcraft, or any of those online games that've been known for people using real money to buy pretend stuff in the game - but, on an individual level, it's never bothered me. I figure it's those folk's money, so they can spend it however they want... just like I might buy a decent bottle of Scotch.
But somehow, in the aggregate, this bothers me. I can't really put my finger on why, exactly; but it just seems like a sign our society is going down the toilet (or something equally dire). It's probably just because I'm older than most of these people, I suppose.
#DeleteChrome
make him a Virtual Millionaire?
It's a "she", actually.
#DeleteChrome
It is that simple. A piece of linen cloth with colorful specks arranged in a certain pattern is called a painting, and if it happens that someone named Gaugin or Degas left those specs on the linen it's worth millions. Why? It's just some pigments on linen.
You don't pay for the pigments and not for the linen. You pay for the arrangement. Likewise, you pay for the arrangement of those 0s and 1s.
Is it worth that? If you ask me, no. But for some people it seems to be, and as long as there are people willing to pay real money for certain arrangements of pigments or pixels, there will be a market for them.
Hell, some people pay me to tell them how to get their IT infrastructure secure. I don't even give them pixels or pigments, I only give them information without a carrier medium (ok, not entirely true, it's most of the time also encoded in 0s and 1s). But by the logic expressed in most other postings here, I shouldn't even get a dime for what I'm doing, yet there are people willing to pay thousands of dollars per day. Because they want it, because they're willing to pay for it, and because I'm willing to sell that information.
Welcome to the market economy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe I'm strange, but I spend my days managing websites. Which are essentially virtual newspapers / magazines/ posters/ directories/ whatever. So what if it is a online designed 3d room, its just a online facility people pay for.
I feel a strange separation to my work, because I know in 1000 years from now, no one will ever no I was alive or a person. There won't be an antiques roadshow describing how wonderful/shit my work was, my work wont exist it will be simply gone. Ancient potters, blacksmiths, artist, or architects don't have this problem, part of their work can survive. Something physical something real.
I would love to listen to the future documentaries describing how "clever" we are with our "Internet" and "condoms" and our "iPads". But how simple we were for not realising that we should really have a centralised computer attached to our brains, that can simply kill all the sperm in a man's body before we have sex, by analysing our thoughts and electro-shocking our testicles.
I'm kinda sad that I wont see the future.
It sounds like Anshe is trying to regain some spotlight here. It never claims that she's actually "made" millions, just that she's got holdings of "millions of dollars worth of online real estate". That's a completely different thing, and if she were to liquidate, I doubt she would walk out with 7 figures.
This is just the singularity hub going along with nearly 10-year-old "wow, people can like own 'virtual property' on teh intarwebz!" typical Second Life garbage hype, I'm guessing at her behest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RedLyae4b2s&t=28
Anyone remember this?
Don't forget about the taxes you now owe on this windfall. Uncle Sam (or whichever government) worked very hard to earn his share of your luck. I figure you owe him at least half.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
She does have 80 employee, even if they were all part time minimum wage student, I would expect that she must be pulling in a fair amount for personnal income.
Do that for a few years and she could easily have 7 figures in real world money when this is all over.
don't forget the "in China" bit.
I have a friend who has 250 employees in a coffee cup factory and their collective salaries come to less than mine monthly.
Numbers are meaningless when you have 1.3 billion half starved peasants.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
There's nothing particularly earth shattering here. They create art in the form of private islands and then rent said art for profit. This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. They just make a decent chunk of money doing it.
I don't understand any of this, can anybody explain it to me in terms that are easy to understand please? I literally do not understand what any of this is. Like in a few sentences: what the hell?
I mean I commend them for making money and building businesses with this stuff, I just don't understand why anybody pays real money for this, what does it do for them and how does this translate into real life (except for the customers becoming poorer of-course)?
Basically I now find myself at this point in life when I can legitimately say about something that I am looking at: I am too old for this shit.
You can't handle the truth.
People pay anywhere from $5 to $50 for 1s and 0s all the time. Every time a video game is purchased you pay for 1s and 0s. How is this any different? You pay membership dues to various organizations, and once you stop paying you don't take anything with you except the memories. If you have ever paid $100 to go to a Broadway musical, you paid for something you can't touch or own. This is not any different than any other thing you pay money for that you don't get to keep. It's not really that difficult to understand is it? People pay money for things they find valuable. If someone wants to buy virtual property then great. That means somebody got paid and the economy continues. They aren't being extorted or coerced they bought it of their own free will. Silly humans.
Anshe Chung was big back when it looked like Second Life might take off. It is not news that he/she has made a lot of money on Second Life. There was even an article here on slashdot two or three years ago. Anshe Chung made a lot of money by recognizing the possibilities early, just before the buzz hit about Second Life. Since Second Life has passed its apogee, Anshe Chung has managed to continue making money by being one of the dominant players in Second Life business (as a result of having gotten there first).
For those who don't understand Second Life, there are a lot of people who believe that there is a business use for virtual worlds. Second Life became big because it was the first virtual world that looked like it had put all of the peices together. Unfortunately (for Linden Labs and those who think virtual worlds are the future), no one has figured out how to do real world business in a virtual world. Fortunately for Second Life content developers (like Anshe Chung), there are a lot of people who are willing to spend a fair amount of money on their entertainment. Today, Second Life is a visual chat room.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Really, this article is years behind. Anshe Chung hasn't been relevant in the pantheon of virtual land barons for ages.
