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Role Playing (Games)

Virtual Real Estate Purchased For $100,000 59

Posted by Zonk from the that-is-a-lot-of-gold dept.
mike1086 wrote to mention a BBC article discussing a $100,000 virtual land purchase in the Project Entropia world. From the article: "The space station is described as a 'monumental project' in the 'treacherous, but mineral rich' Paradise V Asteroid Belt and comes with mining and hunting taxation rights. With the price tag also comes mall shopping booth and market stall owner deeds, a land management system, a billboard marketing system, and space station naming rights. " The official release has further details. You may recall these folks from the expensive island purchase a while back.
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Virtual Real Estate Purchased For $100,000 More

Virtual Real Estate Purchased For $100,000

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  • Somone's got more money than sense. (I wish it was me ;) )
    fp?
    • I'm sure it's just somebody who likes owning more virtual land than they know what to do with. I'm sure they're not going to make ANY money off of their $100,000.00 land purchase.
      • I understand that, I just wish I had that kind of money to waste. Infact that could be one thing nearly all slashdotters could agree on; we would all like more money.
      • Can't they make the purchase profitable in game and then convert the PID into real cash? I thought that was the entire point of this game.
        • Possibly, but IMO it's still a waste of money. If I had >£50,000 to invest, I wouldn't spend it on virtual land in a computer game; hence too much money and not enough sense.
          • So anyone who makes different investments than you would lacks sense?
            • No, however in this instance, in my opinion, the investment lacks sense. Of course there are people all over the world making different investments than myself, many (probably most) getting richer than me. I hope this guy makes a ton aswell, however as things currently stand, I belive, given the choice, that I would opt for a different investment. In other words this investment would lack sense for me (especially seeing as I don't have £50,000 to invest).
              • Considering the guy has that money to invest and you don't, it suggests that he's made somewhat more succesful investments in the past than you have.
                • Either that, or I'm still young and at university, thus havn't yet earned enough; despite which I still have high return on investments I have been able too afford.
      • Yes, you can withdraw from the game. there is a fee of 100 ped of 3.5% of the amount withdrawn, whichever is greater.

        Incidentaly, he will probably make most or all of his money back just by sellign the arpartment and vendor stall deeds.
    • It would be funny if the game was cancelled just after the cheque cleared.
      • Hi Guys, I already got offered $200k firm, by another gamer. Not taking the cash because, Im confident this will produce fabulous income. I started to do the numbers for ya, but I just dont want to start a gold Rush, before I have time to get my business up and running. But I will say this. If u love the massive multiplayer experience and you love the futuristic setting and you'd like to see if you could make a living in that enviroment, then check out Project-Entropia... Gamers are an economic force. A nat

  • Hmm... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by slashflood ( 697891 )
    The client is Windows only. There is not even a Mac client. Why are all the virtual worlds restricted to one platform?
  • They'll be in quite a shock the next time the game resets.

  • Gamer or businessman? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bartyboy ( 99076 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @11:57AM (#13872858)
    Unless this guy doesn't know what to do with his money, this is probably a well-calculated business move. It's just like buying a building and renting the units to tenants, except he does it on a virtual property.

    Business must be good, since the game won't go on for ever. He probably expects to get his money back within a year or two, if not sooner - that's a 50% return after 3 years (assuming he's bringing in fifty thousand each year). The only thing that can stop him is if the game experiences a sudden drop in population or if the company that runs it goes under and the server(s) shut down.

    • Re:Gamer or businessman? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Eric Giguere ( 42863 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @12:07PM (#13872928) Homepage Journal

      Of course, some people can afford to lose $100,000 if they have fun doing it. (Not me!)

      Building new land in virtual space is very similar to what they're doing over in Dubai [theemiratesnetwork.com], it seems, though the actual investment required to build a virtual property is considerably less than building new islands.

      Eric
      Read my Invisible Fence Guide [ericgiguere.com]
    • Well if I had >£50,000 I know I wouldn't spend it on virtual land in a computer game; I can think of a dozen lower risk, higher return (proportionally) investments. Various stocks and share in the FTSE for a start.
    • Of course, if the company running the game is going to go under, they could always hold another auction.

      1. cp space_resort.zone new_space_resort.zone
      2. perl -pi*.bak -e "s/Space Resort Alpha/Space Resort Beta/g" new_space_resort.zone
      3. /auc WTS brand new space resort, $100k. PST kkthnxlol
      4. Profit!

