I Quit My Job To Try and Make a Living in the Metaverse
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Entropia Universe is one of the oldest real cash economy MMORPGs. Known as a game that allows you to make money playing it, the developers even state that players are able to make a living by playing the game! But just how true is that? I took a week off from my real job to try and find if you truly can make real money playing Entropia Universe. And if I can't make money, at least I'll have fun. Right? RIGHT?!
The results will not surprise you.
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#entropiauniverse #playtoearn #mmorpg
Thanks for watching. Many of you have been asking for me to play this game ever since I started my channel, sorry it took so long to get around to it! Have you ever played Entropia Universe before? What was your experience? Do you think the game is more of a casino than a traditional video game? And do you think that's OK, or should it be more heavily regulated?
Let me know your thoughts!
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Regulated or not, and much like with real casinos, i'm not gonna touch these types of games that are made with the intent to scam.
I played this game once out of curiosity. After playing for several hours I earned .5 cents, which the game immediately wanted me to spend on ammo. I realized this was just not fun and that I’d have more fun doing art commissions for a slightly more reasonable rate, so I stopped playing.
Your chat with the self-professed gambling addict was kinda sad. Not just hearing about his losses and addiction (which, by his stil being there seems unaddressed).
The low player count combined with the obvious casino-esque nature of the game to the point of players developing gambling addictions was the saddest part.
It made me think, "So 67 employees (according to LinkedIn) are just making their paychecks for year after year by slowly draining a few thousand gambling addicts for their last pennies and leaving a wake of destroyed lives behind. No one's even getting proper rich. It's just a big, boring and depressing slimy casino leech, keeping itself alive for the sake of keeping itself alive. How fucking sad is this? "
How do you even afford $50 an hour to play !??? Unless you are Rich in the 1st place ! 😢
Cover LORDS MOBILE, can play it on PC also... I am now 8 years Free to Play after I originally was bored as fk in LOCKDOWNS and gradually added up over 10k without even noticing it... Still have the account cos wtf else am I gonna do with it... my 1st and last mobile game ever.. 🎮 I want my PS1 again
.. shitty medal of Honor games are better than today
I remember one time i was sweating for PED in Entropia. Some kids came up to me and were like "Why are you so obsessed with PED? Are you some kind of PED-ophile?" and shoved me to the ground. I was hurt, not just in game, but emotionally too. I retreated to my ship and had a quick, sad FAP, healing my in game wounds, but not the emotional ones. I never played Entropia Universe again after that, I just couldn't face the other bots after suffering such humiliation.
The hell did I just read lol.
So many words so little sense
Y'all hating he's spitting
this is truly a certified entropic moment
did u at least get some Boorum D?
"Entropia isn't a gambling game, it's a skill based game, and to prove it let me tell you about a bike accident I had. I took a risk to ride my bike, just like everything in life is a risk, right? Doesn't that prove that Entropia is fair and totally not a gambling simulator?!"
Fuckin wat
this is Chewbacca.
Chewbacca is a Wookie from the planet Kashyyk.
But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
This is what talking to a conspiracy theorist sounds like ngl
@@HappyBeezerStudios *insert standing ovation here*
@@HappyBeezerStudiosdamn thats really really good. Too bad Jauwn wont respond to this because your argument is perfect
'sweating' has to be one of the most unintentionally funny and miserable concepts i have ever seen in a video game
they literally created Sweatshop: The Game
often misused by sweats mad that other sweats are better than them
I actually heard Sweat Circle and was scared that he was being brought to a sweat shop or something...turns it it wasn't that far off.
Fort Sisyphus is a VERY appropriate name for the place you keep getting sent back to when you die in this miserable game.
Had I noticed that was the name it would’ve been a perfect place to insert a meme using Me and the Birds by Duster
@@jauwnone must imagine Sisyphus happy
@@doug9779One must imagine Sisyphus gaming
@@noodlepoodle3582one must imagine Sisyphus sweating
@@papasuamae4302 One must imagine Jauwn sweating.
90% of entropia players quit right before they get that zillion ped jackpot 😔
lol that’s what a lot of gamblers say. “Don’t quit before you hit big!”
Sounds like a sunk cost fallacy though
@@HiGlowie en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
@@StavDev Holy shit, that's a thing?
@@anormalphantom130 Yeah, I just learned those existed a week ago
@@HiGlowie My favorite NPC line: "I won $500 off a scratcher!!!"
I love it even more when their friends ask them how much they've spent, really sinks in that sunk cost for a sliver of that back.
I love the CEO's explanation, "it's absolutely not gambling, BUT in a way, when you think about it, isn't EVERYTHING gambling? In fact most gambling is much WORSE than any gambling you would do in our game... So it's NOT gambling, but if it WAS then it would be fine"
It's like watching the devil do his thing in real time. He always makes evil sound like something it's not
"so (if everything is gambling), is your game gambling?" "...no." best part of the interview lmao
@@twocatsyelling723 yes cascading down the conceptual web and ladder is a fun game to muddle the mind.
This is textbook narcissism.
My his next "gamble" with his bike be a loosing one.
Can't wait until this genre of game makes it to VR. I want to stand in my living room absorbing sweat from a creature for 8 hours straight
Furries already do that.
