Real? Big deal!
Gamer buys $26,500 virtual land
This guy spent 26 grand on a virtual piece of land. That fact in itself just makes this guy sound like a nut. But he's going to make money on this land by taxing anyone that enters his little island to hunt and whatnot, and he's going to sell plots for people that want to build homes and such. The implications of this are amazing.
How long until entire economies exist online? How long will it be until we see the first entirely virtual stock market? A number of years ago, probably coinciding roughly with the first MMORPG Everquest, i thought up an online game that would basically create a laissez-faire economy in which people were free to trade and develop a business based on the ideals of truly free commerce. It would have effectively incorporated a virtual stock market. I hadn't envisioned real money coming into play, but now i'm starting to change my tune. The sale of beefed up avatars and virtual weaponry and magic skills is becoming big business on eBay, and this recent $26K acquisition, are all solid stepping stones to a true physical-virtual economy.
Gibson could only have dreamed of this. I don't believe he had written about such a digital economy, and the closest i've seen to this is the virtual world in Stephenson's Snow Crash. People invested a great amount of time crafting their virtual homes and avatars. But even there, it was based on a more open-source principal and didn't incorporate an economic edge.
It's going to happen, though. Online economies will crop up that could very well end up competing with physical markets. The next decade, for this reason as well as so many others, is going to be quite exciting.
This guy spent 26 grand on a virtual piece of land. That fact in itself just makes this guy sound like a nut. But he's going to make money on this land by taxing anyone that enters his little island to hunt and whatnot, and he's going to sell plots for people that want to build homes and such. The implications of this are amazing.
How long until entire economies exist online? How long will it be until we see the first entirely virtual stock market? A number of years ago, probably coinciding roughly with the first MMORPG Everquest, i thought up an online game that would basically create a laissez-faire economy in which people were free to trade and develop a business based on the ideals of truly free commerce. It would have effectively incorporated a virtual stock market. I hadn't envisioned real money coming into play, but now i'm starting to change my tune. The sale of beefed up avatars and virtual weaponry and magic skills is becoming big business on eBay, and this recent $26K acquisition, are all solid stepping stones to a true physical-virtual economy.
Gibson could only have dreamed of this. I don't believe he had written about such a digital economy, and the closest i've seen to this is the virtual world in Stephenson's Snow Crash. People invested a great amount of time crafting their virtual homes and avatars. But even there, it was based on a more open-source principal and didn't incorporate an economic edge.
It's going to happen, though. Online economies will crop up that could very well end up competing with physical markets. The next decade, for this reason as well as so many others, is going to be quite exciting.