      Better yet, they could ALSO charge other players to access it as an "expanion pack".
    • Business.

      If the gold farmers in the far east -- well their parent companies -- could spend $100k and get a zone created just for them on WoW where they could farm to their heart's content and then convert that gold to $$$, you can believe they would.
      • Why not just strike up a deal to buy gold directly, call it "wholesale", then re-sell it to players, call them "consumers" at "retail."

        They could offer 2x what they currently pay to WoW for their accounts, AND it would benefit WoW since WoW would have a ton left outgoing client traffic to them. Just throttle the amount so that you can get x gold put in your account every 24 hours for $3000/month.

        Better yet, why not have WoW cut out the middle man, and just put up their own store where you, the consumer, ca

  • I'm missing something (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lazyl ( 619939 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @12:08PM (#13872952)
    How does this Project Entropia thing work? From the web site:

    The real cash economy means that the internal Project Entropia economy is linked to the real world economy, by using a currency called the Project Entropia Dollar (PED), which have a fixed exchange rate to the US Dollar (10 PED equals 1 USD). ... A unique aspect of Project Entropia is that a player may elect to transfer PED back into real life currency, thereby enabling them to earn real money while playing an online computer game.

    As I understand it, every game economy needs sources and sinks for the currency. I suppose players withdrawing this ped currency out into real usd would work as a sink, but what are the sources? In a completely virutal economy the game can just create money out of thin air, but in this system they can't do that. Are there some players that just constantly pay to play, and other that collect profits and earn thier money?

    • Game sinks/sources (Score:5, Informative)

      by Daemin ( 232340 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @12:40PM (#13873226)
      There are 3 sources of income:

      Hunting
      Mining
      Crafting

      Hunting, you need a weapon, and when you kill a monster you may (but probably won't...) loot some money, and possibly an item.

      In mining, you use bombs to locate resources in the ground, and then a tool to extract them.

      In crafting, you need a blueprint, and the resources called for to make the particular item, these having been obtained by someone mining.

      Hunting and mining require weapons or tools, which decay with use. This decay is not permanent. Items can be repaired back to their maximum trade terminal value at cost. The decay per use varies form item to item, anywhere between $0.001 to (the highest I know of...) $0.10. I addition to item decay, hunting requires ammo. One unit of ammo costs 1 pec (1 pec = $0.001). Mining requires bombs, which cost 1 ped each (1 ped = $0.10).

      Crafting just requires the raw materials. On each attempt, you may fail completely and loose the amount required for one try; you may succeed, and create the item; or you may partially succeed, and get back some or all of the following: some or all of the raw materials; some residue which can be sold of an amount that will be about as much as the attempt cost. As with all items, the crafted ones have a maximum value and on success its value will be a random amount between 2 or 3 times the cost to make and its fully repaired value, which in some cases can be several hundred ped. Expensive items can take 10's of ped to make in terms of TT (trade terminal) value. However, unless you mine the minerals yourself, you must buy them at some mark up that will range between 105% of tt for common minerals and 150-200% for rarer ones. The rarest mineral, which is not found often, goes for as much as 1500%.

      When hunting or mining, you may find an exceptionally large loot, or mineral resource. If the value is over 50 ped, a global message is sent saying "NAME has (killed a created/found a deposit) (creature name/mineral type) worth XXX ped!" There is a "Hall Of Fame" board which records the type 25 loots/mineral deposits/crafting successes for the last 24 hours. It alls shows the top 25 all time highs. When crafting, the message will come up if the item or value of the resulting residue is worth 50ped +. Rarely, you will also manufacture one or more gems of various type worth between 150 and 500 ped.

      Currently, the largest loot ever was a mineral resource worth 42,600 ped, or $4,260US. Incidentally, this was found last week. The highest crafting is 32k ped, and the highest hunting is 29k ped. These were also found in the last two weeks.

      The game is essentially a zero sum game. When you begin you get NOTHING but an orange jumpsuit worth 0 ped. There is no way in the game to acquire items worth more than 0 ped without depositing money, or being given it by another avatar. There are trade terminals which sell basic junk that no one uses. All other items are either crafted, or looted. The blueprints to craft items cost 0.01 ped each, and minerals must be found by mining (which requires money for tools and bombs).

      Essential, when the game began, there was no way for the first play to get money from the game before he put money into the game. Mindark (the company that makes/runs the game) is very secretive about how the loot system works, but I would suspect that there is never more loot to be had then has been lost by players through item decay, ammo burn, supply burn, or crafting failures. Otherwise, MindArk would go broke.

