Scifi virtual world Entropia, a game taking place on an asteroid where the economy is central to the game, has now enabled players to withdraw their in game cash from ATM's. While it's always been easy to buy in game cash (of course) taking it has been difficult. This now creates a relatively frictionless transfer with an established exchange rate.
"The game's maker, MindArk, based in Gothenburg, Sweden, estimates that Entropia players generated $165 million (or 1.65 billion P.E.D.'s) in total economic activity last year. Since the game's inception in 2003, it has been relatively simple for players to add money to their Entropia accounts via credit card or electronic bank transfer. But until now withdrawing money from the system was a cumbersome affair that could take months, as MindArk employees manually verified that the player's virtual fortune had been earned legitimately (and not by hacking).
'We want this game to be a full second reality,' Jan Welter, MindArk's chief executive, said in a telephone interview. 'We want you to be able to have fun, make friends, make a business, enjoy music and art and do it in our game. The A.T.M. card is a big step toward bringing people into our world because they can have comfort that they can access their virtual funds immediately.'"
There are now entrepreneurs making real livings through their virtual world investments. Witness this gentlemen making $150,000 a year renting and managinghis space station:
For instance Jon Jacobs, known online as Neverdie, a 39-year-old Entropia player in Miami Beach, last year sold almost everything he owned (real and virtual) to scratch together $100,000 (1 million P.E.D.'s) to buy a huge space station in the game. By selling apartments and storefronts to other players and by imposing taxes on players' hunting and mining on his real estate, he is now making about $12,000 a month on his investment, he estimates. And his big nightclub is still under construction.
The question is, is it all based on the Ponzi scheme of first mover advantage? On other words - do the first players capitalize on the later players inthese economies?
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