After some time you will start praying that the vr headset starts burning your retinas
stand outside in ankle deep mud and 90° heat for the TRUE experience
those poor monsters must be so dehydrated :(
🤣🤣
You had no money, so a random guy you never met before put you into his car and started driving you to an unknown location that turned out to be a sweat "circle" where you preform unnecessary, mind-numbing labor for far too long only to receive pennies in compensation when you're finished?
Its almost a metaphor for something. Very bold of them to refer to this mechanic as a "sweat circle." Sounds eerily familiar to a term we have irl. Except that term actually generates a product at the end of the cycle even if that product is literal garbage a lot of the time.
I got no idea what that term is. Please tell me
@@ashimarulovesyou He's talking about sweat shops and how people get roped into them. Though honestly, the reality behind them is usually much more horrifying than "greasy scammer sees an opportunity and hides it under a nice demeanor and desire to help". Most people are either forced to work in the shops for NO pay after they were sold to the shop owner by human traffickers, or they are literal children who were sent to work by their parents to whatever job they could get (i.e. sweatshops) because the family is literally on the verge of starvation.
@@hastur-thekinginyellow8115 holy crap. The paralel made by the game becomes so disturbing when you know that
@@hastur-thekinginyellow8115 Thank you for answering my question. That is truly disturbing. I have never heard of the existence of such human trafficking circles, truly tragic this still exists in this day and age. I guess I should’ve expected that those still exist though.
@@ashimarulovesyou In the 90s and early 00s was so common for manufacturer of sports equipments to appear in the news for using children slavery that was the joke that "That´s why their stitching is so good is made by baby hands" and sadly it never stops Nestle is once again facing charges of children kidnapping and slavery and even defended it saying "If we don't use slavery chocolate will be too expensive", but the really worse part is that many people now defends these companies usage of slavery or sweatshops, if you want an example just go look how people try to deflect any criticism about Shein is just mindnumbing
Heavy Weapons Guy playing this game:
"It cost $ 400,000 to fire this weapon...for twelve seconds."
You’re exaggerating, right?
@@zoetje9817 you can buy a real dragunov cheaper than you can for one in game...
@@zoetje9817 It's a reference to another game, that's a quote from it.
A soft warning about Entropia - They don't allow you to delete your account once it's been made no matter how hard I tried, so make absolutely sure not to share passwords with other accounts, and avoid using a primary email address.
I'm sure that's not allowed under EU law
@Sillimant_ Yeah probably not, might be able to send them a soft threat and get it deleted.
you definitely can delete your account lol
@@ThePuppetMaster33 must be very new because there was no option to do it automatically and there's no link for it in their website
@@elliejohnson2786 did it about 3 or 4 years ago
Jauwn's style is like the RUclips equivalent of some creepy homeless guy asking kids if they wana see something fucked up, and he takes them to where some rich asshole is pouring toxic waste into a creek.
Yeah a free video game making money off its players is definitely comparable
@@bigboysdotcom745 yeah and cigarette companies are just selling people leaves, it's ok
@@bigboysdotcom745 its more like sucking money out of gambling addicts
@@bigboysdotcom745 This is hardly a game. It's a glorified, unregulated casino with extra steps. It only makes money by exploiting people with problems.
It's pretty fucking slimy.
@@bigboysdotcom745 If your game only makes money by exploiting people with problems, it's pretty slimy
Imagine a third person shooter where you don't have the freedom to shoot.
Freedom cost $3.50
@@jauwn Imagine when playing Doom, when picking a couple of shotgun shells, a prompt would appear saying: "These shells cost 10 cents to pick up"
@@DarkOmegaMK2You joke, but one of the Activison CEOs actually brought up the idea to charge players real money per bullet in COD.
@@darienb1127 Wasn't that the same guy that did the whole drama involving the UNITY engine? Where they would charge developers on a "per install" basis.
@@DarkOmegaMK2 I think it might have been.
As a recovering gambling addict, that ending message with Richard is the most poetic thing I’ve ever seen in any media. I can imagine a version of For the Win by Cory Doctorow (a book about gold farmers from 2010 that’s hauntingly accurate to this day) where that’s the ending message of the whole book, as there’s a few sections of people wiping their whole bank account when investing in the markets of virtual economies.
It truly was. I'm so glad that I ran into him in the game, and that he was willing to let me share his story (anonymously, if it isn't obvious as I censored his name).
Perhaps the saddest part though, is that his message is a warning to me, that he hasn't been able to heed himself. He's sitting at the roulette table with me, telling me he hopes to never see me again. Make the choice he couldn't.
@@jauwndamn this is actually sad
@jauwn hope he actually got a good reward for the amount of money ( bullets) he used carrying you through the "dungeon".
If you are over level 10 you get no reward from the dungeon
@@jauwn this scam doesn't stop punching players...
Play to Earn is basically "Pay to Earn", but it will never pay out to you. Made to bring in money for the company hosting the game. Like a casino.
It's actually: Pay to Earn less than minimum wage on average.
Play game! Earn money! Get laid!
Disclaimer: You are neither entitled to make money nor get laid, the act of playing does not constitute a legal binding agreement, all sales are final, gfy.
The only way you could fathomably make anything playing these games is being a sharecropping scholar, which means someone else footed the bill and is going to get hosed when the whole thing collapses
Smart contracts could absolutely be used to enforce workers rights for scholars in these scenarios and they never will because crypto was never for the people and only belongs to those centralized at the top
@@druwu1801
Basically, it's a fancy pyramid scheme.
