Because some people seem confused what the point is -- the point is that right now there are a lot of blockchain/NFT/"metaverse" games that are making ridiculous bank by doing big presales of virtual plots of "land" on the basis that they are going to turn into big UGC-based platforms to rival Steam, Roblox, etc.
I conduct an analysis that looks back over the 30+ year history of MMO's and find that anytime we see true "land-like" assets in multiplayer online games, we also tend to see digital "housing crises" that have a lot of eerie parallels to the ones we see in the real world, and they play out in ways that closely match the predictions of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Henry George.
This is interesting for several reasons:
- It suggests that these big blockchain/NFT/"metaverse" games are headed for trouble long term as their user growth stagnates
- It gives us a place to learn lessons about policy interventions that might have something to say about the real world (Henry George's Land Value Tax was independently re-derived from first principles for use in EVE, and it ended the recession that plagued their early launch days)
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TL;DR -- virtual land presales are a great way to make a quick buck and leave your investors holding the bag, but they're not a great way to build a sustainable creator-driven UGC platform.