Metaplace Now Coins Spacebux

Jump starting a virtual world economy

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

While real world economists attempt to unfreeze the global financial system with fiscal stimulus plans, handouts to the needy, and anything else that might stimulate demand, the game gods of Metaplace are in the process of stimulating their own virtual economy - and move from the free-goods-for-all early beta phase into a market-based world.

Over the last few weeks, Metaplace added a virtual currency - originally called “gold” but now named “coins” - and players watched as they magically coined spacebux while visiting and rating other player’s worlds and other normal parts of MP gameplay.

To date, the in-game marketplace has not included a mechanism to charge for user-created content. This is all about to change according to Cuppycake - the MP community manager - and in the next few days there will be charges for both publishing items to the marketplace (250 coins), and a commission fee on sales of virtual goods (25 coins or 10% - whichever is greater).

The coin discussion in the Metaplace forum has raised some interesting issues - will new players start out with enough coin to make a world? could there be a “try-before-you-buy” feature? when will players be able to give coins to each other?

Unlike the Second Life experience, in Metaplace the community is small enough and the game gods are engaged enough that actual dialog occurs - see the metaplace forums. Look for a seller rating system to emerge based on player suggestions in these discussion - then look for this system to be gamed once the population grows beyond the early adopters.

There will certainly be some rough patches ahead, but with the MP virtual economy stimulus package underway we can all look forward to seeing how well MP can manage the virtual economy and avoid runaway spacebux inflation.

In the meantime, I’m considering working with Urizenus to set up a virtual meth lab - or perhaps consulting with Pappy Enoch about setting up a moonshine operation -- anything to make some serious coin. Everyone is going to need more spacebux to help pay for the real life economic bailout.

Comments

[Cuppycake]

Hey Pixeleen :) There's my elephant!

FYI, the beta forums are only viewable by those with a beta account. So the forums you linked won't be a very useful link! Hehe. :)

[deadlycodec]

No, you guys should grow some virtual cannabis. Everyone knows that virtual cannabis is like way better for you then virtual meth.

[deadlycodec]

THIS JUST IN:

Tizzers and I discovered this:
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/datasets/sldev2/versions/2.txt

IT'S ON IBM'S WEBSITE.
Alot of emails in there. LL employees and my own email (one of them) d3adlyc0d3c at gmail.com. This is just SCANDALOUS. SL users, your privacy has been violated.

[SusanC]

I wonder how long it'll be before there's Real Money Trading. (e.g. A pays B some US dollars outside of Metaplace; A creates some trivial and useless marketplace item; B buys the bogus marketplace item in order to transfer some coins to A).

The obvious way to do "try before you buy" is for the seller of the item to make a demo world which people can enter try it out. (Then if they want to incorporate the item into their own world, then have to buy it).

[SuezanneC Baskerville]

I'd just like to point out that "SusanC" is not me, nor, for that matter, am I them.

[Two Worlds]

Okay, I'm suing for copyright infringement. That is MY word--nobody can use it unless they're paying royalties!