Have you heard about Elon Musk's plans for Mars? Let me tell you something in confidence: You and I... We don't need that guy! The new world is already here! What about overpopulation? The rapid decline of our natural resources? Hah! Firlefanz! The guys from Earth2.io got you covered. Technically speaking, it's just a lame old video game. They've taken satellite images of our planet and put a 10 x 10 meters tile grid around the whole thing. At the start every user can buy tiles for a certain price. This price changes, the more tiles of a certain country get bought. That's Phase 1. In the second phase, every user will be able to gain resources from their tiles, which they then can use to build the house of their dreams in the final phase. So... what's the catch?
The current tile price does not equal the real market value
By Golly! $42,58 for a single tile in the USA? That's an increase of 42 478% from the starting price of $0.10. So, who bought Wallace, Idaho? Congrats to you, Sir! You've just made yourself a billion dollars! Which color do you want for your private jet? Flamingo pink... I see! Well, maybe you should wait before you order one. You can't just sell your property back to the game developers. They didn't want it in the first place. You have to find a fool, who's willing to buy it from you in the system's own marketplace. Otherwise, you'll only be able to brag to your friends and family about your in game Empire. Now, if you take a look inside said marketplace, you will get an idea of your real net worth. Kinda. Most of the listed tiles are being offered with a discount of more than 20%. And there's no real transparency, so we actually have no idea, how fast they are selling or if they are selling at all. The price of every new tile will certainly rise with scarcity, but who knows if you'll ever get rid of them afterwards. It's still not foreseeable, if eventually every tile on this virtual planet will sell or if the market full of crazy investors will soon be saturated. I've still bought a few tiles of Wallace, Idaho... You never know!
How will they distribute resources in Phase 2?
Phase 2 is set to launch sometime this year. But who knows? Right now, the website is crashing every few minutes because the developers are surely stockpiling bags full money on their servers. The guest bathrooms are full already, so I've been told. How are we going to get some of that precious money? No Jack, they probably haven't had the time to buy themselves a good security system yet, but your just back out of prison, and I'm not going to watch after your cat again! And maybe we don't really have to cut holes in our stockings yet. The developers will be distributing natural resources over all the tiles. We don't know, what the distribution rate will be or what resources are going to be available. Maybe just dirt, maybe gold and oil. But before you start going full "W." and buy all tiles of Afghanistan, Iran and Irak, remember that we don't even know if they'll be represented 1:1 like on our real planet. So, in short: Nobody has any idea, what's going to happen and how that will affect your tile net worth.
A complete world in VR? Is the technology already here?
The team of Earth2.io consists of true visioners (any "Siedlers" fans out there?), that's for sure. They want Earth2.io to become a virtual reality that you can actually visit. In a few years, so they say, you'll be able to walk through your oil fields, Antarctica, and the brothel you build on your neighbors’ front lawn. This seems a bit far-fetched. Even though that guy with his perfectly trimmed rose bushes would totally deserve it! So Earth2.io is by itself an investment in future technologies. A risky one, some might say. You'd need a big server farm to run a whole simulated world in VR. We're probably not going to be too overwhelmed with the first results in Phase 3. So, don't hold on to your tiles for too long.
Also view my original article at Publish0x: