Jon Jacobs, a director of independent films who hails from Miami, FL, has purchased a virtual space station from the Swedish software company that owns and operates the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) Project Entropia. This is believed to be the largest single purchase of virtual real estate by an individual.
Project Entropia is somewhat different from most MMORPGs, in that the client is free to download and it does not require a subscription fee to play. Instead, the developers make money by taking a percentage cut whenever players convert real money to the in-game currency, called the Project Entropia Dollar (PED), which is fixed at a rate of 10 PED for 1 USD.
Jacobs, who earned a third of the US$100,000 fee by selling in-game items, plans to call the station "Club Neverdie" and operate it like a cross between a nightclub and a virtual Jurassic Park, where visitors can hunt giant dinosaurs and collect their hides. Because he owns the virtual property where the hunts are taking place, Jacobs will be able to collect a cut of the proceeds from the sale of the virtual hides. He expects to make up to US$20,000 a month from these tariffs and other income, such as tickets to club events hosted by real-life DJs.
Other MMORPGs have had virtual economies before, but the game developers tended to frown upon the transfer of in-game assets for real money, as it upset the balance of the game's economy. Recently, Blizzard, makers of the popular game World of Warcraft, banned the practice of "gold-farming", where players are paid by a company to collect in-game gold, which is then sold to regular players for real money. Blizzard went so far as to ban "selling items for 'real' money or trading items for things of value outside of World of Warcraft."
Project Entropia has taken a different approach. Rather than banning transfer of game items for real money, the developers have made it an integral part of the game's mechanics. The game has been in development since 1995, and was released to the public in January 2003. According to the game developers, it has over 300,000 active players, and a projected GNP for 2005 of 1.5 billion PED, or US$150 million.
The concept of a virtual world where people can live and conduct all sorts of real-world transactions was popularized by Neal Stephenson's excellent novel Snow Crash. People have found interesting ways to integrate their real lives with their virtual ones. Events such as virtual plagues have blurred the boundaries between games and virtual worlds. With more and more MMORPGs striving to emulate these ideas, it seems that life is again imitating art.
reader comments