Well, and still, being well off as you describe yourself, you have the need to brag about 'how much are you worth', and have to post as AC .... sad.
An SL "job" pays pennies per hour.
or as the Chinese call it, a "living wage."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I thought this was old news, and that the millions she made were revealed to mostly be through "virtual prostitution" of sorts?
And that when some folks found out about her having an interview within Second Life, they hilariously griefed her.
Except now with sculpt prims, mesh, shadows, and the new 64m limit they can be much nicer looking penises.
I was there, arrived late so I didn't see the start of the griefing. The event hosts were stupid and unprepared, those kinds of attacks are easily stopped.
This was news like 6 years ago, the real news is that second life has not caved in on itself in a cestpool of land sharks like the one mentioned in the article getting you to "rent" space on a plot and then bans you from it a week later, furries sex slave, and fucking retard noobies trying to cyber fuck every square inch of the place while advertising a "bank" scheme.
yea thats a problem on SL, when she did it so did any fuckbrain with an internet connection, now the place is infested with zombies gaming the system all day. and not all from china there are many stupid people who will let their 500 watt computer burn for 2 real dollars worth of tokens "for free" its pathetic
they are Chinese, so just a shade cheaper than Oompa Loompas, but yet they have the ability to even make candy total shit
Congratulations, sir or madam.
You have nearly won the contest for who can be the largest drain on our society.
I do hope you are proud of your achievement, the world is a better place because of you.
Please kill yourself now.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
In all fairness, I got pretty bad on MMO's too for a while. WoW had to actually ban chat for new users because they were getting so many Chinese bots wanting to tell everyone on their server about a "Great deal I've heard about!" I think if I were starting a MMO or online world today, I would be very tempted to just ban all Asian IP addresses en masse (though they would probably just find a way to spoof U.S. ones).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Is this really any different than people throwing hundreds of dollars at the latest device from Apple? Look at the people who replace a perfectly good device with one that's newer but offers little additional functionality.
I'd argue that the motivation driving people to buy the latest gadget is identical to the motivation behind someone buying a piece of virtual property. It's pure emotion; the happiness of unwrapping and enjoying something new.
There are a lot of people in the real world making a ton of money on stuff people don't actually need. And I'm not just talking about electronics. Alcohol, drugs, fancy clothing, luxury cars, junk food... We can get into debates about paying for something intangible, but the motivation is the same: pleasure.
I note the article doesn't say what kind of employees she has. Lots of SL "business people" have "employees" who get paid maybe 500L per hour (if they're high-paid) to do whatever work they're supposed to do. That's the equivalent of around 2 bucks an hour, and they most certainly do not get benefits. Saying "I have 80 employees!" sounds a lot more impressive than "I found 80 idiots willing to do a lot of work for me for significantly less than I'd have to pay if I outsourced to Pakistan." Hell when I was exploring around on SL I saw people "camping" for something like 20L per hour because they didn't want to buy any of the in-game currency. They didn't realize that you spend more than 20L per hour for the electricity to run your computer, and so they were actually losing money by wasting time with the camping crap. And this was a very popular activity, with many thousands of people doing it. With such a vast resource of dumb people who can't do basic math, it's not hard to get 80 employees without spending any money.
As far as having virtual land holdings worth millions - she doesn't own anything. She rents server space, and then re-rents it to other people. Linden Labs could pull the plug on her tomorrow and then she'd "own" precisely nothing. They've done it before - in fact it was a lawsuit over them doing that that made me go look at SL in the first place to see what the hell the fuss was about that could make people sue in RL over a virtual chat system.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
Maybe you could pay him to teach you how to format comments properly.
Cool post bro, highfive \o
Yeah, but there's still the occupational hazard of being first against the wall when the revolution comes.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Their renting fucking entropy!
Speaking of entropy...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The way to think of Second Life is a distributed game company. Most games, the code, the game servers, and the game content are all done by one company. In Second Life the servers are run by the host company (Linden Research Inc.) The code is open source for the "Viewer" (the program you download and run to play Second Life). A majority of users actually run alternate versions of the Viewer made third parties, that have better features than the official one. And lastly, 99% of the content is made by a subset of the users themselves. As a form of entertainment, it has staying power among the creative "do it yourself" crowd. If you want your game handed to you all pre-made and not have to do anything but play, it's not for you.
The subject of the story, Ailin Graef, made her major start by providing nicer virtual land than was being offered by the owners of Second Life. People liked it, and were willing to pay for it. Like any other entertainment, such as Netflix, or reading Science Fiction novels, it needs no justification. If you find it entertaining, great, if not, find something else to do. I have not made as much as Ailin, but I have made a good amount providing 3D entertainment - enough to buy two new computers...ten times over, and that's doing it as a hobby from home, mostly in Second Life. I'm grateful people found what I did enjoyable, and I had fun creating it. Making stuff is another form of entertainment, for some people.
There is no scam or ripoff here. You can play Second Life entirely free, forever. But about half the users spend some real money each month to get something made by someone else. Just like buying the latest first person shooter game, or a movie ticket, it's an entertainment expense.
I would so laugh if a real estate scam happened to happen on someone that used a scammed visa card to pay with....both would negate the other, no?