Gamer sells virtual game property for over half a million dollars | Hacker News Reader

Gamer sells virtual game property for over half a million dollars

blog.games.yahoo.com

54 pointschrischen28 comments

Previous large money transactions in Project Entropia have been shown to be PR manipulations ($100k "sale" from company to employee) or outright fabrications. There are plenty of references to these investigations out there on the net, though don't look to wikipedia, it's heavily astroturfed.

Bottom line is the game is a ponzi scheme, using fraudulent high dollar transactions to lure in lower dollar players. Some of them will flip property to even newer people for a profit, but in the vast majority of cases there just isn't any "there" there.

You can just back of the envelope figure they are full of shit - no one is paying $500k for a fucking space station made out of pixels and stored on Oracle RAC.

Need any more evidence? They are also the geniuses behind "Planet Micheal" whose tagline reads: "In the grim world of Michael Jackson, there is only war" (I swear I'm not making that up)

Oh, that employee I mentioned? "Neverdie" aka Jon Jacobs? Yeah, he's the one that just "sold" his brilliant investment for "$600k"

The one good take away from all this is how easy it is to fool the gaming blogs/press with a $20 PR newswire release. That is Project Entropia's biggest skill and they do it damn well.

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/05/project_entrop...

Thanks for that rundown.

> The one good take away from all this is how easy it is to fool the gaming blogs/press with a $20 PR newswire release.

Fascinating. Got any thoughts or references on how to get PR newswire pieces picked up? Y'know, I mean without being a scumbag ideally.

It should be pointed out though that these sort of sales (not at $500k, but "large" $1k+ figures) do happen in some games (EVE) though!

1k+ deals were happening for single building properties more than 10 years ago in the first large-scale MMO, Ultima Online.

> no one is paying $500k for a fucking space station made out of pixels and stored on Oracle RAC.

Since you're so well upvoted, I guess a lot of people agree with this, so I want to respond to be sure people aren't dismissing this sort of purchase without being logical about it.

I'm certainly not paying $500,000 for a virtual good like this, but this kind of statement is a bit broad and (I feel) narrow-sighted.

There are currently large online communities paying thousands a month to keep their virtual play worlds alive (e.g. larger gaming communities in Second Life). It's not hard to imagine someone acquiring virtual real estate at very high prices. Certainly I know of many investors doing it to the tune of tens of thousands. Just like landlords, those buyers are regaining their money by renting out portions of it to tenants, virtual good shopkeepers, special in-game events, etc. This is absolutely without question happening right now in many virtual settings and has been for years.

As such, virtual land can be a true investment, regardless of the number of "pixels" it contains. I'm not saying I think it's a good investment, but to dismiss the market entirely as worthless is a narrow-sighted decision without understanding that there are true economic forces at work, and that business-people do their math and seem quite willing to make large payments they expect to recoup (just as with real property).

Further, some could have said the same quote about websites and look foolish today:

> no one is paying $500k for a fucking virtual magazine made out of pixels and stored on a Wordpress server.

> no one is paying $500k for a fucking virtual name stored on a DNS server.

Virtual and digital items are going to be more and more important in our lives. They will continue to be valuable. Bet on it.

Even beyond the business implications, the comment and reaction surprises me. I don't see people reacting with the same shock about buying a $500,000 work of art, memorabilia, or antique. Clearly things can be of exceptional value based on the amount of time involved in creating it, the amount of sentimental value it holds, or the level of beauty/quality it has.

It's entirely fair to think high-priced virtual goods are a bad investment or to be skeptical of their worth, but to be severely dismissive of them is an act of ignorance and not giving them the (small?) respect they deserve simply as an economic factor in our lives and our children's lives.

I actually agree with almost everything you said. What I said was flip, to be sure, but I didn't intend for it to be forward looking at all. Obviously virtual goods can and do get bought and sold, and I have no problem believing that someday what I said could be precisely wrong in that someone would pay $500k for a fucking virtual space station made out of pixels stored on an Oracle RAC.

I was posting to shine a light on the fact that this company has pulled this kind of thing before, reporting huge dollar transactions that were either provably made up or at least had no way of verifying them. And that the person involved in this report is an employee of the company that sells these virtual goods (but they never, ever mention that). All that info came via researching the claims and not judgements about the value of virtual goods.

I was just trying to give an extra way of evaluating what I was saying. I claimed they're liars, linked to some supporting discussion of that, but it's the Internet - how do you know it's not me that's lying and them that's telling the truth? There a gut check is useful - it's pretty easy to tell that _today_ in 2010 people aren't dropping $500k on virtual real estate in a poorly funded and poorly known (compared to say second life, eve, warcraft, etc) virtual world. At least it's unlikely enough that you should demand a fair amount of proof before you believe it (and you won't be able to find any except for the pr-news-blog circle jerk)

I hope that explains what I meant better. No question that there are many people exchanging real money for virtual property in game type virtual environments.