If it never paid out then no one would play it
Some kids want to grow up to be an astronaut, other maybe a fire fighter. But me? I wanna be a full time entropian gambler 💯
Degenerate at birth
Bahahaha!! 😂
@@jauwnwhy?
Read that again in ancient Swahili and edge 11 times while tipping your landlord. Few will understand.
@@jadonlimoges1830 smegma comeset
I was worried that once the NFT 'games' releases slowed down, the channel might fizzle out and stop. but after watching your meme stock video and this one, it's clear you're branching out and diversifying. your videos really brighten my day!
What kind words! Yep, I am trying a few different things to branch out to, while still coming back to NFT games every now and then. They're kind of dying off + it's always the same complaints every time. My next video will be a review of some really cool underrated games that I've been playing recently, so something completely different for once!
@@jauwn That sounds fun! I love hearing about hidden gems.
@@jauwn Hope you put starsector in that list. Ez hours of trying out new weapons on your ships thanks to mods.
Uy actually hope this fella actual goes AWAY from nft derivative content entirely.
Not only the algorithm mistakenly puts pro nft videos on my feed because of these videos, but because it attracts toxic grifters and "entrepreneurs" to the comment section and those little cliques can get a channel shut down with fake claims.
Good luck
"ya gotta diversify ya bonds nigga"=Wu-Tang Financial.
the gall to call a location "fort sisyphus" in a game where you have to do a ridiculous grind to get any kind of money out of it at all while attritious mechanics constantly eat away at it is a bold move.
The game is openly mocking its players at every turn.
Even funnier is that that location is where you get sent when you die, representing the boulder falling down again and again
I'm shocked Richard still plays considering he says he's in therapy for his addiction. Surely this game, which was feeding his gambling addiction and still is feeding it, would have been the first thing a therapist would tell him he needs to cash out and stop playing. But at least he's warning others how bad it will get instead of trying to drag you into the bucket with him.
It's very... sad.
And he can't even cash out until he earns at least 100 USD, i.e. 1000 PED.
It's like seeing a heroin addict out on the street telling you not to do heroin... while doing heroin.
@@doubleaabattery7562
Oh mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun
@@doubleaabattery7562 This behaviour is so much common with smoking addicts. They will always tell you to not start smoking byt smoke anyway bcs they are so deep in this addiction.
@@heidihoffman1231 Oh damn, having the video end with the "richard" quote on screen as house of the rising sun fades in would be amazing. Too bad that the licencing cost would probably be ridiculous.
Dude that intermission was a breath of fresh air. unique, aesthetically pleasing, and filled a purpose
Which one did you like the most?
@@jauwnthe second one but not by much, I just personally found it a bit funnier. they kind of compliment each other!
@@jauwnIt fills the niche that DisruptTV’s editing left behind when he tried to scam people but less intense
Def Sam Hyde inspired. I can’t talk shit tho that’s how I edit.
i really feel bad for Richard, i hope he recovers, mentally and financially
I really hope he was only on the game because he had left over ammo or items from spending money but I doubt it.
@@SirFlooberis Best case scenario would be he is working with a therapist and winding down on engagement with the game. Setting and acheiving behavioral goals.
(Going from spending 5 hours a day playing or spending $50 a day to playing 3 hours a day. Substituting those other 2 hours with a healthier behavior).
Are you for real? Im on his chanel for the first time, but if he needs mental recovery from playing shitty game for a few days, he should seek profesional help and avoid videogames...
@@ElnoSVK You've clearly never had an addiction, I'm not going to try to argue
@@ElnoSVKthat's like saying if I was to stop my alcohol addiction, I should just avoid drinking alcohol entirely. That doesn't make any sense.
That's what addiction does to you. Just simply avoiding it is already difficult enoigh because you're already addicted to it, forcing you to play it even though you don't want to.
Getting professional help is a step in the right direction. But overcoming addiction isn't as simple as a few days or a week's worth of abstinence.
I’m glad to see this covered. Pay to earn has always been a stupid concept because it’s only ever been successful in gambling, I’m glad you’re showing not just nft games can be scams, normal ones too!
I can see pay to earn having a spot, but not as a replacement for full time jobs etc. Plus like shown with the NFT games leaving the in-game economy up to the player base is never a good idea since you will have those chasing after the quick buck raising everything which just makes it harder for newcomers to go in and enjoy.
As a fan of JRPG's I myself probably wouldn't mind too much of a grind every now and then for a tiny passive income with some free time, but if I try to make that passive income into my main source then at that point the game becomes less about fun and more gambling.
I remember Microsoft tried to do a similar approach to encourage people to use Bing. Working as a tutor at the time when I had free time between people coming in I would fire up Bing and just search random keywords. Eventually I built enough points to redeem a free Amazon gift card ( think it was like $5 over the course of a few months lol). Taking that concept to games I could see be rewarding, but the way Entropia has to where you need to invest first if you want to potentially see any income. Also just how predatory the gameplay is ( charging for everything) when it doesn't even look that fun.
When your MMO makes Runescape look generous and unintrusive with its monetisation, you know something's gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Thank you for covering this.
