Last week, a virtual space station in the online world Entropia sold at auction for 330,000 real dollars, the largest-ever expenditure in an online game. The previous record-holders, both in Project Entropia as well, included a virtual space resort and nightclub purchased for $100,000.
The currency in the futuristic Entropia universe is entirely based on real money. Unlike many other large online games, the Entropia universe is free to play. Swedish developer MindArk makes its money from in-game transactions, typically on a much smaller scale than the space station purchase.
Players live on Planet Calypso and exchange PEDs, or Project Entropia Dollars, which exchange to U.S. dollars at 10 to 1. Project Entropia’s user-to-user transactions among its 820,000 players exceeded $420 million in 2008.
Erik Novak, the player who purchased the space station, is less like an eccentric gamer and more like a traditional investor. He might make a couple of pennies every time a player slays a monster in his new purchase. And he can tax every shopping transaction there. If the game remains open long enough, he could see real profit.
Which begs the question: Is this economy “real” or “virtual”?
Christopher Bolton, a literature professor at Williams College, teaches in a virtual classroom in the online game Second Life. To him, the question is not so much whether a virtual economy is “virtual,” but whether a real economy is “real.”
“Many of the things that we spend money on in a given day are virtual,” Bolton said. “After food and shelter, a lot of what we’re buying is appearances, feelings and fictional experiences. Making your avatar beautiful in Second Life fulfills the same desires of what we have around real consumption.”
A Project Entropia Dollar is valuable because people believe it is — much like a real currency. Some players make six-figure salaries in American dollars without ever leaving the worlds of Second Life or Entropia. While the world economy as a whole was plummeting, Second Life was booming — growing by 54 percent between the third quarters of 2008 and 2009.
“This is a stunning investment opportunity, and I have complete faith I will recover what I spent relatively quickly,” Novak told Tech Blog Red Orbit. “To say Planet Calypso has changed my life would be an understatement. I have even found the love of my life in the game, and now we live together in real life.”
SOURCE: SPHERE.com
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