Futurismic

For the vast majority of readers here, I expect virtual economies consume very little of your meatspace money, if any at all. But some folk place a huge real-money value on intangible virtual items… via Cheryl Morgan comes news of a guy who just spuffed US$330,000 on a virtual space station in the Entropia Universe MMO:

Entropia Universe is well known for its “real cash economy,” where $1 can buy you 10 PEDs (Project Entropia dollars) in the virtual world. The Crystal Palace is a huge virtual space station that orbits the Planet Calypso.

Well the auction just ended, and one “lucky” man (Buzz “Erik” Lightyear) has just won the Crystal Palace for 3,300,000 PED. If you haven’t figured it already, that translates to $330,000 USD.

[...] the purchase may be strategic — the owner stands to make money off the shops, transactions, and activities that occur on his virtual space station. And if online gaming and virtual currency continue their growth trends in 2010, the man could potentially make his money back.

As pointed out, a purchase of that size currently screams “rich guy with money to waste on having fun”(which I can’t bring myself to begrudge entirely), especially if you look at the video clips of the space station’s interior (which looks a lot like a custom level for the Doom engine, IMHO).

But virtual economies and entirely intangible businesses haven’t gone away, despite the headlines dying off periodically… I fully expect we’ll see more of this in the year to come.

Did you catch the story at BoingBoing about the guy who went and married his computer game girlfriend? The original link is all in Japanese, so details are scarce, but the young lady in question is a character from Love Plus, one of those “virtual girlfriend” games. [image by Ramona.Forcella]

Unsurprisingly, a peep at the comments thread reveals that it’s probably not quite everything it seems to be – Konami, makers of Love Plus, are quite savvy on reality-crossover marketing for these products, and I think we’re safe in assuming that the fellow in question may have been motivated by something more than a deep affection for a bundle of pixels on his Nintendo DS. The most notable thing about this story is how easily most readers seem to take it at face value.

I expect part of that has to do with the cultural mythology that surrounds Japan – much as I try to avoid it, it’s hard not to think of Japan as a country with some very alien cultural attitudes (which is ironic, given that anthropologists are often keen to point out how similar the sociocultural pressures in Japan are to those of the UK). But we’re also very accustomed to realistic and expressive avatars inhabiting computer simulations, and with a bit of research it’s probably not too hard for a well-funded development team to work out exactly which buttons to push in the mind of a player to produce the desired effect – be it tension, aggression or love.

Furthermore, people get married in Second Life and other metaverses, so a physical presence obviously isn’t a prerequisite for the required level of affection. Perhaps in countries with high population pressures and low numbers of eligible partners – China leaps immediately to mind – marrying an idoru will become more commonplace as the effectiveness of the artificial intelligences behind them increases? I’m sure that David Levy would agree with me on that…

Right, it’s Friday – so have some Martian landscape porn. A guy called Doug Ellison put this together to celebrate the Spirit rover’s third birthday… counting in Martian years, natch.

Pretty impressive, given it’s made purely from data collected by the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter and Spirit itself… as Paul McAuley says, it’ll not be long before there are versions that’ll allow you to explore the Red Planet at will, and Google Mars is getting pretty close.

And on the subject of Mars, there’s been more sightings of water ice, though it’s been somewhat overshadowed by the discovery of water on our nearer neighbour the Moon. Isn’t it high time we got to work on reducing price-to-orbit and actually going to these places in person?

An interesting discussion from Thomas Frey at the DaVinci Institute on at which point our individual identity merges with that of our avatars:

With each generation of avatar, they will become more life-like, growing in realism, pressing the limits of autonomy as we become more and more reliant on them for experiencing the world. The avatar will become an extension of ourselves. The pain that we feel is the same pain that they feel, and vice versa. Like symbiotic twins separated only by a dimension or two, we are destined to become one with our avatars.

Karl Schroeder explores a similar notion of avatars becoming extensions of ourselves in Lady of Mazes.

[via FutureBlogger][image from TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³]

Just in case you didn’t catch it over at Chairman Bruce’s pad, here’s the promo video for Cyber Figure Alice, an augmented reality game/pet/miniature girlfriend from Geisha Tokyo Entertainment Inc.:

Try to ignore the fact that the main selling point of this virtual girl appears to be that you can dress her up in a variety of outfits, look up her skirt and make her life a misery, and think of the somewhat more positive potentials of the same technology…

• The Lonely Planet people could sell AR add-ons or replacements for their ubiquitous guidebooks; instead of be-backpacked Europeans stood around in the zocalo staring into a book, you might see them wandering around wearing funny sunglasses and staring into the palm of their hand, asking questions about the cheapest hostel within staggering distance of the bar district.
• Home-schooled Christian kids could have a little desktop Moses to deliver moral guidance and lectures on why this or that particular website contains information that is not in accordance with Scripture.
• The DVD extras on the latest Kamigata Punx! tour promo video could include miniature members of the band who could be bought virtual drinks in exchange for squeaky-toned tales of backstage debauchery.

That said, it’s probably fair (if a little depressing) to expect that the original guilt-free tormentable schoolgirl version will be the killer app for some time. Cyber Figure Alice apparently launches later this year, so expect the over-moneyed single geeks in your social circle to spend even more time at home than they do currently…