I have never played entropia... But I did sink many hours into second life, and I was able to pay my rent with that game... But only because I built things and cities and sold goods, that I created
Yep. You're actually creating something new, and adding value. In Entropia, 99% of the content is created by the Devs, you're just buying it from them and then trying to sell it back to players for a markup
@@jauwn But collecting SWEAT surely is the most gratifying experience in gaming, isn't it?
Fucking... SWEAT!
@@DarkOmegaMK2sweating allows you to fap, so obviously it is gratifying lol.
@@TheCommanderTaco Another mechanic in this game: When you FAP enough, your healing kit reach CUM status, while in this status, your healing is 50% more effective has an area of effect, meaning you want to have a lot of people gathered together to maximize your cumming.
So, when you have the effect you usually wanna greet everyone with "I'M CUMMING" and people will flock together to your location.
@@TheCommanderTaco It's usually the other way around though
I hope Richard got out. Shit like this terrifies me because I am EXTREMELY vulnerable to this sort of predatory shit thanks to my cocktail of trauma and brain chemistry. I quit gatcha games altogether before I got in too deep, and it's cut me off from a number of games that could've been good if it wasn't for that. And unfortunately, that doesn't really prevent me from stumbling into a game with gambling in it, because the ESRB and the gaming industry is doing everything within its power to avoid labeling microtransactions and lootboxes as such. It sucks ass.
Not being able to experience expensive titles hurts but there's more than enough AA, A or indie games out there with no gacha or even any microtransactions. I really recommend diving into them than thinking about what you're "missing out on". There are more games than one person can complete in all their lifetime. A lot of them are life services with events going on right now, so you're bound to miss out on something. It's part of life and the soonest one accepts that, the better.
@@hakayonder3396 I'm aware of that, but that wasn't really the point of my comment at all. The existence of good games without those shit aspects doesn't make it not suck that those games do exist. Of course I'm not trying to play every game ever, but it sure as hell sucks to start playing a game, have fun with it, then realize that it's infested with things like microtransactions, gatcha, battlepasses, or whatever else that are outright built to prey on people like me to get them addicted.
Funny thing about Entropia is that it predates all the metaverse trends, and even the crypto craze (was first released several years before Bitcoin was invented). Yet it still has all the pitfalls of the modern Metaverse.
Bro picked you up and dropped you off at a L I T E R A L sweatshop.
Also that place being called "Fort Sisyphus" is way too on the nose, jfc.
No way 😂 i didn’t even notice that
This video is actually a really good example of how boring "earning money" in video games are. I used to be in one of WoW teams that grinds item for it to be sold in the internet. Maybe you should try how it feels to actually be one of the "teams" lol
like BoE farming? ive done my fair share of that
We used to own a diablo 2 store. Luckily d2jsp exists. Made that game a full time job. I've literally sold .07 patched perms for 5k for one item. That game made the perfect loot system for making money. Still play, thinking of selling my 2004 jsp account. People offered decent money
It feels nostalgic to see someone make the same journey and reach the same conclusions I did some 14 years ago. Of course, still being a teen then, it took me a couple weeks of playtime to realize the gist of how the game is actually ticking. I was pretty deep in denial about it, dropped 100 dollars on it. Finally, one day I¨ve had enough, went to the sweating camp and threw all my stuff away to the newbies. Never touched the game again and didn't even really hear about it til now.
34:52 I love the abrupt transition from "disinterested narrator" to a man deeply incensed by the blatant exploitation of people with gambling addictions. And then of course, the We'll Be Right Back gag interrupting the rant.
The sweat collection thing seems to be custom-designed to be as humiliating as possible.
I wonder if it was designed to psychologically abuse players into spending money or if I am overthinking this and it was just a mean spirited troll towards the "peasants" from the devs.
And they even called it fuggin' "Fort S*ssy p*ss" LOL.
So based on that 2 dollars an hour cost I did some quick numbers: if you played for 8 hours a day every day, 1 month will cost $480 at a rate of $16 per day. If you played this more like a regular MMO and only played 3 hour sessions only 20 days out of a month, you'd be paying $120. For the sake of comparison the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV costs $13 a month, less than the price of 8 hours of playing Entropia.
and you propably could make more money by becoming "land lord" and rmt houses in ff14
And now factor in the electricity cost. And unlike most games, you don't trade your money against fun.
Honestly, that is less profitable than mining crypto, and that says something.
Richard was a real one
Hopefully hes doing better with his gambling problem
When you said the name of the game was "Entropia" that was basically all I needed to hear. For those who might not know, "entropy" is defined as: lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
Played this for maybe an hour 15 years ago or something like that. Quickly ran out of ammo, learned what sweating was, found it to be a special kind of torture, dropped the game and never went back. As a child the idea that I could somehow make money from nothing was obviously very appealing. There were a lot of epicly written stories online about how a player made $300k off drops or something, bought a space station and a house IRL, that sort of thing. As a kid I just believed that, hey, maybe with enough time and effort, that could be me! But then the reality of staring at a fat dinosaurs ass for 3 hours to buy enough ammo to kill a couple of robots set in, and I quickly went back to playing real games.
Its a shame this content appears to have such a niche viewerbase.
You have pretty cool editing and your commentary and approach always keeps me involved in the videos from beginning to end.
