Gamer buys virtual land

Now, here's a quite amazing sign of real value being attached to alternate-reality things - in this case, land. "A 22-year-old [Australian] gamer has spent $26,500 on an island that exists only in a computer role-playing game," the BBC reports. The island's in a role-playing online game called Project Entropia; it's called a "massively multiplayer game" because thousands of people play it worldwide. "Entropia allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash, while fans of other titles often use auction site eBay to sell their virtual wares," according to the BBC. "Earlier this year economists calculated that these massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia."

There's been a ton of gaming news of late, BTW: Here's a fascinating profile in the New York Times of electronic toymaker Jeri Ellsworth of Yamhill, Ore. Besides a lot of fun, "her efforts in reverse-engineering old computers and giving them new life inside modern custom chips has already earned her a cult following among small groups of 'retro' personal computer enthusiasts," among other things besides personal wealth (as yet), the Times adds. In Australia, "the rise of broadband Internet at home means more folks are having a crack at online gaming - but the learning curve can be steep." So Aussie ISP Netspace "has come up with Gameschool, a free service designed to attract more people to online gaming," Australian IT reports. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an at-a-glance gaming guide adding that many of the title are simply not geared for kids. And the New York Times describes the latest gamer gotta-have-it gadget: the Nintendo DS with two display screens, two microprocessors "to handle the color game graphics and the machine's many other functions," and slots for two kinds of game cartridges.