Speaking of the “Hot land values” trend, virtual property sales have themselves taken off. I don’t pretend to understand the extreme to which this is currently being taken, but when money’s no object I guess it’s… not an issue. And the big story over the past week has been the astronomically high price that a virtual space station fetched at auction: a cool US$100,000. Let’s say that again so no one thinks it’s a typo: a cool US$100,000.

There were some rumors that this was all a publicity stunt (which is why I didn’t bother mentioning it), but now the BBC News is carrying an online article that suggests it’s not the developer playing games. Here’s a few excerpts from the beeb news story:

The gamer who bought a virtual space station for $100,000 (£56,200) says he wants to turn it into a nightclub to change the face of entertainment.
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“I’m already in talks with some of the worlds biggest DJs about spinning live sets inside the nightclub,” he told the BBC News website.

“Gamers want to be entertained while they play, hunt, socialise and craft, and because of the real cash economy aspects of Project Entropia, they can afford to pay for their entertainment.”
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“I truly think that this will be the decade that gaming and virtual reality changes the face of popular culture,” said Neverdie.
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“Club Neverdie will enable the entertainment industry to reach inside virtual reality and target the gamer while he’s in his element, while also harnessing the economic power of the gamers to raise the quality level of the content on offer.”

Maybe this will motivate me or someone else to contact some indy filmmakers and set up a virtual movie theater (something I’d considered when Second Life added support for Quicktime). If virtual world residents will pay real money to watch pirated, first-run movies streaming into Second Life, I bet they’d pay to watch legitimate indie films and interact with the filmmakers as well.

via Blue’s News