Here's to seeing this channel reach higher peaks of success (:.
need you to know that i love the editing style of your videos with my whole heart, scratches a good itch in my brain
a fundamental flaw with "play to earn" is that it converts what should be a fun hobby into a job, thus removing the fun from it and defeating the entire point of gaming.
and of course you make so little money that it's entirely worthless.
"Until I have more PED to FAP again" had me in tears since ped is short for pedo in my language lmao. Also I love how you went full on AVGN at the end
I actually have fond memories of this game --- it was my very first MMO, back in the Project Entropia days. I don't think I ever spent any money on it, although it was a while ago so I may have dropped £10 on it, once. There were no quests at all back then and I quickly got bored with shooting at things. I ended up stripping as completely naked as the game allowed to avoid death degradation and ended up having a surprising amount of fun just exploring the map and sneaking past ridiculously high level monsters. One thing I remembered was that the people there were really nice --- civil and helpful. Except, they were also utterly boring. The _only_ thing they ever talked about was cycling. (It's tempting to use melee weapons to avoid buying ammo, except melee weapons degrade so much faster than ranged weapons that the ranged weapons are more cost-effective!) Eventually I gave up and went to City of Heroes, which I still miss to this day.
Just gone and looked --- my account still exists! From 2003! Yikes. My transaction history is empty and I didn't seem to have registered my bank account or credit card details. It says I have three items; two Christmas freebies (worth 0.01 PED each) and the VSE. One thing I noticed is that there seems to be a deposit limit of 1000 PED per 30 rolling days, but that seems to be something I can choose --- so there's at least a token anti-addiction feature.
Also, looking at the webshop, I see four grades of starter pack, ranging from $5 to $75, but the $5 one has worse gear than the $75 one, rather than just having less ammo. Which is pretty screwed up. And there are also lootboxes at $1 a pop.
City of heroes was my JAM
Regarding the starter gear - the consensus seems to be any less than the $30 is a waste of money, and if you’re getting the $30 why not just get the $75 one?
Lol
@@jauwnThe $70 starter pack really only costs you about $5, the value you get out of it is immeasurable. Something not mentioned frequently is that all the high level players depo through the webshop purchasing $70 Platinum Packs.
Can’t wait to see how the metaverse game of the week will baffle me this time
you honestly might be right about that whole bot thing
at 13:07 the player you were joking was just a misplaced bot was actually holding the sweat gun, so they probably just macro'd their gun and maybe got booted somehow to the starting hub. (31:00 for the sweat circle context)
Funnily enough Peaches is a real player, she likes to hang around doing sweating so she was probably swunting that day, just caught her afk with her E held down for autofire
Boreas is a mix bag as its usually 50-50 when it comes to bots, sweat circles like royal club dont normally have many bots
30:42 Is when the words "this is completely absurd" slip out of my mouth after having pulled another all-nighter watching whatever this website puts in front of my eye holes.
“The only skill is choosing whether or not to play the game”. Hit it in the head, good video :)
It’s sad that stories like Richard’s only become more common as video game publishers find new ways to make you pay forever.
I played entropia for 12 years i can tell you that after the explosive bp update you cant cycle and you will always loose. No matter what you do.
Why thi shappen was basically the whales stopping to buy hides and ores when thry could just spend the wheel on the trade terminal.
This made everything on the market go to minimum price this meant that people selling loot was loosing money.
12..years..?
you mention the minimium 1ped price, but forget the .50 ped auction fee too
35:55 oh God... that is the saddest goodbye I've seen in a while
I hope "Richard" could recover from gambling addiction
36:40 It should always be a red flag when someone says "skill-based game." That is a term that never comes up naturally in any conversation, and the only people who choose to bring it up are people trying very hard to convince people what they are doing isn't gambling.
All of this comes back to gambling laws which, at least in the US, often contain exceptions for gaming that isn't based on chance, but is instead based on skill, and so the corporations behind casinos, sports betting, and other gambling companies are very very keen on convincing people their products are a game of skill, not chance, otherwise they might not be legal in some places, or would be much more strictly regulated in other places.
Have you ever heard of the pinball wizard? Yeah
I can’t believe this guy quit his job for a week to live in the meta verse!!!
But which metaverse? 🤔 Meta's metaverse or someone else's?
I can’t believe this guy quit his job for 2 years to live in the brokie verse!
“I-I-I just bought more land in the metaverse”
@@Nathan_Coleyobviously someone else's because paying people to stand in their virtual land is better then standing on real land for free lol.
@@Nathan_Coley According to the metaverse fanbois every 3D MMO is part of "teh Metaverse" since you move around with an avatar meeting other people.
I remember in the heady days of EverQuest, between graduating collage and actually getting a job with my shiny new netadmin diploma, I paid the rent for a good 6 months farming the living shit out of Siren's Ghetto....er...Grotto. A water-based dungeon in the 3rd EQ expansion Scars of Velious that 99% of players ignored except to pass through the top of it to reach Veeshan's Lair and the other top-end zones of Velious. Except the zone contained a rare spawn that dropped both the best Bard-class drums in the game at the time (Drums of the Beast) allowing the fastest running speed in the game, and a sword that procced a 12% haste buff even on a level 1 character (Wavecrasher) making it one of the best 'twinking' weapons in the game for melee classes. As a necromancer I was easily able to control the spawns in the area and farmed the ghetto for 8 hours a day usually ending up with at least 1 of these 2 items that I was able to sell in first the EC Commons and then the Bazzaar on my alternate selling character, and sell the resulting gold for about $1000 a month, about $2200 a month in today's money. Easily enough to cover rent and food for me, my wife and 2 small kids. Not too shabby! But those days are long gone.
