Tag: money

News

New edition of Monopoly will swap paper money for bank cards

Hasbro has heard your cries for help and taken action. The scourge of adding up payments in Monopoly has been eradicated. Cash is no more. Monopoly Ultimate Banking Game, which will come out this fall, is set to introduce four bank cards that can be used to make payments and transfer properties. Other editions of Monopoly—of which there are many—will continue to use cash for now, because the future of banking is not for everyone; you have to buy it. (Correction: A 2006 version of the game, aptly named Monopoly Electric Banking Edition, introduced a similar vision of electric payments. Most versions, however,…
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Everything’s (not) alright on the VR front, apparently

On the occasion of CES, the annual “consumer” electronics extravaganza in Las Vegas, murmurs started to be heard about whether virtual reality headsets were all that useful, particularly at the prices at which they are being sold. Better late than never. CNN, however, is here to distract from the doom and gloom with an article cheerfully entitled “Google Cardboard saves baby’s life.” When you put it that way, VR sure sounds like money well spent. Granted, that title is somewhat hyperbolic. VR’s corporeal presence did not save a baby’s life all on its own. Rather, it allowed doctors at Miami’s…
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Greek artist draws on Euros to send a message about his country’s plight

This, it is fair to say, is not how the European project was supposed to work out. At this very moment, German citizens can walk up to an ATM and withdraw their daily limit. At this very moment, Greek citizens can wait in line near an ATM in the hopes of eventually withdrawing their government-limited 60 Euro daily allocation. (On the bright side, Business Insider observes, “Greece isn’t panicking about capital controls because millions of people are already too poor for it to matter.”) The only thing Europeans at banks in Athens and Berlin have in common is an infinitesimal chance of…
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Jason Rohrer’s new game involves gambling real money to win amulets

Jason Rohrer is weird with money. Previously, he gave away $3,000 to players of his last game, The Castle Doctrine. You’d think him affluent with a gesture like that, but two years before that he told Paste how his family lived off $14,000 a year while somehow earning less than that. Now, I’m sure with Rohrer being a family man that he is careful with money. But the way he’s treated it in the past gives the impression that he sees cash as a game piece—something to experiment and play with. ritualistic instructions on how to make a husband faithful …
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They still don’t get paid, but student quarterbacks are now trained in virtual reality

It’s NFL draft season again, that magical time of year wherein prognosticators discuss the concussion-riddled future of young athletes for hours on end. One of the questions that invariably comes up during these interminable discussions is whether an athlete can “read the field” when he moves up from the NCAA to the NFL. But how exactly does one go about acquiring that skill? Virtual reality headsets, reports FOX Sports’ Bruce Feldman, are the newest way collegiate programs are preparing athletes to read the field. Stanford University, which is home to the Cardinals and Dr. Jeremy Bailenson’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab,…
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Government is strangely nonplussed when World of Warcraft gold is used for IRL drugs

Early in the morning of January 19, 2015, shoppers on bankofwow.com could buy 10,000 units of World of Warcraft gold for as little as $4.22. In addition to being traded within WoW, this virtual gold could theoretically be used to barter for (possibly illicit) physical goods or, as Bank of WoW proves, converted into American dollars. Thus, WoW gold is both a commodity and an actual currency. WoW gold is not unique in this regard. Videogame currencies occupy a strange position; they are not widely thought of as real but can fulfill most of the roles of a currency both…