Virtual Economies
March 11th, 2005
How do you draw a line between the real world and virtual? Last December, 22-year old Australian gamer spent $26,500 for a virtual island in the online game Project Entropia. The game, considered a MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game), allows users to buy and sell in-game items for real money (10 Project Entropia Dollars = 1 US Dollar), while users of other games do the same on eBay (although certain games, like World of Warcraft, openly forbid it). According to the BBC, some economists have determined these games to have the gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of an African country like Namibia, making these “virtual investments” something really rather… well, real.
Popularity: 2% [?]
March 11th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
I don’t know too much about Project Entropia, but the company which I believe began the whole virtual economy fandango, Second Life, gives its users full ownership of both property (land and objects) and intellectual property, allowing them to sell items, ideas, etc. in either in-game “Linden dollars” or “real” US dollars. Several websites run actual exchange services, where the Linden dollar is traded against the US dollar. Now that Entropia dollars have entered the market, there’s a whole inter?national community of virtual monetary units.
When do I get to actually leave this world and enter Entropia permanently?
March 11th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
- Jason
I think it’s pretty cool that you can trade in virtual money into real money. I know lots of games that really don’t like it when you sell accounts like RuneScape. You could even get banned for that. So I think it’s pretty cool that you can get this ability on Entropia. I think i can use the extra change sometime. Thanks for the idea. O yea and heres one of my famous pics for AIM.
July 6th, 2006 at 11:10 am
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