>
> >From the "eBay is so weird" category, I recently had a friend tell
> me about the auctions related to online games such as Ultima and
> Everquest. People are using real-world money to buy fake money
> and imaginary objects in the game world, all so they can compete
> in the fashion their brain desires.
>
We work fairly closely with a number of the companies in
the games industry, and this has often been a topic of
discussion. This has been going on before eBay. There
are people who basically play these games for a living.
They start with a new character and play the game literally
8 hour a day, 5 or 6 days a week. Once the character
has a suitable level of experience they sell the character
and start over again. Once you get good at the games
you can make a reasonable living this way. By the way,
a good character can be sold for more than $10,000, but
I doubt these transactions occur on eBay (but, I could
be wrong).
--
Dr. Mark Green mark_at_cs.ualberta.ca
Professor (780) 492-4584
Director, Research Institute for Multimedia Systems (RIMS)
Department of Computing Science (780) 492-1071 (FAX)
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada
Received on Fri Oct 15 1999 - 13:55:14 BST