Remember Entropia Universe, a niche MMO launched in 2003 where players can buy and sell in-game items for real cash? You'd only really read about it when there was a breathless report about another record Entropia Universe sale — like this one, from 2010:
How much would you pay for a string of ones and zeroes? How about a string of ones and zeroes that grossed you $200,000 a year? Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs made history by selling virtual property for a reported total of $635,000. Club Neverdie is a virtual asteroid in the online game Entropia.
… but despite all that money being spent on virtual items in Entropia, hardly anyone seemed to actually be playing Entropia — then, or now. (Entropia currently counts less than 100,000 players, according to MMO Populations.)
That very same thing seems to be happening again, with a new NFT/Metaverse spin. For instance, most recently:
A mega yacht just sold for around $650,000, making it the most expensive non-fungible token ever sold in The Sandbox virtual gaming world. The Metaflower Super Mega Yacht was purchased for 149 ether, according to etherscan. It is described as an ultra-luxury megayacht, featuring a DJ booth, two helipads, and a hot tub, among other amenities.
But again, hardly anyone seems to be actually playing The Sandbox:
In 2021, Sandbox's user base has grown five-fold, reaching 500,000 wallets. It also has over 30,000 monthly active users, about half of whom spend more than an hour per day on the metaverse.
Emphasis mine, because wow. As with both worlds, it's likely that the only people with the most incentive to play in them are those who've paid the most to own items there. And in both cases, the press uncritically reports the high purchase prices without ever asking whether a virtual item is actually valuable if only a vanishingly small number of people believe it to be.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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