Buying Virtual Real-Estate

[BrewersDroop]

Project Entropia, an MMO that utilizes a real cash economy, today announced that a 22-year-old Australian, Deathifier from the Dark Knights society, was the winner of the historic auction for virtual real estate. His winning bid for the extensively rendered virtual treasure island was $26,500, the largest amount ever spent in the MMO gaming space.


Full article here (http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=22078&mode=thread&order=0).

I have to admit I can't wrap my mind around this concept at all. Who would pay $26.5K for something like this?

[Mike Hussey]

I wonder if he's interested in a virtual bridge.

(With a name like Deathifier, it has to be a 'he')

[Rob Beschizza]

Project Entropia, an MMO that utilizes a real cash economy, today announced that a 22-year-old Australian, Deathifier from the Dark Knights society, was the winner of the historic auction for virtual real estate. His winning bid for the extensively rendered virtual treasure island was $26,500, the largest amount ever spent in the MMO gaming space.


Full article here (http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=22078&mode=thread&order=0).

I have to admit I can't wrap my mind around this concept at all. Who would pay $26.5K for something like this?

Real estate costs money because it is instrisically limited. You can't just plonk down a fresh, empty 100x100 plot in central London and magically move the surrounds outwards to accomodate.

This guy paid $26k for something that can be copied; is built on an instrinsically extensible (and contingent ) "land," and where the only return is the computerised use of a virtual environment. It isn't estate at all -- he's just paid $26k to have the sole use of a part of a game which may well be a historical obsolescence in a few years.

Seriously, what value can something has when it is an infinite property? It's like paying for vacuum.

[Moore]

"Deathifier from the Dark Knights society"
hehehehe

[MikeTwain]

I would compare this more to buying a "Limited Edition" print or commemorative plate. Hopefully these companies understand things well enough that they aren't going to now hand out islands to every third player for free.

There's no way I would pay 26k for a virtual island or a commemorative plate though so I still think it's stupid.

[Calistas]

I'm not convinced the story is 100% genuine.

Well, that's from me who has made a couple of hundred dollars from Second Life so far.. hehe :)

[Chris Nahr]

"Deathifier from the Dark Knights society"

And people wonder why gamers get no respect.

[Myth]

This game (Project Enropia) is complete and utter garbage. When it first came out I tried the open commercial beta, and it was completely abyssmal. Mindark, the company that created the game were having people beta test with their credit cards (buy ingame currency with real money), and the game was so bug ridden, that people were having their in game money and items disappear due to lag, bugs, etc.

Some people lost pretty hefty sums of money, and I remember there was an uproar on the forums, and Mindark refused to reinburse any money whatsover. I never committed any real money to the game, thank god. There was absolutely no content whatsover.

For yucks I downloaded the game again last night to see if my account would still work, it did, and was met with the same horrific lag as before cheesy low poly graphics stuck at 1024x768 . It's funny though, the ingame mechanism to take your real life money seemed like the only thing that they had improved upon (that was very slick and stremlined). :(

One of the latest PC Gamer magazines actually reviewed it and for some bizarre unknow reason gave it a 79 percent, while admitting in the review that the game was dated, laggy, and without content.

If someone truly paid 25,000 us dollars to this pathetic company for some ugly low poly virtual real esatate, I would be totally suprised. Seems like a lame marketing ploy.

I challenge anyone on Quarter to three, to download the game (free and requires not monetary committment) and say that they actually like it. Come on, what do you have to lose.

If you take a look at the official site (www.project-entropia.com) you will notice that the game has no forums whatsover. Hmmm, I wonder why.

[MikeSofaer]

They had forums when I tried it. I actually bought $10 of in-game currency, I figured I've spent $20 on games I've played for 5 hours and not felt cheated, might as well see what it's like.

It's boring. It's also a virtual casino with graphics. The basic game mechanic is hunting. There's a reasonably small initial cost for a weapon, but ammunition costs 0.1c a shot or so. As you fire more and more ammo your skill with it improves, and so you do more damage for you 0.1c. The monsters drop loot worth less than the ammo it takes to kill them, except that sometimes you get a "jackpot loot" worth 10 or 20 cents. If you get enough skill you can start making money hunting. They expect this will take about $70

There's an oil rig where oil is created for nothing. You can go there and gather it, but it's a PvP zone, so people are constantly spending money there killing each other to get the oil.

I once had a bunch of people party with me and pretend to fight, so they could get most of my loot without spending any of their ammo. Joyous.

[Calistas]

Imagine if they just charged $5 a month. None of the issues and all of the gameplay. Bet revenues wouldn't be much different either, 'cept there would be more happy players.

The whole concept is stupid and flawed. Amazing.

[Brian Koontz]

The concept (of allowing or encouraging game currency/traditional currency exchange) is fine, its a concept that's been used many times since (Project Entropia pioneered the concept). The problem is that the traditional currency/game currency mindset dominates their entire design structure. Rather than see it as a natural outcome of pretty much any VSOG (albeit an outcome that most VSOGs fight against) and therefore a *secondary* and almost design-free issue, they design their whole game around the concept.

So while most VSOGs are games that have exchange rates for currency, Project Entropia is an exchange rate that is a (unfun) game. Misguided, although that was in no way the consensus opinion when the game was created many years ago. The Hindsight Hecklers are out in force as usual.

[Hans Lauring]

Here's my theory and it's pulled from my ass, because I can't be bothered to read the original article.

But if this guy made a bunch of money from sales and whatnot ingame, he probably realized that pulling funds from the game isn't as easy as putting it in, so he decided to spend his ingame earnings on an island. So even though the PM speaks of dollars the funds in question are just as virtuel as plat or any other mmog currencies.
No way, these guys would still be in business, if they let people pull money from the game easily.

[Mike Hussey]

Piccies of the island here, but unfortuantely none of Deathifier :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4104731.stm

There does appear to be some method in his madness - from the article


Deathifier will make money from his investment as he is able to tax other gamers who come to his virtual land to hunt or mine for gold.

He has also begun to sell plots to people who wish to build virtual homes.

"This type of investment will definitely become a trend in online gaming," said Deathifier