I once sunk thousands of dollars into that game. Once I bought a nice lakeside house for 500 (us) dollars and sold it for over $1100 - nothing compared to the players who spend thousands of dollars buying armor and weapons (mine was worth mere hundreds) but still quite amazing to me.

It is a pretty basic mmorpg, only got quests this year, but there's something extremely compelling about the game. Some people say the game is just gambling- I tend to agree.

There are massive amounts of money going through this game. It's both scary, and amazing to watch. And yeah, if you're a good businessman (or scam artist) there is a ton of (real) money to be made.

I just remembered- I bought the house to set up a beauty salon. My profession was a hairstylist - one of the more elite profession. I spent well over $100 on a hairstylist chair (I had to watch the auctions for weeks before one even showed up), and people would pay $2 or more to have their hair cut/styled. For the first while I did it for free- just for the cost of hair gel and supplies. Crazy enough for you?

Other 'elite' professions at the time were body modification (plastic surgery) and coloring clothes. Red was crazy expensive. Every once in a while they'd release a new color and the price would skyrocket.

Crazy times, crazy game.

who actually does all the animation and drawing for this game? the players? like how do you do "haircuts"?

The animations are done by the programmers who write the game- it's not like second life. Giving a haircut is basically turning a couple of dials and clicking a button.

If hairstylist is considered an elite profession, what are the ones who build the space stations and asteroid bases and whatnot (like what this guy sold for $600,000+)?

"Uber-Elite Professions"

Well, players don't build things. It's way more like WoW than second life. The company 'mind ark' or whatever they are calling themselves now, makes things (asteroid, houses etc) and auctions.

Being a 'trader' is an unofficial professeiom. It basically is watching the market and buying low and selling high. This is is essentially what neverdie did wih the asteroid.

When you say hair styling, is it real artistic work or press a button to get effect work?

Could someone conceivably hire third world people / turkers en masse to do this at a profit?

Its like customizing an avatar... You (or the customer) picks a style, length and you press a button. Depending on your skill level, it either works or it doesn't and you have to try again- no bad haircuts. No real creativity involved.

I was doing 1 or two a night so I don't think more workers would have helped me.

Makes more sense than most real estate prices in California.

Try NYC...

Wow. I believe I downloaded and installed this game on my machine in something like 2003 or 2004? My graphics chip couldn't play it at a usable frame rate, and I really couldn't figure out the gameplay (I remember people telling me to go to some ship or something? I could mine there? Or something?)

I had absolutely no idea that it was still around. I'm really happy for the creators to hear that it seems to be absolutely flourishing. Awesome.

It looks like Second Life plus FPS game. I can see how that could be a human black hole. The biggest barrier to entry for SL is figuring out what to do with yourself in-game. If you just got sucked in to fighting orcs or whatever right away, the addiction would take hold much faster.

In the beginning of the game you start grinding basically. I know I started hunting animals and sold what I got until I could get a decent gun. I then saved till I could get mining equipment. I got lucky in the middle of nowhere and hit a huge vein of gems (or something) that I sold for like 5x what I paid for the mining equipment.

I then bought armor and a better weapon and went roaming the wilderness to find one of the better cities with better markets. I could have gone with one of the 'coyotes' to help me do the crossing (some seriously big monsters along the way that I had to run like shit from) but they charged ridiculous amounts and if you had an iffy connection you could lose them and the cash you spent.

I eventually got a bit bored with the game as it's specifically designed so progression is really slow without dropping money. At least they kept skill progression to grind only or ludicrously expensive 'implants' (like in EVE).

How long before regulation rolls into town? I'm sure there's bureaucrats out there who want a piece of this pie (beyond the normal taxes that might apply).

If there were a poker game in the virtual world, would that be legal in the US? Would it depend on whether the currency was convertible to real money? If so, would there be a threshold rate of exchange at which it is legal vs. illegal?

This idea has been explored in Second Life. I do not know the answer, but there must be some literature out there that discusses the legality of the virtual casinos in SL. You might search for SL's currency (linden bucks) to find it.

Is there a virtual goods bubble?

...alas, we have the next real estate bubble.

What happened to that woman who supposedly sold Second Life real estate (IIRC) to the tune of a million dollars? Like 4 years ago.

Are you referring to Anshe Chung? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anshe_Chung

Apologies for adding absolutely nothing to this discussion, but...

Dude...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com