Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Property Revisited
The response to Wednesday's column on Virtual Property was instantaneous, massive and fascinating.
I wrote in that column that in (based on a San Jose Mercury News story by Ariana Eunjung Cha) that in recent weeks, Ultima Online players have begun going onto eBay spending real $US dollars, sometimes thousands of them, to acquire video-game assets that included characters, houses, castles, gold, armor and magical potions.
This seemed especially significant: eBay, one of the most revolutionary and successful business sites on the Net, was advancing and legitimizing the idea of virtual property.
Middle-class Americans were beginning to pay substantial amounts of cash for the ownership of virtual materials.
Net economics are changing again, and this time it's eBay demonstrating how the Net and the Web are attracting millions of individuals who not only want more choice, selection and freedom in their retailing choices, but who are beginning to value digital property in very new ways.
Some gamers wrote me to jeer that this wasn't new, that gamers had been trading characters and armor for years. Others said this wouldn't change gaming, pointing out correctly that in games like Quake, there are few collected assets to sell. "Shut up," wrote Aladdin, "you don't know squat."
But there is a huge new idea here, and plenty of people grasped it. A lot of gamers had obviously been thinking about the issue long before eBay started auctioning virtual properties.
"?your comments on virtual property are right on," wrote Brandon Reinhart, a Game Programmer at Epic Games Inc. (www.epicgames.com). Reinhart said he'd spent hundreds of dollars on two accounts. "The property means a lot to me..it has value." Reinhart said gaming was bringing a number of real world issues to the virtual world, including the theft of virtual property as well as the trading and auctioning of it.
He said inexperienced players needed to be especially careful these days. "I lost 700,000 Ultimate Online gold pieces in an attempt to purchase a Tower, a structure it's no longer possible to build on UO because there's no more open land. "The lines blur even more" he wrote. "What a great time to be a game programmer!"
The idea of virtual property - elevated by the staggering success of eBay - has all kinds of implications. If cyber-property is seen as having intrinsic value, measurable worth than can be traded, valued, and sold, then get ready for even more billions of dollars to start flying around the Net and the Web.
"I like your angle here," wrote Pat Dane, "and it's right in line with a company I founded a year ago." Dane's company is CyberMovers.net, which offers Website relocation, maintenance and move-in services. In a sense, Dane may have grasped the future, even gotten a step ahead of it. Only he doesn't need big vans, boxes and burly crews.
CyberMovers "offers a Full Range of Site Management, Location, Relocation, Promotion and Maintenance Through Our "virtual" Web Master Services. CyberMovers will meet "the needs of various customer segments - from the first time personal site owner to the more advanced small business site owner who needs to "relocate" to another hosting service or ISP."
The idea of Web movers and property managers dovetails with the surprising news that eBay customers are shelling out thousands of dollars for property, potions and tools on congested Ultima Online, which increasingly looks like an overdeveloped New York City suburb.
Scott Franke wrote that the concept of virtual property offered new employment as well as economic possibilities.
"?this is something you danced around in your article," he wrote, "but I wanted to bring it to your attention on the off-chance that you hadn't considered it."
I hadn't, really. But Franke wrote that from the exorbitant prices being paid for gaming characters, it seems reasonable to assume that some people could make their living entirely by playing these games full-time and selling the property they make.
"While the actual price per hour of playing time isn't realistic at this point, it can definitely be a job people would enjoy doing. And I can assume that the people who spend this much time now would not mind quitting work to make a lower salary if they get to play as much as they want." From the gamers I know, this is a reasonable assumption.
The notion of virtual property extends into digital money as well, especially when it comes to gaming. Charles Evans, the Senior Vice-President of e-gold wrote into to agree that gaming was mainstreaming, that is, moving quickly beyond geeks and nerds and into the American middle-class. (Ultima Online is played by more than 125,000 people globally). "As a follow-up," he suggested, "you might be interested in Dark Castle (http://www.dcastle.enteract.com/), a game which requires players to purchase equipment with "plats" that can be purchased only with e-gold. Dark Castle operators, wrote Evans, have found credit cards to be both expensive and risky, so they use an e-gold payment system exclusively.
Britt, a Web architect wrote: "this is a huge idea. The concept of virtual property very much transcends computer games, although that's where it's being introduced to the middle class. In two years, we'll be going to architecture school to design Web sites for anxious families with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend. Virtual property is just around the corner."
