Virtual Worlds Forum

While at CES last week, I bumped into Jon Jacobs, who Entropia Universe users may know under his Neverdie moniker. He was there announcing Space Pirates, a $5 million treasure hunt within Entropia, which is due to launch this Autumn, as part of Entropia's expansion into virtual space. "There's going to be a gigantic array of new technologies that'll be used for building spaceships, creating armours that can survive in space," he says. "Spaceships are gonna require shields, furniture, warp drives! All of that stuff, people are going to be finding randomly, when they're doing stuff. Two years down the line, some of those things are gonna be worth $25,000 or more." The competition will be open to all Entropia users, although it'll clearly be an attractive promotional tool to attract new users too - Jacobs' own fame (he paid $100,000 for the asteroid on which his Club Neverdie is located, and more recently acquired a virtual bank licence for $90,000) will help. Jacobs thinks Space Pirates will be another boost to Entropia's popularity, particularly compared to rival virtual worlds. "This was the first, it really was," he says. "Second Life came along, and they were behind us. When I bought my asteroid, it was on the BBC front page. After that, Second Life hired some publicists, and... See, anybody can go into Second Life and just put their name on shit, but the reality is it has no intrinsic value, so it's kinda worthless at the end of the day! But it's worked out in the end, because it's raised awareness." Jacobs says that Entropia is going from strength to strength. "We've got the new graphics engines coming in the summer. It already looks good, but it's gonna look better! It's a very exciting platform, and it's way ahead of the competition." Club Neverdie website