PED? FAP? This game has a thing for unfortunate acronyms.
24:58 "Fort Sisyphus" come on, now they're just rubbing it in our faces
Haha, god. As soon as you started talking about obscure games that used real money I thought to myself "haha, I wish Project Entropia had made it to the modern stupid era" and LO AND BEHOLD. I just found my beta CD of this a few months back when cleaning my office
The thing about games that allow players to withdraw money is that there is no grey area. As soon as you can make money off of a game, someone will turn it into a casino, whether the developers want it or not. Best case scenario, it's a "job" with random payoff if the proportion of payers per grifter is high enough.
Definitely took a look at this back when I was a dumb teen, pre-09 engine switch. I was broke but found the ideas fascinating... Keep in mind, back in the early 00s we weren't inundated with NFT games, trading demographic data, or internet scams in general yet, and even the concept of a "free to play" MMO that didn't look like RuneScape was kind of mind blowing. We didn't really have any other examples to look to yet, so I completely fell for the promise of making cash by gaming. I'm only lucky I was still a high schooler with no cash *to* blow on it.
Even in 2004, the premier new player experience was Sweating, and it was the largest group of players I ever saw then as well. Kind of amazing how they have this new graphics engine and the contained tutorial area and everything now, but some things never change.
Entropia Universe uses similar mechanics to a casino - with the resources you buy to do a task the 'bet' and the result of the task the payout.
Can you make a living as a customer at a Casino? Technically yes, but not typically.
And if you do too well they ask you to stop; on a good day.
Would love to see how you manage trading in a casino..
"Buying 1$ chips 80c" 😅
I remember this game! I played back in 2007 when it was still called Project Entropia. Shit I still call it that. It was in the Gamebreo Engine. No day night cycle, no working stock market, no vehicles, no weather and they barely installed fruit and dung. I wouldn't pay a dime into this game and what we mostly did was dance in the street naked. Sweating was a free magic ability everyone had. You did it bare handed by holding right click on a monster. You did a weird chanting dance then a sweat beam would shoot out. The only skill you gained from it was meditation which you maxed at 3. Don't know if it did anything. Back then everything you did gave you skill points. I had a Jester D-1 rifle. Shooting it gave me rifle skills, aiming skills, dexterity, bravado and I don't know if it actually did anything. Dodging monsters do give you dodge and agility points and taking hits gave you body and health points. Of all the skills I trained in those actually did work. I was dodging weak monsters easier, health did increase by (gasp) one and I took less damage. It was free to train those skills. Just run up to a weak mob and let him beat you up. I think about a year in I started adapting a more trader mindset. They want you to play the slots, but I refused. I started sweating and sold for a PEC each. I held it and kept sweating till I had about close to ten PED. Then I started buying sweat at the sweat farm. I'd stand around calling out my price as a sweat dealer. Which I would sell thousands of bottles to someone for a profit. Eventually I got into making and selling Mind Essence in auction house. The idea was to make money off the players not off the game. But playing as an NPC trader, standing around all day gets really boring so I eventually quit. I think I left about 100 something PED in there.
So, back when this game started that would be about 1.5 hours of minimum wage.
Dang.
The fruit and dung I find quite often. The problem is -- it only becomes visible when you are REALLY close. And you often run right by it, so its easier to look backwards when running for it
I love that this game literally has Sweatshop mechanics with real sweat
About 3/4 into the video with all the explanations of the managements is reasons why I couldn't play certain jobs in FFXI.
Examples like BLU, SMN, Goldsmithing, and more.
Those examples though is TIME management and in game currency... you're talking about real money.
I'm shocked this game is decades old and not dead, but things like City of Heroes and such died so young.
RIP Tabula Rasa, and fuck NCSoft. At least there’s CoH emulation
No...is that a literal sweat shop? You can't make this shit up 😭
You know for a fact when the devs made sweat harvesting the free money maker for 20 cents an hour, they were inspired by sweatshops.
Dude my uncle used to do some weird shit to make money in EverQuest back in the day, still one of the oddest things I’ve seen someone do.
jauwn didn't even stand in line to get a drop of oil every half an hour. very disappointing.
(it's an actually unreal experience to stand in the queue for free oil. you end up seeing a full long af line of naked people cornered by armed guards, waiting to click on an oil rig only to return to the back of the line and do it again. I spent most of my time in entropia doing that tbh. sometimes you'd see people cutting in line and getting shot lol)
Jesus that’s dystopian
I'm morbidly curious how much more this video about Entropia Universe is going to make you, vs when you actually played the game for a week.
Considering that I would need at a minimum $100 in PED to cash out, which is all but impossible to get without spending money, infinitely more.
More since the video technically doesn't require a net negative to begin lol.
Say technically since it does require electricity ( obviously), and time ( which is considered money to some). Plus there are also no hidden transaction fees ( to my knowledge) he wouldn't have to worry about with youtube lol.