But Scott Franke is right. Economically, it's one thing for geeks, nerds and programmers to be trading potions. It's quite another when millions of middle-class Americans - the primary consumers in the world's richest country - join in. If we are, in fact, entering an age in which virtual property is becoming valuable, and is actually moved, maintained, up-graded, managed, and re-sold, then the Net would continue its revolutionary challenge to conventional notions of economics.
Online, individuals are using technology to re-distributing wealth and property, both intellectual and material. Virtual property seems an almost inevitable extension of that notion, already in evidence through eBay, on thousands of e-trading sites, and via Mp3 players. In a different sense, open source and free software movements are distrubiting software in this way, only for free. But they still have value - that's sort of the point.
Some questions I can't answer, but would love to know more about from those of you who might help:
Is Net and Web property infinite? That is, is the Net so expansible that it could never be overcrowded and congested?
How much, if at all, will computer gaming be affected by what is sure to be the growing purchase of and trading for virtual characters by the hordes of relatively affluent middle-class gamers thundering online? Are there other gaming characteristics that may soon be applied to the real world?
Are there other employment and economic possibilities beyond gaming in the concept of virtual property - as in Pat Dane's CyberMovers? Could this notion spill over into architecture, construction, design, real estate and other kinds of bartering?
Frankly, the false 3D one gets by projecting an image onto a computer screen just isn't the best way to represent information.
2D or isometric views can provide a more detailed view of a gaming field or whatnot. By not trying to do this fancy hardware-rendered over-the-shoulder shot, the game designer can have far more simple control over the display of a specific (more limited) area. When I want my character to move three squares to the right and one down, I want to know exactly how far to move my mouse, and this to be consistant (not changing due to perspective).
Not that there aren't things 3D is good for. I'd hate to have to draw the looking-down-from-a-cliff panoramic shots manually, or only have a very limited area visible... or do them top-down.
And that's just gaming, where 3D really does have several legitimate uses. Do you seriously think IRC will be replaced with something using avatars, either 2D or 3D? That we'll walk (or fly) our way around web sites? Don't kid me.
2D representations of information are just more efficient and immidiately understandable. I can scan a page of text very quickly and click on a link far faster than someone in a VRML world can walk through a door. Okay, maybe some people will have such sites. They're the same folks who use Shockwave plugins, sound and gratuitous Java applets right now. Guess what? I don't visit their sites, not because I boycott web sites doing such things but because I'm more busy reading pages with actual content.
It'll just be more of the same.
Fisrt of all, I'd like to mention the idea of proximity. In the real world, we have heard that the most important thing about a piece of property is 'location' (x3). Part of this is because by being near something popular, an otherwise completely undeveloped location can become valuable, for a business, for advertising, for a home. But this is because being physically near something makes it easier to get there. This goes directly against the most powerful idea of a virtual world, namely that we aren't tied down by physical location. I can type in a URL and get to anywhere with the same amount of work. Being 'near' Yahoo, for example, doesn't even make sense. The nearest isomorphism would be links and/or banner ads. But both of these cases require the concent of the popular party, unlike neighbors in the physical world. To force the idea of 'nearness' upon a virtual world is to introduce arbitrary rules that dilute the power of that world. The only context in which you would want such rules is in a gaming environment, where rules hamper options and therefore increase challenge. Outside a gaming environment, extra challenge in navigation is rarely sought.
Second, we have to realize that a virtual world is created by someone, who is still capable and probably interested in continuing to create. So although hobbiests may be able to obtain real-world cash for ocasional pieces of virtual property, it cannot become an industry; whoever runs the system can too easily flood the market. For example, if people were making a living playing Ultima Online and selling the property they collect, think how much more an UO programmer could make by creating that same virtual property without working to earn it. The fact that this power must exist for any given virtual world to exist suggests that selling virtual property will never be a booming industry.
So as fun as the it is to watch UO approach the ideas of SnowCrash, they are both fictional worlds, and I'm afriad the real world will never have reason to attribute huge amounts of intinsic value to virtual property.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
Jon, this virtual property thing is interesting, but it's only surprising if you have forgotten that money is a virtual concept anyway. Whenever someone trades a new abstraction some slow witted people will be astounded ("people will never swap real food for paper money, bring back the gold standard...").
