[MUD-Dev] [BIZ] Playas Pay to Spread the Luv

[Michael Tresca]

Like MUDs, only not a fantasy genre.

  http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62826,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://michael.tresca.net


--<cut>--
Over the last month, Nikoma Lee has received more than $1,000 worth of
gifts from friends she barely knows and only recently met through a new
service called FunHi.

For Lee to receive gifts from near strangers is probably not all that
uncommon, as she's a beautiful young woman beginning a career as a model.

During the same time period, George Georgiades, a 25-year-old consultant,
has spent about a grand giving presents to his own group of new FunHi
friends.

But these are not ordinary gifts. They're purely digital: little flashing
icons of cars, planes, diamond rings and other virtual representations of
expensive items included in messages members send each other. And FunHi
members don't seem to care that the real money they're spending on the
gifts, at prices as high as $30 an item, is going straight into the
company's coffers.

"It gives me the same pleasure like at Christmas," says Georgiades. "When
the money ran out, I went and got more. A hundred dollars at a time, (and)
over time it added up."

Mike Peng, too, has been buying gifts for his fellow FunHi members at a
rapid rate. Often, he says, it was as a result of him and other members
trying to out-generous each other.

I "got into a tag fest with some of them," Peng says. "It's like if someone
got you something, you get them something back, and with a few people I got
into a gift-giving contest."

All told, the 26-year-old says, he's spent nearly $300 on gifts in just
three weeks.

A visit to the FunHi Gift Shoppe gives a quick lesson in the
service's hip-hop sensibility. Though surely a small percentage of
FunHi's users actually talk like the gangstas they portray, it's
evident that nearly everyone involved has fun pretending they do.

Thus, members can spend real dollars on things such as a "FunHi Luv
Byrd."  For $15, a FunHi member could give another pal this "plane,"
which is touted in the gift shop as "the ultimate symbol of the
Playa that knows no limits to luv! No matter where you at, you can
get there just in time to watch the sunset together on the beaches
of an exotic paradise. Hanger and white-gloved crew included. Bring
yo baby and take off for an adventure anytime."

Another option might be $7 for "The Cleaner," a rather ominous gift
for the paranoid. Its blurb says, "Every playa is bound to make some
enemies. Get your favorite balla' their very own hitman. Put the
contract out, sit back and watch the haters drop. One bullet, no
trace and no case."

The point of all this gift giving is that FunHi members want to meet
as many of each other as possible, and quickly. Where eBay members
get a feedback rating showing their trustworthiness, FunHi users
rack up a "buzz" rating, as well as "fans." One way the buzz ratings
and numbers of fans go up is by being seen within the community as
generous and responsive to receiving gifts.

Of course, being a young good-looking female doesn't hurt, as the
members with the most fans are all women whose pictures show them in
sexy, alluring poses.

To hear Joshua Selman tell it, FunHi never intended to get its
members to spend significant amounts of cold hard cash on these
virtual gifts.

"It's ludicrous," says Selman, the company's vice president of
business development. "It wasn't something we had planned. Our
customers asked us for this.... It just exploded on us. It's not
like we're trying to bilk people.  They really want it. I think it's
a prestige" thing.

Georgiades seems to agree with Selman's notion.

"If someone is nice enough to get me something nice, I always try
and return the favor," he says.

He also says he doesn't mind that FunHi is pocketing the money he
spends on gifts that, other than demonstrating his esteem for the
recipient, can't be used for anything, or even be re-gifted.

"It's a donation for a service," he says. "I probably overdid it
though.  Gotta feed the habit."

In fact, Georgiades says FunHi shouldn't be blamed for its members'
spending habits. Speaking for himself, at least, he acknowledges
he's the one who kept spending and spending.

"It's not their fault," he says. "I thought I was stupid after
looking at last month's credit card bill."

Selman says FunHi has banked about $10,000 in the month since FunHi
launched. And given that Georgiades himself has paid about 10
percent of that, it's clear that not all of the service's 6,500
active members are doing the same thing.

To be sure, the gift shop offers much cheaper options, such as the
"Miku Luv Token," which costs a penny. "The currency of innocent luv
on FunHi. Show em sum luv, give em sum buzz, Miku style. Luv don't
cost a thang," says the token's blurb.

"Everyone can communicate off the site without even spending a
dime," says Selman. "Yet they've chosen to use this gifted message
to show esteem for the other person."

Meanwhile, Selman explains that from FunHi's corporate perspective,
it is more a game than social-networking service.

"It's totally playa/pimp," says Selman, whose speech makes him sound
like someone who's never been anywhere near a ghetto. "We wanted the
entire entity to encapsulate a game environment where people are
playing roles."

He explains that when a new member signs up, he or she must choose
from around 50 personas, including "Bad Boy," "Booty Call,"
"Gangsta," "Hustla" and many others.

"So as an individual, you go on (to) choose a role," Selman
says. "Your persona is being filtered through a role-playing
relationship with other people."

The service aims, according to what might be called its bylaws, to
foster purely positive and friendly interactions.

"It's very interesting and different," says Judith Meskill, who
blogs about social networking, "this 'hater' proof system they
have.... It sounds like very rap, but by the same token, it's
playing into people's security and privacy issues at a very edgy
level."

In any case, FunHi definitely seems to have captured its members'
imagination and attention, not to mention their credit cards.

Georgiades says he logs on to the service a few times a day, no
matter what.

"I was away in Brazil last week, so (I) was inactive for the first
time," he says. "But (I) still managed to log on."
--<cut>--
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