      The best equipment is extremely rare, and expensive to buy. The most expensive item market wise is a medical kit that commonalty sells for 50kUS. In the time that I have been playing (1.4 years give or take), no more then 3 of these have been looted. The best weapons and armor sell for 2-10kUS.

      The loot system is VERY stingy. It is not uncommon to spend 2 or 3 hundred ped in ammo burn/item decay, before (maybe...) getting a large loot to break even. There are 60 or 70 different skills that determine
    • There are no provisions in PE for a monthly P2P subscription. You can deposit Real Currency into the game if you choose to, or not deposit if you are so inclined.

      Your earnings potential is based upon how actively(and intelligently)you pursue your goals. It's also based on others losses, someone hits it big and while others constantly lose money,mostly due to ineptitude or sheer bad luck.
  • I could understand someone purchasing a large amount of land in an incredibly popular game like World of Warcraft for that price, but not in Project Entropia. I would consider myself a fairly hardcore gamer, but I'll honestly admit that I had been under the impression this game had been killed before release. So, if I consider myself a knowledgeable gamer, how is this game still in existence when even a serious gamer hasn't heard much about it?
    • This has puzzled me as well. My roomate got into the early alpha, 3 or 4 years ago, but there was NOTHING in the game and we forgot about it untill a year ago.

      THe game seems to have a large undergound following, mostly in Euroupe.

      One thing it has going for it: You can download the game, set up an account, and "play" without the use of a credit card for anything at all. Granted you will have no money to playwith, but a kind player may give you some noob equipment so you can hunt. Compare this to say WOW, whi

    • Re:Project Entropia was Released? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @12:55PM (#13873376) Homepage Journal
      I could understand someone purchasing a large amount of land in an incredibly popular game like World of Warcraft for that price, but not in Project Entropia.

      Two words: Viral Marketing.

      Until somebody interviews the player behind "Neverdie", you don't know that this guy isn't an employee of the company. He buys a piece of virtual for and eye-popping and publicity generating $100,000, and gets a company bonus for oh, say, $100,000 plus enough to cover income taxes for generating publicity.

      The value of a property is based on the net present value of its future income stream, discounted by the risk. It'd be a nearly inconceivable vote of confidence in the company hosting this games future stability and ability to create business on a pretty impressive scale -- if it's for real.
    • Such a land in World Of Warcraft would be ridiculous, considering it does not have a real economy. He will draw in masses of taxes from this :)
    • Why would land be worth anything in WoW? It doesn't matter how popular it is, you simply can't make money from it.

      You should be seeing the light. You can make a ton of money on a much less popular game by simply allowing people to own stuff and make money off of it. Like rental properties and such.

  • Virtual real estate? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigdavex ( 155746 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @12:40PM (#13873234)
    Virtual real estate?
    How about just fake estate?
  • Who's to say that the guy that bought this land isn't also working for the company to drum up press for the game. No one here can figure out why anyone would want to do this freely, so being a patsy makes more sense here.

  • /. account (Score:3, Funny)

    by tsa ( 15680 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @02:32PM (#13874286) Homepage
    I was just wondering how much people would pay for a /. account with excellent karma.
  • Let me do this simple calculation based on what he gets for his money: 1000 appartments (average price of 150 each: 150 000 ped (15 000$) income) 100 shopping boots (average price of 1500 each: 150 000 ped (15 000$) income) 10 hunting biodomes (average income: 4000/biodome each mont, so yearly income 480 000 ped (48 000$)) Billboard marketing management system (I have no clue :D) And keep in mind these figures are on the low end. Anyone who says this is a stupid investment, should think before they speak
  • If anyone does the math I think it was a good buy, I was interested in looking into purchasing it but I expected the auction to go on for 1 month before someone was crazy enough to pay the buyout. Three days didn't even give enough time to make up a business plan.

    I explained it to my friends like this(who probably still think I'm crazy):
    The apartments on the main planet sell for 25,35,45 dollars for small, medium, and large. If all 1000 sell for at least 25, that's 25,000 USD back right there. Apartments al
  • . . . which means that his "investment" is tied to the whims of the company that owns the game. If they suddenly decide that, for reasons of "game balance", they need to devalue the currency, then he's screwed.

    I vastly prefer the model used by Second Life [secondlife.com]. It has a floating currency, with competing markets for exchange (although there have been some worrying developments lately [blogs.com] in that regard). There are hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of players with a very real financial stake in the game and control ov

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