Metaverse? Now I've heard everything!

[Marti Talbott]

So we can buy land for $13,000.00 and own stock in a place that doesn't exist? (Metaverse) I think I'll pretend I own a city on a planet and sell tickets to tourists on an imaginary spaceship.

I should probably find a safe place to hide first.

[Jeff Tanyard]

You can buy and sell any virtual thing you want.  If you meet a need in the virtual marketplace well enough, you can get rich.

Anshe Chung

[Marti Talbott]

You can buy and sell any virtual thing you want.  If you meet a need in the virtual marketplace well enough, you can get rich.

Anshe Chung

Apparently so. My question is, who's buying? Are the ones who do smart or stupid?

[notthatamanda]

You can buy and sell any virtual thing you want.  If you meet a need in the virtual marketplace well enough, you can get rich.

Anshe Chung

Virtually rich and/or actually rich. The crossover from reality to virtual and back again fascinates me. I remember when I saw people buying fortnight giftcards for gifts. Spend real money to get a gift card to buy virtual stuff in a virtual world.

How close to the Oasis is Metaverse going to get and how long will it take to get there?

[LilyBLily]

I was shocked to learn that storage of Bitcoin uses up electrical energy on multiple serves. It's not really virtual if a bunch of computers are maintaining it at the cost of our planet.

[Marti Talbott]

I was shocked to learn that storage of Bitcoin uses up electrical energy on multiple serves. It's not really virtual if a bunch of computers are maintaining it at the cost of our planet.

I don't get bitcoin either. It's not really a coin, is it? It's just currency that doesn't really exist?

[Post-Crisis D]

I've played video games but I've never been a "gamer."  But, when I first got my iPad, I downloaded and/or bought a few games.  There was one I liked where you built your own town.  You could buy in-game money with real money or you could build shops and stuff and earn in-game money from their in-game sales.  So, most of the time, I did that.  But, there were times when they had sales on in-game money or certain items you could buy.  I don't remember prices, but I think $5 or $10 for a boatload of credits.  And, when you reach a certain point, your shops and whatnot are making lots more money than when you started, so you could play strictly with in-game money and supplement from real world money only if or when you wanted.  Anyway, it was fun and I didn't spend much, and I probably spent less on it than buying a movie ticket.

But then, the company apparently went out of business.  And, since the game was tied to the Internet, you couldn't play it without connecting to their server.  So, I have this whole town, some of which I spent real money on, and it's just gone.  Can't play it.  Can't even look at it.  It's just gone.

So, after that, it's like never again, you know?

It's one thing if I can create a virtual world on my computer because as long as I have backups and hardware that can run whatever software is required, that virtual world is there.  But, if it depends on third-parties, especially third party companies that could go bankrupt or decide it's not worth keeping their servers online anymore, then that virtual world can be gone-poof!--just like that.  And, if you've spent real money on that--poof!--that's gone too.

[Jeff Tanyard]

There was one I liked where you built your own town. 

The last game of that sort I played was Sim City 2000.   

So, after that, it's like never again, you know?

Just make sure to only invest in games where you can make real money and recoup your investment.

[notthatamanda]

I was shocked to learn that storage of Bitcoin uses up electrical energy on multiple serves. It's not really virtual if a bunch of computers are maintaining it at the cost of our planet.

I don't get bitcoin either. It's not really a coin, is it? It's just currency that doesn't really exist?

It's a crypto currency. Not regulated, no tangible money or coins. I have a vague understanding of what mining crypto currency is. The bitcoin farms (like shouldn't they be mines, not farms?) are just buildings of servers trying to break these multi digit alpha numeric codes and they keep adding more digits to make it harder to mine which means more servers, more energy used on it. That's my loose understanding of it and if I got any of it wrong <shrugs> Like Warren says, "If I don't understand it, I don't invest in it."
My friend's brother invested his share of the small inheritance they got when their mom died in a crypto currency. "Border coin?" My friend couldn't remember what it was called. We are calling it booger coin.

[Marti Talbott]

I was shocked to learn that storage of Bitcoin uses up electrical energy on multiple serves. It's not really virtual if a bunch of computers are maintaining it at the cost of our planet.

I don't get bitcoin either. It's not really a coin, is it? It's just currency that doesn't really exist?

It's a crypto currency. Not regulated, no tangible money or coins. I have a vague understanding of what mining crypto currency is. The bitcoin farms (like shouldn't they be mines, not farms?) are just buildings of servers trying to break these multi digit alpha numeric codes and they keep adding more digits to make it harder to mine which means more servers, more energy used on it. That's my loose understanding of it and if I got any of it wrong <shrugs> Like Warren says, "If I don't understand it, I don't invest in it."
My friend's brother invested his share of the small inheritance they got when their mom died in a crypto currency. "Border coin?" My friend couldn't remember what it was called. We are calling it booger coin.

No wonder I can't understand it. Thanks.

[German Translator]

Nothing new about this - here is a WIRED article from 2003 about buying virtual real estate in games:

https://www.wired.com/2003/01/gaming-2/
Not long ago, a 43-year-old Wonder Bread deliveryman named John Dugger logged on to eBay and, as people sometimes do these days, bought himself a house. Not a shabby one, either. Nine rooms, three stories, rooftop patio, walls of solid stonework - it wasn't quite a castle, but it put to shame the modest redbrick ranch house Dugger came home to every weeknight after a long day stocking the supermarket shelves of Stillwater, Oklahoma. Excellent location, too; nestled at the foot of a quiet coastal hillside, the house was just a hike away from a quaint seaside village and a quick commute from two bustling cosmopolitan cities. It was perfect, in short, except for one detail: The house was imaginary.


Equally unreal were the grounds the house stood on, the ocean it overlooked, the neighboring cities, and just about everything else associated with it - except Dugger himself, the man he bought it from, and the money he shelled out. At $750, Dugger's winning bid on the property set him back more than a week's wages and was, on the face of it, an astonishing amount for what he actually bought: one very small piece of Britannia, the fantasy world in which the networked role-playing game Ultima Online unfolds.

[Matthew]

It's a complicated topic. These sorts of sales range from legitimate (if ultimately temporary) like MMOs, to speculation, to outright scams (won't name them here).

You have big companies becoming interested in the topic. One connected digital world. Oftentimes this is mixed in with virtual reality. To be honest, I think it's all a bit silly... though it's not necessarily impossible for virtual real estate to have real value. If some "metaverse" becomes popular enough with digital visitors, you may have storefronts that can be bought and sold (and rented) for significant sums of money, just like physical properties. In terms of VR I think we're very far off from Ready Player One.

My objection to the whole thing is that for a metaverse to really work, it needs to be run by one company -- and I'm morally opposed to giving one company a cut of all sales of all real estate or goods in the world.

The current state of things seems to trend toward speculation. People buy these digital "assets" in the hopes of merely selling them for more later on. However, since the value is really linked to what people are willing to spend, the investment could become entirely worthless. This to me is sort of like a ponzi scheme (like many cryptocurrencies imo) -- you have to sucker more people in and get them to pay for something that doesn't have any current value but may have more value in the future.

[idontknowyet]

I'm a bit of a gamer and have definitely spent real money on virtual items in games more than a time or two. It really doesn't make sense except to those in the game/world then it's perfectly logical. Games can be your escape just like books or any other hobby.

Never played it but I've heard about people making stupid real life money on games like second life.

A long time ago i played Entropia universe which has a real cash economy. Didn't play there long, but it was an interesting concept.