Money is traded for scarce items, when resources are limitless then value becomes limitless anyway. The scarcity in virtual property is completely contrived, minor changes to the software could multiply the available amount of property 1000000x causing the value to dissappear. The importance of this can be exaggerated though - artifical scarcity is commonplace in finance - eg diamond prices would collapse if DeBeers did not maintain artifical scarcity.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
You have drawn exactly the opposite conclusion to that which I would draw. If physical resources could be replicated freely then the main argument supporting IP dissappears.
The whole notion of intellectual property is a social construct.
However, this does not necessarily make it a bad thing.
The whole notion of standard property is a social construct -
there are many societies that do not have any real notion of property.
It is even more common to find societies for whom the concept of land ownership
is unknown. They are not being dense, it's just that for hunter gatherer based
societies, the concept of land ownership is not terribly useful.
We are so used to the idea of property that it is easy to forget that it is
a social convention. There is nothing inherently natural about the concept, and
we need police, locks, walls and fences to enforce it. The notion of property
is so deeply engrained in our society that many other unquestioned social
constructs are built on top of it: eg money.
You and I are both feel pretty comfortable with the concept of material property
and agree that it is useful. Obviously "Intellectual Property" is also a social
concept. As RMS is fond of pointing out, the very term "IP" is biased since it
implies that the concept of IP is as natural and necessary as the concept of
material property. Many special interest groups (eg RIAA) would
like to halt the debate there:
"IP is just like regular property, we all agree that property is necessary
for society, so ownership of information is necessary and good."
Except we all know there is a difference: when information passes
from one A to B, A still has the information. Should we treat ownership
of information and material in the same way ? Probably not, and its an
important question.
The only valid justification for social constructs are that they benefit society.
If the construct is not beneficial, it should be discarded. For instance,
land ownership provides an incentive for the owner to extract the maximum
long term benefit from the land. Land is better managed when it is owned
by someone so it benefits society as a whole for land to privately owned.
Two hundred years ago, society was based upon agriculture. Real wealth
meant ownership of land. One hundred years ago, society was based upon industry,
real wealth meant owning what Marx called "the means of production", ie factories.
Today we live in the information age, real wealth means owning information.
It is necessary to clarify what is meant by ownership of information.
There are really two forms of information ownership today.
One is accessibility. If you can freely access a piece of information
then in some sense, you own it. The internet has made us all much "richer".
The other form of ownership is the IP sense of ownership. That is, not only
can you access the information, but you have power over what other people
can do with the information. For instance, you can sell others access, but retain
sole rights to pass on the information.
The IP form of information ownership is a social construct. It is only
possible because we have laws that enforce it. Are those laws a good idea ?
Personally, I'm not sure. Some IP laws are certainly flawed (US software patents ???)
while some are probably beneficial.
It's pointless to argue for IP on the grounds that IP is just like material
property - its not.
It's also pointless to argue against IP on the grounds that IP is a social
construct - yes it is, but so is just about everything else.
AFAIK the argments for and against can be summarised as:
FOR: Without IP there would be less incentive for information creators.
AGAINST: IP laws make everybody poorer because information that is
freely passed around becomes available to everyone.
Both of those arguments can be expanded upon endlessly. I've got no
idea which is better.
I suspect that society might be in a bit local minima at the moment.
We would be better off as a whole if information was generally shared
and freely available rather than jealously hoarded, but it's not clear
how to achieve this.
On a side note, its amusing to see opponents of IP being branded as
communist because they believe that information should be free. The
argument has got virtually nothing to do with left/right wing.
The notion that there should be restrictions on copying of
information is a form of protectionism. The arguments to justify IP
ie "protect the creators" seem more socialist to me than the anti-IP
arguments (not that there's anything inherently wrong with that).
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
The UO situation sounds rather boring to me (never having played it). Economics of scarcity are nothing new, whether played out in the virtual world or not.
What fascinates me are unlimited economies, something like a UO where users could create their own land and goods.
LambdaMOO was like this (still is? haven't been on for a while). Users could create their own objects, rooms, areas, etc. You weren't guaranteed a link to the main world, but you could often convince someone to give you a link. Or not; some people preferred to keep their own world separate, where you couldn't get to it unless you knew the special object number. Kind of like an exclusive club.
