The Great Space Robbery

Sometimes you wonder whether the world has gone completely mad, or whether it’s just you. This morning was one of those occasions, when I read a story on the BBC News website headlined ‘Billions Stolen In Online Robbery’. Crikey, I thought (yes, I have been known to think with the voice of Bertie Wooster). Billions stolen, you say? That must be one of the largest robberies ever, if not the largest – how odd that it hasn’t been all over the television and newspapers. I took the bait, followed the link… and discovered, perhaps inevitably, that the story wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d imagined.

 

You see, the theft was linked to Eve Online, a futuristic online trading game in the Second Life mould. No, I hadn’t heard of it either, but apparently it has something to do with players forming vast corporations and struggling for power. I can’t quite envisage how this plays out in real life, except for perhaps imagining players sat in front of their computers in a grim parody of Fry & Laurie’s Businessmen sketches: “Dammit John! Marjorie has seized control of the Praxis Nebula!”

 

The reality is somewhat less exciting than the fantasy, though, and although the player in question was responsible for the theft of 200 billion ‘kredits’ (the unit of currency apparently used in the game), in real terms it equates to about £3,115. Which is no small amount to have stolen, admittedly, but somewhat less adventurous than the headline to the story claimed. What it suggests, though, is that a large number of people have been investing real money in the game, and that’s the part that really leaves me baffled.

 

Perhaps in these times of the Credit Crunch, where we have little faith in our banks and financial institutions, some might argue it makes as much sense to invest our assets in virtual worlds as real ones. But, much as I enjoy videogames, I can’t envisage a scenario where I would ever be tempted to sink large amounts of real money into an online computer game. Okay, at some point I might pay to download an update to a game I own – but that’s a very different thing entirely, I’d say. It strikes me that someone has been rather clever in persuading gamers to part with real money to buy virtual cash in a fantasy world, and gamers have been rather foolish in rushing to do so.