It's not so morbid to wonder about that, I wouldn't worry
Oh, that brings memories. Back in 2006 my (small) corp leader in EVE augmented his dead-end job income by reselling timecodes. It was significant, like 70% of his salary. Once he got scammed and we worked our legs off earning 2kkk isk to repay his debt. Fun times. Never paid for EVE too. Never aimed to earn some real money through it tho.
I just responded to another comment about EVE. I started playing in 2011 and it was such an amazing time, so nostalgic. Loved the game, not sure how it's doing now though.
P.S. Speaking of that crop of games, wasn't Vendetta Online flirting with real money economy too?
Never heard of it, unfortunately
@@delta-v4xNot that I’m aware of, but Vendetta IS a seriously impressive title, it being what it is.
@@delta-v4xwhy did the currency have to be kkk
Always nice to see another Jauwn upload, great stuff as usual!
Bro, I love how when you started comparing the game to a casino, you were playing the Sonic casino zone music in the background lmao Also a big fan of your artistic style. Love the motion graphics bro.
Your editing aesthetic is so cool, you should link up with a freaky breakcore webcore type producer and make their music videos
That would be fun
@@jauwn could you need some freaky breakcore webcore type music for your vids?
@TollsterMensch I usually just make all of my own music so I don’t have to worry about copyright. Or I use music from old SEGA and Sonic games because they’ve openly said they don’t care about copyright claims
@@jauwn ah, nice to hear a big company not being a dickass about it ha
I played before. I'm a strict non depositor. I DID start out sweating. Moved on to reselling, flipping items, getting free oil from the rig when it wasn't guarded... I think I made eventually 200-300ped I didn't have enough time to figure out to scale up from there I got busy with real life lol
Your channel has progressively gotten stronger, like your editing, delivery, and overall presentation flows very well and I can see you've gotten more comfortable with your kind of narration and style. Some of your videos now are like documentaries or journalism, and I think that's really cool.
The sad part is that practically all the "pay to earn", crypto, & blockchain games we see now are just cheap shovelware versions of games like this. To give Entropia Universe what little credit it deserves, it's the most high quality game of all the recent trend chasing garbage. Not that that's saying much, since the main thing it probably has over its "competitors" is a steady player base (not just braindead crypto/NFT farmers) & likely it's decent security. The last part is mostly because in its 20 years run, I've never heard of a major exploit. Unlike any crypto/NFT project that some hacker rugpulls before the creator (most likely) could themselves.
But is a steady player base of gambling addicts something to brag about keeping?
I guess it says something about the cheap NFT/crypto games that they couldn't succeed at making either a fun game or addictive gambling, but I'm not sure feeding addiction should be praised either.
@@prettyevil6662000 I do agree there. I was just trying to point it out as an "advantage" it has over those cheap pale imitation games. Plus as I said, the security is MUCH better than any Crypto/NFT game. And it's not promoting tossing around digital scraps of paper (what NFTs essentially are) as unregulated securities for way too much money. I don't think RMT (Real Money Trading) gambling has any place in online games. It's just more blatant about it than the loot boxes from just a few years ago. The only MMO where I do any kind of gambling, is in FF14's Gold Saucer. Since it has no RMT built in. Plus Square actively warns against any RMT between players.
@@prettyevil6662000I guess it is something to say "you did not fail at making a casino"
I do enjoy the Cruelty Squad soundtrack when talking about NFTs and crypto scams.
Only fitting
"it cost $400,000 to play this game, for 12 second"
- Heavy
I've watched all your videos over the past few weeks, and I gotta say that something about your approach with these games, your editing and your commentary is really fun to watch. Can't wait to see more content from you, whatever it is. :) Also the whole chat with Richard was genuinely sad, I hope he's gonna fully recover from his gambling addiction one day
I hate to say it but I love this game!. I found this game years ago when I got my first office job and wanted something to do in downtime that didn't take much input to keep it going. I treated myself to a starter kit because I had just got a new job paying a large amount for my area. I never put money in after that initial amount and have been playing it ever since. I just loved the weird worlds they had built and I loved exploring the world and visiting homes and the like it see what sort of odd things people had collected.
I joined corps and the like and met amazing players that also loved the game they held free hunts and other cool events and it was always a fun time to chat and show off finds and share stories of highs and lows. I did my fair share of sweating or standing around grabbing oil from pumps. The game is massive I have explored and died many times in space and took the giant motherships to other planets. This doesn't excuse the horrid rates and it being basically a casino at the end of the day. However it is not for everyone I chose not to interact with the money shops or deposits I just play to hang out in a weird little sci-fi world with others.
If you want to experience the game there are tons of corps that host events for players to do things like hunts and the like and you wont need to spend a dime! The thing is just play it as a videogame and don't go in with this idea you are going to become some millionaire or something. If you want to put money in go for it but seriously don't put it in with any expectation of an return and you will have a fine time if you enjoy the gameplay that it has.
All in all its a weird little niche game not many will like but that is fine I just hope that people will continue to try it and enjoy it for the game and not the chasing of monetary gains.
Glad the game was seen on the channel. Thanks for stopping in even if it wasn't for you. ❤
I recently just joined and I’m the same but I’m totally F2P at the moment. It’s really fun and I actually enjoy the sweating for the bants basically
Its really amazing how investor-brained people swear by these games and their ability to earn you money while having fun, but then when they actually list the steps it's either 1. Play the Landlord simulator or 2. Gamble your life away in the hopes that you will be the lucky one.