I remember that one user built a bar like this that ended up being a popular hangout. It wasn't accessible unless you knew the number, but the number was passed around a lot (someone even left a note in a central part of the system with the object number on it).
Not to mention that there was a lot of creativity in linking in places. There was a Monopoly board in one area of the place; several of the "houses" on the board were real houses, and you could actually shrink yourself and go in.
The significant scarce Net resource is eyeballs. Other people's attention. An audience/community.
That's why Yahoo and Amazon have such stunning stock prices, and why the Slashdot effect exists. Domain name scarcity is only a corollary - after all, you could always register y79grh0.com, or even do without! All you really need is an IP address, unless you care about people finding and remembering your site. Net "real estate" is exactly as valuable as the number of people who will visit it regularly.
Bandwidth and host capacity are considerations, of course, but only if you're popular, which ought to pay the necessary bills through ads, etc. There's no direct analogy to gentrification of neighborhoods driving people out, since the costs of becoming a "high-rent district" are directly coupled to income opportunity.
I realize that this is obvious to a lot of you, but Jon and others seemed distracted by the bogus idea of spacial scarcity (congestion/real estate).
How long will it be before people start selling off their slashdot accounts for hard cash? Hoe much is it worth to people to have...
*A popular, cool username
*An oldtimer's low account id number
*An account with a history of positively moderated posts
Just a thought.
Although the VR version of cyberspace has not yet hit critical mass to start producing 3D versions (despite my, others valiant efforts with things like VRML and AlphaWorlds), the 2D version is very much starting to take on these Matrix-like effects. Some parts of the matrix are very popular (.com, .net, .org) while others are not (.us) while others are barely populated (.ro, .pt). People buy and sell these virtual addresses for some very huge amounts of money. Other people are the architects providing home building services, and down the bottom are a bunch of hackers like me trying to get the plumbing working.
What is happening now is the move from the 2D virtual property to the 3D. Although 3D is populated by game engines (and you can class, Isometric, 2.5D and 3D in this) eventually the same thing will spread to the general populace. As Katz points out, the arrival of the Middle-class into once what was hacker territory is a significant thing. We legitimize both the worth of the property and the fact that it exists. Stock options - how much virtual property are they? They are no more than a bunch of bytes on someone's harddrive these days, so what is the difference between that and a couple of pieces of armour and a good character.
The early adoptors always end up with a bunch of the most valued parts. Look around at the domain names, slashdot logins (I got in real early to get mine for example and the newer crowd haven't got such a range anymore. Maybe the login here will be worth something someday?). An interesting thing about these early adoptors is that normally they take the best stuff, not because it is, but because it reflects their personality or other trait that they like to express themselves with. Then, as time progresses, they become some of the most valuable simply because others want it. The gaming examples are just following the same trend already established in the flatlands. How long before some of these game environments start "meeting" at the seems?
The flip side to this is that, because we are digital, we can create as much property as we like. Just because a few games are hot today does not mean that they will be the only property available in a year down the track. Effectively limitless space can have some interesting effects on what and how items are valued. At what point do people come in to make a hedged risk on a new piece of virtual real-estate.
The funny thing that I find about all of this is that it will create jobs for the middle men. OK, so eBay is probably one of only a couple of sites on the 'net doing this now. How long do you think it will be before we start to see specialist virtual game property trading companies/sites being formed (darn, I should go out and patent that business idea!). That is, what we have in the real world will be mirrored in the virtual which will be mirrored in the real world... Just like the Matrix.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
It would be one thing to write the same editorial with the tone of "this is interesting, I wonder how far it could go". Jon seems to prefer the "Eureka! I've found it! I'll change the world!! I saw it first!!!" tone when he finds something interesting.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
Remember the arcade game "Gauntlet?"
You could put more money in for more life points.
Paying for UO characters and property differs from
that exactly how?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's bad enough that hackers are being berrated by main stream media for supposedly "stealing" from large, anonymous corporations, can we all see what will hapen when the middle class has a vested intrest in computer security?
What were to happen if a cracker got onto one of the ultima online servers, helped himself to some UO Cash and then bought himself whatever he needs?
Worse yet: Cracker gets onto the server, figures out some of it's data structure, and decides to get into another player's building and cleans him out?
