Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs has done some crazy things, like running for “President of Virtual Reality” and buying a virtual asteroid for $100,000 in real money in the online game Entropia Universe. Now, his Neverdie company is trying to raise a ton of money via the Ethereum cryptocurrency through an initial coin offering (ICO) so that he can build cross-platform online game avatars. It may seem far out, but he has already raised more than $2.1 million from backers.
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is a cryptocurrency that creates an immutable and transparent ledger, which is distributed across a lot of computers in what is called a blockchain. It creates secure transactions, and it enables developers to build software programs on top of it. Entrepreneurs can raise money through Ethereum by staging ICOs, and Neverdie wants to use his money to enable much better online games.
Jacobs created his Neverdie identity, or avatar, in many different worlds. But he wants to be able to take his avatar across a bunch of virtual worlds. So, he is creating a Neverdie Teleportation ICO. He wants to create virtual tokens that you can use to transport your avatar from one world to another. By giving players the ability to move from one world to another, Neverdie believes players will be liberated and be able to engage in much more commerce than they currently do. And Ethereum could provide the cross-platform currency that greases the skids of this new economy.
And here’s another twist. Jacobs believes that artificial intelligence advances will destroy a lot of jobs in the coming years. He thinks Neverdie can create a lot of jobs by using the tokens and giving them to people for playing games. Yes, he believes in paying people to play games, using the proceeds of the Ethereum ICO. Jacobs thinks this will create a lot of jobs to offset those lost to AI.
It’s an ambitious plan by Jacobs, who operates the Rocktropia virtual world, where this model of paying people to play games has already been tested. I heard Jacobs talk about this plan at the Gamelab event in Barcelona. He is also speaking at the CoinAgenda Europe event in Barcelona this week. I interviewed Jacobs after his Gamelab talk. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
,
,
Above: You can buy Neverdie tokens with Ethereum. Image Credit: Neverdie
GamesBeat: You’ve already raised quite a bit through pre-sales, and then, you’re targeting a very large amount?
Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs: The idea is, we started about two and a half weeks ago, basically the moment we had the site up and the exchange mechanism in. We started selling the coins. Also, we were giving some of our existing players from Rocktropia coins, so they can vote in the Rocktropia elections. It started off gradually, but we got one $50,000 investor very fast, not anybody we knew. That started to fund our marketing for the ICO.
GamesBeat: I need to back up a bit and understand this all.
Neverdie: Here’s the thing. I don’t know if you follow what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years. I ran for president of virtual reality, which is kind of an out-there thing. But the reason I did it was because, with my experience, I’m seeing that unless we connect virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online role-playing games [MMORPGs], we’re not getting value out of it. Players aren’t getting enough value. They’re not growing. Everyone is stuck at a certain level of growth.
In addition, in Entropia specifically, the players need to get more involved in the direction of it. All they’re doing now is complaining. I wanted to hand over — to create a democracy, as much as possible, so they can be actively engaged. They have money tied up in it. It’s not just a game. This is their assets.
I put myself out there for that purpose and also because VR was booming. I thought, “These guys don’t even know the mistakes they’re making. We’ve been making them, but nobody’s listening to us.” That was the point. Then, my means to do that is — OK, we could do it with a teleportation system. If you think about it from a theory point of view, if you could just teleport between worlds, that would make it work. That became the basis of how I was going to achieve it.
I felt like I could create jobs at the same time because there’s a way to twist the business model of games to include actually paying people. A lot of games, like in Entropia — we give away a lot of freebies to get people started, but when you cut that off, you lose a lot of people. You could just take a section of your revenues and say, “If you want jobs, here you go.” It helps support the economy. Because the jobs being lost to AI and the like, it fits with the challenges of the world. I wanted to make what we’re doing more relevant to what’s happening in the world.
,
Source: Venture Beat