Yahoo ran this story earlier this week about a man who sold his virtual property inside the game Entropia Universe. This was top news at Yahoo because he sold it for $335,000! That's not virtual money but actual US currency! Stories like these show how the line between real and digital is being blurred. Yet is this story really that outrageous? When people buy things like digital music on itunes aren't you doing the samething?
This video explains the value virtual properties have in the games themselves:
When I first read this I thought it was kind of crazy but if people spend a majority of their time on these online communities it makes sense to invest in them. I am a gamer, though I rarely play MMORPGS (the kind of games where you can own virtual properties), but have seen the strong bonds that form over such communities. I guess a person's reality is what they chose it to be, and a virtual home maybe better to some than a real home.