Play Money
The other day I was doing a lot of compiles, sitting around waiting for stuff to finish, with only a few minutes here and there. Not really enough time to seriously get into any other tasks. So, I figured I'd check out some blogs. Checked my regular ones and still had some time, so took a look at Blogger's "Blogs of Note". One of them was Play Money. That sounded interesting, so I took a look.

Wow!

I've played games for pretty much forever. Started playing video games when they came out, then computer games. Also played PBM (Play by Mail) games, and then later PBEM (Play by EMail) and then online games. Some of my friends and I, who are all programmers and have at different times played games quite a bit, always said, "It would be so cool if you could earn a living playing a game."

I stumbled across the Play Money blog, and that is exactly what this guy is doing! Or at least attempting to do. Pretty amazing. It never occured to me that you could sell a virtual thing and make real money. I've played this kind of game before. Not Ultima Online, but similar types of games. And I've won some of them, and those I haven't won, I've usually done pretty well. Amassing resources, trading, etc. Who would have thought that you could take some "valuable" resource in a game, and sell it for real money? I don't know why it never occured to me. Given some of the games I've played (some lasting 18 months), the desparation of someone not having enough ships to protect a homeworld, the ease with which things could be traded, etc... it was always possible. Just no one ever thought of it!

And now I stumble across a game system, that has a few hundered thousand players, and they are selling virtual items, for real money, on e-bay. And the annualized sales for this year are $3.4M!!! That's right, $3,400,000 will change hands this year on e-bay for castles, runes, cloaks, etc. And it has an actual exchange rate (just like any country). Currently 1M Britannian gold pieces are going for $16.63, which is up 4 cents from last week.

From a game point of view, I found the very concept interesting - that it would be so formalized, "normal", etc.

From a game philosophy point of view, it was interesting too. In some of the more complex games I've played, there have always been different styles of play. Some people treat it as a war game, some as adventure, some just want to be traders. Now here is a game where someone is a real trader. Not just trading in the game, but making a living off of it in real life.

I'm not an economist, or even understand it real well, but I thought that part of the blog was interesting too.

And then there were the fraud/scam issues. Something I deal with every day, in one way or another. And here are some of those same issues being dealt with in a virtual world... or actually in the blending of a virtual world with a real one.

Some pretty interesting stuff. If Ultimate Online wasn't such a time sink, I'd think of joining. I still might... as long as I can keep myself from spending too many hours on it!