Wired Meets Tired

In a world where nerdy videogamers and lucrative venture capitalists stand far across from eachother at every party...a new game concept has arrived that turns the tables! I just read about this crazy stuff in Wired Magazine, and after I try to explain this I recommend you browse through the website. Apparently, this game is similar to many others out there in that you develop your characters skills, personality, wealth, and experience by playing the game continuously. The trick about this though, is that the game has a "Real Cash Economy" meaning every virtual object within the game has a real value. As your character develops a career, the credits earned in the game can be withdrawn at any time at a conversion rate of 10:1 for US dollars. Of course, the opposite is true also; One can deposit real money into the game in order to buy more virtual "stuff" or even rent a virtual apartment, buy a virtual condo, etc. Anyway...the big kicker in all this is that some eccentric guy just invested $100,000 of real money into this "virtual economy" and has built his own nightclub in the virtual world of this game. He charges cover, sells out parts of the club...and apparently he's made 15k of real money somehow. He says that in the long run this could be a profitable strategy to harness these new "Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs". I know most of you aren't really gamers, but this creeps into pretty interesting implications, as the virtual world is becoming bigger and more familiar to all of us!

Game Website