Pay For Real Beer Using Virtual Skin

Now, I had a little trouble understanding this, mainly because it’s ridiculous, but here goes. You can now get a cash card that works in both a virtual gaming world and in the real world. There are huge ‘virtual world’ games out there called MMORPGs or ‘Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games’. The developers of one such world: ‘Project Entropia’, have started offering gamers a card that can be used in real life cash machines.

Unlike in the real world, money can be acquired in a number of ways on Calypso, a virtual world made up of two continents. For instance, you could be a virtual hunter and set about hacking down tiny marsupials with a 9ft machete. Depending on how drunk you are, you could then make a small, ratty Leatherface-style mask out of the skin OR you could sell it to a seamstress. The possibilities are endless. There are blacksmith’s charging people to repair weapons and even virtual estate agents. Imagine that, you escape reality because you’re a tosser, only to join an alternate one and choose to be a tosser all over again. Marvelous.

Last year Jon Jacobs or ‘Nerverdie’, as I’m sure his mum calls him, spent a whopping 1 million PEDs (the in-game currency) on a virtual space resort. That’s the equivalent of £56,200 in real money. Despite not spending his cash on a real Ferrari or 1,000 real prozzers Jon seems fairly placid. He plans develop the space station into a virtual night club through which the media can flog music and videos to gamers.

In 2005 nearly £90 million passed through the game and that is expected to more than double in 2006. Unsurprisingly some students gamers are using the virtual world as their main source of income. What the hell am I doing? I’m going to become a virtual rent-boy immediately blow and pixelly penises all over planet Calypso. I’m then going to get high on virtual crack and stick my head in virtual sand for the rest of my life.