This is a couple of months old, but I’m guessing you’ll forgive me. I don’t have much time for video games (I have more fun writing this blog ) so news items like this take a little while to ping my radar.

Some of you may already be familiar with an online game called “Second Life”. It’s been around quite some time, but it has a few unique features that separate it from the other products in its marketplace. The main distinction feature is that the company who maintains the game also provides its users with the programming tools required to further develop and add to the game itself.

Over the course of the game’s life, this has affected the way the game is played in a number of interesting ways, not the least of which is the spontaneous creation of an economy which has a real world impact to player’s wallets!

One of the game’s players is Ailin Graef, who plays a real estate developer in the game. She buys virtual properties, develops them and sells them. She then re-invests her profits into buying and developing even larger properties. And she just finished a million dollar year! Not a million “video game dollars.” REAL dollars. I don’t mean to keep repeating it that way, but it boggles the mind. This is one MILLION actual dollars selling real estate…real estate that only exists on a server and in people’s imaginations!

Graef’s company is called Anshe Chung Studios, and they have an actual physical office in Wuhan, China. They have a workforce of 25 people and soon are expanding to 50. By following the same principles used by real world real-estate developers, she has apparently cracked the old adage about real estate wide open(buy land, because they don’t make it anymore). Apparently they’re making more online every day! With less than a $10 initial investment and less than 3 years of time, Graef has created real wealth from literally nothing but pixels and bits.

I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of things will unfold in this arena as time goes on. I have to assume that at this point, the possibilities are literally endless. Pixels, bits…and profits?!?

Here’s a link to the original article:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162315.html