By: Tateru Nino
19 December, 2009
I get asked why people buy/rent/lease virtual land a lot. It’s both a tough question to answer and an easy one at the same time.
Having virtual land is like most people having a front yard.
The common-case front yard is costly to maintain over time. There are expenses involved, both monetary and in upkeep time. And then what? It doesn’t actually do anything except sit there. You can stand on it. Sit in it. The neighbors can appreciate the work (or lack of work) that you put in it.
And that’s about it. Maybe, with a local council permit you can put a lemonade stand or microscopic business venture on it.
Why have a front yard at all? In most cases, it’s either just extra space, or raw self-expression. Or both. The parallels between that sort of use and virtual land are very strong, though.
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Very astute!
Depends on the front yard.
and I host my own virtual land both at home (cost free) and on a coupla vps (at fairly decent rates as far as virt priv servers go)
As a child my friends and me could play touch football both out back and in the front yard at one of the houses my family lived in. Another house, in a State with much higher property costs, we could only water the flowers and bushes, not enough room to really play at anything. That’s what the street was for.
At my grandparents retirement home we could play a regulation version of baseball, the yard was so large.
As an adult, I don’t have a front yard, just a backyard for bbqing (Live in an apt, mgmt maintains the actual yard to boot
But the question remains, why?
And I really don’t have good answer for that at present.
Guess it depends on the use case :-p
Wonderful question nonetheless.