Devil's Daily: He Spent How Much?!

Everybody is talking about the guy that owned the $8000 ship in Eve Online. I say owned, because it was destroyed. It was supposedly more or less invincible and yet, after pulling it out as a swift end to a giant battle, one person found himself $8000 poorer. 

This isn't the first Eve Online story to go around. It seems not even a few months can go by without someone somewhere spending an obscene amount of money on space ships, or real estate in Second World. To someone like me, that rarely buys DLC, let alone invests huge amounts of money in virtual items, it seems a little excessive...

The Nature of Excess

Then again, most things seem excessive to me. That people spend hundreds, thousands of dollars each year building cosplay costumes and travelling the world playing games and watching films they'd be able to watch from their home if they waited a few months seems excessive.

That people spend so much on cigarettes, alchohol, food and clothes seems excessive to me.

When it comes down to it, if I absolutely had to spend $8000, it'd end up being on something I enjoy, and if this guy enjoyed Eve Online enough to buy an ultra rare $8000 ship, all the more power to him. What's the difference between his $8000 ship blowing up and him spending a ton going to Disney Land, or visiting night clubs night after night after night?

The difference is acceptance. The difference is the view that $8000 on a single ship in a video game is excessive, and $8000 spent over a few years doing things that you actively pay to forget is socially accepted - if you're of a certain age.

He spent HOW much?!

People buy the things they know they'll enjoy, and it's difficult to begrudge anybody who has the cash to do it. It's not so much that one person spent so much on a single item that freaks us all out, it's that by comparison we've all spent so little. When I first read that amount, my first thought was that I found paying for Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare pack excessive. It was, if memory serves, £8, and it contained four or five hours of new story, new gameplay and a ton of zombie shooting fun.

This ship was $8000, a thousand times more expensive, and didn't even had any zombies.

There may be some people who have spent $80 on a yearly gaming subscription, or who reward developers of free-to-play games they enjoy by buying additional items. By almost any scale you want to judge it, $8000 seems like a ridiculous amount to shell out on a video game.

Unless you've spent it.

Final Thought

I can't speak for everybody else here, but I kind of wish I had $8000 to put into a video game. Seriously. There are developers whose games I've enjoyed consistantly and who have rewarded those that have supported them. I'd love to be able to just hand over $8000. It's not a lot, in the grand scheme of things, but I'd feel I'd contributed to something I felt passionate about.

If I got something in return, like an ultra rare nigh-unbeatable death ship, that would just be all the better.