I chose to single out Project Entropia and devout a full feature to it because it is a true game industry pioneer. For those of you that don't know, Project Entropia is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG). This genre has recently seen a boom in popularity and new games are released every month. Many of these games feature the same style and type of adventure through a word while gaining experience and new equipment. The reason why Project Entropia is such a breakthrough is because while the game is free to download and play you actually transfer real money into your virtual account to buy things online. This means that the game runs on a real world economy where you can invest money into the game and then also transfer your money back out. If you look at the history of the MMORPG market you can see that this was just a natural progression into the next generation of gaming.

Since the early days of MMORPG gaming the selling in-game items online has always been available. In the early days of game such as Everquest and the like items were constantly seen available through online auction houses like Ebay. There are in fact many sites dedicated only to the online the sale of in-game items (. Clearly since the early days paying real money to get ahead in a MMORPG game was a common practice. Project Entropia takes advantage of this old tactic and even takes it a step further.

While many of the most recent MMORPGs frown upon in-game items being sold (Blizzard cracks down on World of Warcraft Ebaying) Project Enbtropia encourages the practice, but only if you use your real money in-game. Recently the buzz surrounding Project Entropia included the sale of a plot of land in-game that sold for over $26,000 (Virtual Island Sells for $26,500). This step forward in the MMORPG Industry shows true innovation and also a unique way of handling the problems faced by many MMORPGs.

With this step forward it is interesting to consider what the next logical step will be in the ever growing community of MMORPGs. The only thing you should try to remember when playing Project Entropia is that you still are not being paid to play videogames.

-Seth (26-Jan-2005)

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