Virtual Reality starts to cross over
As players in the Vitrtual Reality of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) start to trade Virtial property on ebay, and the Virtual economy starts to generate real business equivalent to the 19th largest economy in the world, MSNBC notes that disputes are starting to appear in real world courts: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6870901/

About a year ago, Wired columnist Julian Dibbell closed his one-year blog about working in the Virtual Ultima Online world to make a real income:
http://www.juliandibbell.com/playmoney/2003_04_01_playmoney_archive.html

He managed to bootstrap himself to a level of over $3,000 a month.

You could seriously, realisically consider this a career option now, but it comes with the same worries as any job - plus the possibility that the world you work in, along with all your earnings, could suddenly vanish in a hack attack or the collapse of the parent company. (Those of us who grew up in the cold war are familiar with this kind of overreaching dread.)

If anything validates the concept, it's the VR sweatshop. According to MSNBC, "Digital sweatshops, businesses where Third World laborers play online games 24/7 in order to create virtual goods that can be sold for cash, are also on the rise. One such business, Blacksnow Interactive, actually sued a virtual world's creator in 2002 for attempting to crack down on the practice'.

Welcome to the Ultimate Online Fantasy - this will be your cubicle.

- posted by Jonathan Hutchins @ 3:55 PM 0 comments