Crackers/malitious hackers finally have something that has value to steal... and they would be stealing from mainstream america instead of the corps. This can have several consequences as i see it:
First and formost: The biggest hacker backlash in history. You think the Kevin Mitnick case was bad... now the law enforcement officials no longer have to work on the "estimated losses" reported by companies when they get documents copied off their servers (say source code), they have real world price tags on what the damages were.
Moreover, can we really trust mainstream american media to see the difference between hackers and crackers? It's bad enough that they can't do it now when the crackers are just defacing websites...
Secondly: With a bit of luck, this will drive all aspects of computer security forward. I can see dedicated players paying godo dollars for crypto systems that would protect their online assets. As well, internationalization of crypto technology will be given a big boost as non-north american players will want access to the same quality of crypto as we are priviledge to have.
Thirdly: Goverment regulation will quickly be pushed onto the scene. Any location generating real US$ seems to become the target of the US house and senate.
Third, B: TAXATION! As is, it's very difficult to keep the internet taxes at bay. In the states, the problem seems to stem from the seperation of states.. but if people start shelling out cash for virtual property, the likes of which cannot be seen right now, there will be a renewed effort by the USG to tax online transactions.
Fourth: Hopefully this will lead to the apparition of "free" servers that will pop up and have much more room to grow, allowing people to settle in. It'd be even nicer if a "Homesteading" act were to be implemented on UO (specific example) to move over onto the new systems, giving them some sort of bonuses (very much like the development of the "Wild West in early america.)
So much more can come of this, and i have to congradulate JohnKatz for bringing this to the light...
I happen to completely agree with you here.
How is this even different from buying software? It is just a collection of bits on your hd (which in most cases can be taken away from you without much, if any notice [or whatever terms are stated in the eula]). What do you really own? A cheap cd with bits on it you might not even be able to legally use.
But that is just me.
This sig is false.
Jon,
I would like to see a rebuttal of this. How does your virtual property example of Ultima Online real estate differ from the services described by th0m?
I'll help you. They are intrinsically less valuable.
Ultima Online does not sanction or control the sale of these assets (AFAIK) so they could change the value of these assets with impunity. If real estate is scarce, they could "virtually" increase the total amount, which would have the same effect as a government printing more money. They could change any rule of the game and change the value of the property.
With the example of online minutes from a phone company, the phone company cannot redefine "minutes" or change the service without breach of contract. A "month" of HBO is a month. The worst HBO could do is decide to make the service free to everyone, in which case all you lose is a month's payment. A domain name is absolute. There can be only one resolution to the browser query of http://slashdot.org.
Other than being a bad value, the examples of "virtual property" are no different than examples of real or meatspace property. Many things of monetary value cannot be held in your hand: 1000 shares of MSFT, car title, mortgage, bank statement.
My favorite line:
"ooh! ooh! virtual property paid for with *virtual money*! another monumental technological discovery"
[snip]
What's the difference between virtual money, which is a mere representation of money, and real money, which is a mere representation itself? There is no difference. The value is attributed and not inherent. American one hundred dollar bills only have as much value as we think other perople think they have. I know that the grocery store will let me walk out with a cart full of food if I let them take a shiny one hundred dollar bill, but I don't carry one around. Instead I pay for it with virtual money I store on a plastic card in my wallet.
Y'know, over on Ars Technica there's a very interesting interview with the lady who paid $2025 for an Ultima Online account, which sheds some light on the decision from her point of view.
It all boils down to the old economic principle of "opportunity cost" in making a decision . . . she had the money, and of all the alternatives on which she could spend it, this was the most attractive to her.
She's no rank newbie trying to buy her way into riches, either--she'd played the game since October 1997. The main reason for the purchase, she says, was the impossibility of acquiring "real estate" in UO anymore.
And of course, games involving real money for virtual property aren't new. I've yet to see anyone mention Chron X, an Internet CCG where you use your credit card to pay real money for virtual cards...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
{{if you haven't read Ender's Game, this probably won't mean much to you.}}
/., cnn.com, and nytimes.com.
>> * An account with a history of positively moderated posts
Wow. That would have made Val & Peter Wiggin's lives easier. Remember the time they spent creating those personas? Peter's political beliefs gradually became "syndicated" on a few of the Nets. Card couldn't have foreseen the exact structure of the Net (and who's to say that present-day structure is the structure?), but I think it's safe to say that our "major news nets" would include
Card hypothesized syndicated columnists (Jon Katz & Chris Locke both come to mind) whose opinions were posted -- much like Martin Luther's theses -- and debated vehemently. the debate was very public, and the political figures of the day stayed tuned, because the popular opinion in the debates let them know how to adjust their platforms.
