Man pays $100,000 for something that doesn't exist

If you had the chance to buy a nightclub, 1000 apartments, and some lush gardens, all for USD100,000 you'd jump at the chance, right? What if I told you that this whole package only existed within the virtual world of an online game? Because that's exactly what a man calling himself Neverdie has bought.

The game is an online sci-fi role-playing game called Entropia Universe. If you're not familiar with the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (shortened to the jaw breaking MMORPG) they allow players to log on and enter a persistent 3D world where they can interact with other players and/or kill gruesome monsters. Progress is measured in terms of skills gained, treasure collected, and fancy clothes worn. They can be ferociously addictive, even to the point of being fatal.

Usually the player has to buy the software and pay a monthly subscription to keep playing. Entropia Universe (formerly known as Project Entropia) is a little different. It's free to download and free to start playing. However, instead of the in-game currency being some fictional coin with no real-world value, EU's creator Mindark has tied the Project Entropia Dollar (PED) to the US dollar. Players can inject real money into their online persona's account. The twist is that it also works the other way. The PEDs you earn while playing can be turned back into real cash.

This all adds up to a game with some interesting possibilities. Imagine earning your living from services or goods you provide within the virtual world of Entropia. There are people who do just this. While at first it may seem a bit odd to earn your living from playing a game, isn't that exactly what professional sportsmen and women do? And our culture hails them as heroes. Role-models for our children.

With all this in mind, the game's Swedish developers Mindark recently held an online auction for some real estate within the game world. Namely, an orbital space resort boasting apartments, clubs, shopping malls, a commercial spacedock, and hunting biodomes. The winner was Jon "Neverdie" Jacobs, a film maker and actor whose works include the clubbing film Hey DJ.

For his $100,000 he gets his own little kingdom within the game. He can charge other players to visit, sell the 1000 apartments, rake in the profits from shopping and virtual clubbing and generally earn money for doing very little. It's unclear what his overheads would be, apart from presumably hiring the services of other players to help run things.

So is he crazy? Perhaps not financially. Mindark's previous sale of in-game real estate was an island, which sold for $26,000. The owner, according to their press releases, made back the investment in a year.

Now if you're anything like me this whole thing sounds a bit removed from reality, but when you think about it, the question is one of value. Our society functions by a consensus about what we agree as valuable. It's highly unlikely that Neverdie paid in gold for this transaction, and even paper money only works because we agree to honour its face value. The money Jon Jacobs paid only existed as a string of numbers in a bank account somewhere. Ones and zeros within a computer. And what has he bought? His space resort (the unimaginatively named "Club Neverdie") is really nothing more than some files on a hard drive within Mindark's game servers. Again, ones and zeros.

It's an abstract world we live in folks.

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