'); //-->
Home
Help

Latest News

Related Coverage
Tenor of the times: Domingo goes on line

Prior coverage
Geeks go for guffaws

Film downloads nothing to stay home for

A safe place to sound off about race

Ultima indulges the yen for prime real estate

Web site + rock stars + activism = ?

'Home Page' documents on-line search for self

Web-site parody gets Bush reaction

OK, eBay, make way for Sotheby's

Filmmakers take on cyberspace

An on-line Louvre of the art of web design

Filmmaker goes Hollywood on Internet

When parents need answers, they turn to NetMom

MP3
Internet is a new road to rock stardom

To stop the violence, the play's the thing

Decordova exhibit plugs in to interactive computer art

Cybersmith logs off for the last time

Webbies promise awards, 'The Ultimate Bookmark

New cartoon series are truly interactive

Making a score in video games

At this site, everyone's a poet; cool things

'Star Wars' prequel brings fanboys out in full force

When friends become source of e-mail clutter

Related Links

Technology on Boston.com

Technology news

"Plugged In" section

Latest News
Latest arts & entertainment news

Sections
Boston Globe Online: Page One
Nation | World
Metro | Region
Business
Sports
Living | Arts
Editorials

Weekly
Health | Science (Tue.)
Food (Wed.)
Calendar (Thu.)
Life at Home (Thu.)

Sunday
Automotive
Focus
Learning
Magazine
Real Estate
Travel

Local news
City Weekly
South Weekly
Globe West
North Weekly
NorthWest Weekly
NH Weekly

Features
Globe archives
Book Reviews
Book Swap
Columns
Comics
Crossword
Horoscopes
Death Notices
Lottery
Movie Reviews
Music Reviews
NetWatch weblog
Obituaries
Special Reports
Today's stories A-Z
TV & Radio
Weather

Classifieds
Autos
BostonWorks
Real Estate
Place an Ad


Buy a Globe photo

Help
E-mail addresses
Send us feedback

Alternative views
Low-graphics version
Acrobat version (.pdf)



The Boston Globe OnlineBoston.com Boston Globe Online / Living | Arts / Cyberlinks
Ultima indulges the yen for prime real estate

By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 08/20/99

For sale: One dream tower, prime location. Comes with pentagram, loom, spinning wheel, forge, anvil, and water trough. Current bid, $1,009.

The tower for sale on eBay would be a bargain by anyone's estimation, except for the tiny little fact that it doesn't actually exist. It's unreal estate, virtual property, a possession acquired in the fantasy role-playing game, Ultima Online. As of yesterday, there were 300 lots featuring Ultima property for sale on the popular auction site, with bids ranging from $5 to an astonishing $10,100.

There's nothing all that jaw-dropping about people paying to play; folks routinely drop a sizeable chunk of change to walk the links or to pull the bar at the slot machines. But the odd thing here is that folks are dishing out cold cash to buy status and power in a virtual world. Forget the down payment on the real house: They want to occupy luxurious digs in a universe where they pretend to be warriors and warlocks.

In the best-selling Internet game, players assume characters who hone professional skills to accumulate gold, acquire property, do a little swashbuckling, and slay a monster or two. The game has more than 130,000 active players, and the housing situation is getting tight in Ultima fantasyland. Players have turned to eBay to buy and sell towers, houses, and other virtual possessions; some portfolios have traded for as much as $3,000.

''There's a long cultural history of people paying to support an obsession,'' says Jason Bell, producer of Ultima Online, which was created by Origin Systems in Austin, Texas. ''The game is immensely social, and it works the way real society does. You increase your skills to buy a bigger house. It's not about being a winner; it's about power and status.''

There are two kinds of people trading in this unreal estate market: folks who love the idea of the game but pay someone else to do the hard work, and folks who don't mind doing the work and are eager to trade it for someone else's money. Andrew Varga, for one, loves to play; he just needs money to pay for his books when he returns to the University of Guelph in Ontario this fall. The Toronto native is currently selling two lots on eBay: He's offering 1 million units of gold (Ultima currency) for $400, and he's selling a house full of stuff for $250.

''I figured, `Why not?''' says Varga. ''I stockpiled these things, and I need money for college. I don't see anything wrong with making a profit. I like the game, but the only reason I'm doing this is to make money. I think it's pretty hilarious.''

But isn't the point of playing the game actually earning the goods yourself? Isn't the act of playing supposed to be the fun part? What's going on here? We live in a society in which we pay others to make us thin, young, sexy, and healthy. Now it seems we are also paying others to help us have good, old-fashioned (albeit virtual) fun. And the phenomenon isn't limited to Ultima Online; yesterday three speculators on eBay were selling portfolios on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a virtual market based on the ups and downs of the film industry.

Is this the beginning of a virtual economy? We turned to Robert Reich, former secretary of labor, to answer that one. ''This move from an economy of three-dimensional objects to an economy of intangible things is not surprising,'' he says during an interview from his home on Cape Cod. ''But there is something else going on as well. Some people are extremely rich, and they are willing to spend their money on psychological or psychic thrills and comforts which seem exceedingly frivolous to the rest of us who don't have that kind of money. We are living in a new gilded age.''

One man's obsession is another man's profit. Ultima players are not only selling possessions; they're also hawking the skills they've spent hours building in the game, which is an on-line variation of Dungeons and Dragons. The more time you spend playing, the more skills you gain. One sale on eBay yesterday featured the following skills: tinkering and tailoring, stealthing and stealing, alchemy and anatomy, poisoning and healing. The bidding had already reached $1,750, and who knows? By the time the auction closes, maybe the seller will sweeten the deal by throwing in a virtual bridge.

How do you determine value in the gilded age of Internet auctions? Cyber artist Jeff Gates asked that question this summer when he posted an unusual offering on eBay. ''Information is the commodity of the new millennium,'' he wrote. ''What's stopping us from selling our own information? And to the highest bidder! My demographics are for sale! Find out what makes this almost middle-age artist and bureaucrat tick!''

Gates, who heads the new media initiative at the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian, views his eBay experiment as a kind of performance art. ''As an artist, I'm interested in the value of art, and I also wanted to talk about the notion of privacy,'' he says. Alas, his auction attracted plenty of attention, but no one was interested in paying for his statistics. Not to worry: He's going to print out his original auction page and turn it into a fine art print. And then he'll try to sell that. You never know: It might be the perfect thing to hang over the spinning wheel in the virtual tower.

This story ran on page D08 of the Boston Globe on 08/20/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.


Click here for advertiser information

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
Boston Globe Extranet
Extending our newspaper services to the web
Return to the home page
of The Globe Online