Val & Peter (Locke and Demosthenes) were so well-known, and made such good points, that they eventually became political figures.
So... let's presume a persona comes into being on the Net. Let's say that this persona takes the name "DrTuring" and becomes immediately (and enduringly) popular with the online community. Let's say that a "Write-in DrTuring for President" campaign starts, and takes root. How much would Bill Gates pay the real DrTuring for the keys to that account? How much would Bush, Jr. pay? Are we no longer discussing profits of a few thousand bucks?
As more and more people enter the online community, political sites and news-debate sites will grow in power, and that power will have to spill over into the real world.
The entire concept of property (and even identity) is "virtual." Before the Industrial Revolution, you could pay to have documents forged that introduced you as whomever you pleased. With the advent of the photograph, identity became a more tangible thing. And now, with the advent of the "nick," technology has caught up.
another 2 cents from
Jurph;
penny for your thoughts?
i do think it's interesting, but i think the spin of jon's article was wrong. he's making a big song and dance about this new era of "virtual property", and that's misleading.
i would have enjoyed the article, rather than been annoyed by it, if he'd stuck with the subject in hand - told about some of the motives of people buying these accounts, talked to some UO gamers about how they thought this was going to affect the balance of power and influence in the game world, etc - but instead he chose the overly familiar path of trying to extrapolate a greater significance and meaning, resulting in a big fluffy article that didn't really tell you anything you wanted to know.
jon does this in every article, presumably in the hope that one day he'll actually hit upon a genuine revelation instead of regurgitating old material. keep an eye out for the inevitable "new era of wearable computing!", "new era of portable computers!", "new era of geek cinema!" etc (oh, hold on...) stories over the coming weeks.
as always, i don't take issue with what jon's saying; this sort of story would be very suitable to go into a print publication or a non-tech-oriented web site. there are billions of people out there who don't even appreciate or recognize the concept of a non-physical product, and they'd get a lot from the article - but, sadly, none of them read slashdot.
-- in china, chinese food is just called food.
much as it pains me every single time i realize it, i'm afraid that i have to report that once again you're picking value out of vapor and getting all excited about something that, as always, isn't exciting or new at all.
i'm tempted to launch into an extensive diatribe, but i've got work to do today. suffice it to say that the "virtual property" that's got you so frantic in the last couple days is nothing more than a sale of service. it's amazing that you're managing to misunderstand this to the extent where you think there's something new.
every month i buy a package of 'minutes' for my mobile phone from my wireless company. these are just numbers in a computer, of course - am i purchasing "virtual property" here? and, if i am, haven't people been doing that for years?
i could subscribe to a paying-members-only web site; i could choose to pay for HBO; i could buy an Ultima Online account or good domain name from ebay. these are all the same thing - i'm buying the right to use a service. just because i'm not getting a physical product in return doesn't make it magic or 'cyber' or anything else you might want to think.
okay, the UO accounts and domain names might have certain 'added value' in terms of the time/effort invested in bringing them to their current status, but that doesn't make it any different. by buying an account or a domain, the purchaser is simply entitled to access to certain kinds of service in return for their cold hard cash - but hey, who pays in *cash* these days, anyway?
ooh! ooh! virtual property paid for with *virtual money*! another monumental technological discovery from jon katz! better write another /. column about this!
please.
-thom
-- in china, chinese food is just called food.
I own nothing - or so my friends say. What I mean is, I own nothing physical. My apartment has no family pictures, my pots and pans came with the lease, and I only value my computer for the pattern of information on it. (A mountain bike is the one exception.) Yet I don't feel poor; totally the opposite.
Anyone with a grasp of nanotech research knows that within thirty years it's likely any physical object (within broad limits) will be replicable from a cheap feedstock; even physical objects will become valuable only for the pattern of information they're made from. So digital possessions won't just be on a par with physical things - they'll replace physical things. ("Got that new AMD box yet?" "Yeah, downloaded it yesterday.")
Think how much time you've invested tweaking your code as opposed to tweaking your hardware; I'd bet it's far more. You "value" your code far above the hardware it runs on. Perhaps we're already in that world of largely digital possessions and just haven't realised yet.
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
Isn't the the underlying concept of value the same? It shouldn't be surprising that people attribute value to something and others find a way to make a profit. A fool and their money are soon parted, regardless of the physical nature of it. I value my free time immensely. However, I have to be willing to give up some of it to afford my car. I pay my company with my time and they give me a scrap of paper that says I have the representation of 1000s of other scraps of paper being held by my bank. None of which would have any real value if it weren't assigned by society. You can't eat or drink virtual property or a $100 bill. If you can find someone willing to give you real food and drink in exchange, who gets the better deal?
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
It has really precise real-world counterparts; As cities grow and sprawl they build new "downtown" areas. If the UO administrators were to create gobs of new land, the existing, densely-populated areas would lose value as players would expand to stake their claim on the new land (I have a vision of homesteaders rushing madly into Oklahoma).
I guess game dynamics would dictate what really happens to the new land; does it become the hip new region to settle, or is it like a new cookie-cutter urban sprawl subdivision? If players controlled areas of undeveloped land, can they cut it up and sell it off? What happens when groups of players want to preserve open space -- can they even do that? It's like the Wal-Mart vs. small towns crises that are popping up all over the U.S.
There are all sorts of implications for communities in there. Aside from all that, I have to wonder if it's any fun to play the game anymore. Do I really want to be a blacksmith in an imaginary world where I still have to pay rent?
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
> Is Net and Web property infinite? That is, is the Net so expansible
/.
> that it could never be overcrowded and congested?
The Net is crowded and congested today. Good domainnames are rare, good spaces for banner ads are expensive, popular servers are overloaded and slow...
It doesn't really matter if property is infinite on the Net or not, because crowding occurs when some neighborhoods are considered better than others and people want to be (seen, live, work...) in cool places and not on the end of nowhere. Then prices and value rise.
Net property behaves exactly the same way as real estate. While a few acres in Siberia or Alaska are dirt cheap, people want to pay millions for their offices in Manhattan, downtown London or Zurich.
Given the minimal cost for undeveloped space, the main business on the Net seems to be net-estate development. Just have a look at Yahoo, MP3.com, cnet.com, etc. They succeed because they manage to convince people that crowding in their place is cool and then selling the crowd to the highest bidder.
Very confused and crowded at
johi
Of course cyber-property will have intrinsic value for some people. The same way that a certain logo or designer's name on a piece or clothing has intrinsic value, for some people. The products (the sorts of things that are available to buy, sell, and trade) may change, but the people don't.
"I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent"
Are there other employment and economic possibilities beyond gaming in the concept of virtual property?
He said inexperienced players needed to be especially careful these days. "I lost 700,000 Ultimate Online gold pieces in an attempt to purchase a Tower, a structure it's no longer possible to build on UO because there's no more open land.
But suppose the programmers created a way to insert more open land into Ultima? (I haven't played Ultima, but the same sort of change might happen in any virtual economy.) Suddenly, all those virtual properties that players have been accumulating lose their status of no longer possible to build. The "Ultima artifact" monetary system suffers a sudden devaluation. This sort of changing of the rules which defined the value on a monetary system is much like printing money without limit - it can lead to runaway inflation and people leaving that economy.
There could end up being a conflict between the "virtual economy" and the "usage" view of a virtual item. (Adding new land to Ultima might make perfect sense as far as making the game more playable for the current number of people involved, yet it would devalue the surrounding virtual economy.)
There could also be the sort of "insider trading" issues that affect all commodity markets. "Sell your properties now, they're going to open a new continent next week."
The only thing being really proved here is that TIME = MONEY. The time spent to create these characters(and the vanity appeal) is what the money is buying. The amount of money being spent is directly proportional to the amount of resources(supply) left of UO. The demand for this property has caused the prices to skyrocket. Milton Friedman would get a kick over this concept. We all(most of us) pay for our ISP's to let us save "time" in researching information, or buy things on-line(time saved not having to go to store).
What's going to be really cool is when someone cracks UO, like we did Diablo, and charge for "Stolen" virtual property. I wonder if once someone does crack it, will the "Real" price of gold on eBay reflect the inflation. Sorta like the US leaving the gold standard.
Just rambling, I guess.
Freedom begins when you tell Mrs Grundy to go fly a kite. _R.A.Heinlein