Megabyte Millionaire

Jacobs directs his avatar in front of a large screen inside Club NeverDie. On the screen is a picture of Jacobs from Hey DJ sporting Elvis-like sideburns. The avatar stands in front of the man, like the puppet before the puppeteer.

"This is the future," Jacobs says.

Suddenly three people send messages to Jacobs at once. Someone has been inside Club NeverDie killing other players. In Entropia, avatars can die and are re-created without losing any items. The person isn't doing any lasting damage. He's just being annoying or, as Jacobs puts it, "a fucking idiot."

Jacobs brushes off the incident. But 30 minutes later, it spirals out of control. A player who was killed in Club NeverDie paid to place an advertisement in the game-wide bulletin system: "Ubers (high-level players) kill people in bio-domes. Don't waste 40 PED."

Jacobs, frustrated, throws his hands in the air and slams them down on the desk.

"You get idiots doing this: He comes up here. Somebody kills him, so he uses the advertising system to try to damage the business," Jacobs says. "The same thing happens in real life. I could be running a club, somebody gets stabbed, and then the papers are saying, 'Don't go to Club Space.' I've got the same problem. At least here, no one really got hurt."

Jacobs spends the rest of the afternoon talking to the players and posting messages on the forums. It's work.

This isn't a game. It's a business.