It's such utterly immoral design, it makes my skin crawl.
The 'skill' loopholes of gambling are atrocious. In California Blackjack and fucking *Baccarat* are considered 'games of skill' that you can gamble on in a card room...so long as the bank is not the card room itself.
I kept ignoring this because the title was so click baity, but by god the video actually delivered
I try my best to find a way to justify my click-bait titles!
"I expected reviving to cost money but was plesantly surprised that it doesn't" - proceeds to explains how items take durability damage on death and that you have to pay to repair them...
Cost-to-performance ratio stuff isn't unique to play to earn games, but man, in other games I can at least choose to be inefficient since the only real cost is that it takes me more time to do the same stuff, here if I dare to not play in the most optimal way I'm losing actual money.
Oh shit this is an epic return
3 years (3 weeks) in the making
The people who made this game took a look at mmo's and said, "You know what would make this better...managing logistics"
Thank you for this content. this is kinda nice to expose those "play to earn" videogames as the casino scams they are, deliberatly designed for you to lose and throw money in for a vague chance of a never-coming payout.
While i would never play this game, it's a big problem in MMo's like World of Warcraft. Blizzard have their "classic"-servers now where you can currently replay the wrath of the lichking expansion and just quietly snuck in their "Wow-token", which basically gives you alot of gold for real money. The community was outrages - but still, people play the game. and I play it too.
i dont buy the tokens, but it's getting increasingly harder to do raids (the big 20-man dungeons) because most raids have become a GDKP system. Meaning, when you kill a boss and it drops an item, all players bid gold and the highest bidder wins.
Which has many problems in itself, but players basically pay extra for convenience to get nice gear while already paying for every expansion ontop of a monthly subscription.
Play responsibly, friends. And maybe call your mom tonight and tell her you love her.
Yeah I have played WoW since WOTLK and I recently quit for similar reasons to you mentioned. It’s hard to raid competitively without either spending a lot of money or a lot of time, of which I’m not willing to spend either at this time
@@jauwn holy shit i didnt realize i'd get an answer! :D
Been watching your videos all day, this channel is a treasure trove of content. great storytelling and editing, really nice to follow along on your journey.
I try my best to answer every comment that is worth responding to 😊
[16:20] is the coolest 'please subscribe if you like this' I think I've seen
I like the melting digital chaos of your art and editing. It really fits with the dystopian vibe of crypto 'games.'
Glad you like it! I'm trying to include more but they take a while to make so I only really spend a lot of time on them if it's going to be a long video
Love Richard
Richard is the real hero. Shout out to Richard wherever the man is
Ooh I liked the intermission “warning” gimmick. Super cute 😂
I tried entropia universe way back, and i put 10$ in, I managed to get a small hustle buying sweat at a low rate directly from sweaters on spot and selling at a little higher rate to "bigger" players... so I was making money... slowly but surely... at a slow rate since i had a small initial budget... but than my already old laptop decided that its graphic card had enough and i just could not afford to buy a new computer ... so... yeah, if you play the game quests, it costs, but if you get a hustle on, it is possible to make a profit ... but yes, it is really not easy and most people would succomb to just playing, paying then get addicted or bored and quit...
This just looks like poor man’s Monster Hunter.
Everything made by you is the definition of "Graphic design is my passion "
I played as a teen and went through a VERY similar experience as you! I've often thought about playing again now that I have a job and can deposit and have a bit of fun at least for a little while
I loooooved the part where you just got pissed off. The way it came right after you talking to and playing with that other long term player was such perfect timing. Playing with this guy and learning about his background and why and how he plays the game only to be snapped back to reality by how shit the game itself actually is,
“FUCK this.”
Absolutely lovely
I looked into the game a couple years ago and I remember that you can also get skills for doing repetitive actions - like sweating, which would then increase your sweat per hour. Additionally you could sell your skills, literally. You would sell the levels that you get to the marketplace for PED.
The SECOND you said "F*CK THIS" I FELT that in my soul bro...
Oh my God at 33:05 Richard spent $1,000 he then won $16k thousand dollars, but then he spent it all and much more!. This poor man he's trapped in this game forever I feel like this life is now become the Matrix maybe we are trapped in a machine forever and we don't even know it. Richard is trapped in the video game with his addiction. 😮 poor guy. 😮 😂😂🤷♀️
Omg I never thought I’d hear Jauwn get so heated XD
Glad you introduced me to the existence those “skill games”, holy shrimp what an existential horror waiting to happen. I hope they don’t catch on.
I feel for Richard. I'm a former heroin user and I'm glad I've never seen that circle of people since I quit. I can't see some even if I wanted to for obvious reasons, but addiction can kill many different ways.
o7 to Richard.
I'm amazed there is genuinely a game out there that makes "free to play" an overstatement
This game more than even the seediest f2p games is best described as "free to install"
Project Entropia ( as it was called ) costs roughly $1.60 an hour to actually play with out the absolutly crippling restrictions .
It would most likely be easier to get a job in Second Life for the equivalent of about $0.15 /hr .
Furtopia ( 1996 ) is far older, and may be among the oldest of these type of games.