Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Real-World Financial Tips From Virtual World Investing Pros

by Chad Mumm on February 28, 2009 at 06:01 PM



With Wall Street in disgrace and the economy in a nosedive, where should the country turn for financial advice? Would you ever think gamers? Since 2003, players on the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) Entropia has been steadily building an economy that now boasts a daily turnover of $1.25 million per day. Entropia sports a real cash economy model of play where monetary units in the game (PEDs) have a fixed 10:1 exchange rate with the US Dollar and players use this currency to purchase anything from weapons and other items to pieces of virtual real estate. In fact, Club NEVERDIE, an asteroid space resort in the game, set a world record as the "Most Expensive Virtual Object" when it was purchased for $100,000 USD in 2007, an investment with an estimated value over $1 million USDs today. The game is free to join but like the real world, it often takes money to make money and many players treat gaming in Entropia like a job.

We had a chance to speak with some of those who have had tremendous success in the game (one player put his brother through college using his earnings) and they had a few words of advice for fallen Wall Street investors, who may have overlooked one of the core tenets of investing:

Related Links:

Tags: business, ces2009, economiccrisis, entropia, finance, recession, switchedvideo, video, wall st, WallSt

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular