[drakonka]

I am making a snail simulation and have toyed with the idea of making a personal feature available to myself only which would let me use my real money to take care of my snails, buy supplies, etc because the currency in the simulation is already the same as my daily real world currency. Only obviously instead of really buying snail jars and race entries or breeding rights the money you spend would go into a savings account.

I thought about this when my cat was very sick. I would (and did) spend any amount on veterinarians, surgeries, medicines, and special food to make him better and take care of him. I figured, what if that kind of emotional connection could be transferred to virtual pets on a much, much smaller scale? I'm already pretty attached to my snails, and on a personal level it might work.

This is a really half-baked idea - for example, the amount of real life money I can spend would not be the amount of money in my actual bank account, but the amount of money I have in the world itself (since other users can't be at an advantage or disadvantage when using purely virtual currency against my real life currency). Also, snails are not expensive - I wouldn't exactly be dropping large chunks of cash into savings buying snail jars.

Anyway...it was just a random thought I had about gamifying my saving habits a bit.

[jpindar]

People do get attached to animals in open-sim type virtual worlds and spend real life money to buy them food (necessary to keep them alive). The people who sell the pets and food make a good profit, probably second only to virtual world landlords.