Jacobs took me to the VIP area, a beautifully laid out section over the dance floor with a private bar and lounge area. He pointed out a golden egg the size of a small boulder. "I paid $10,000 for that. No one knows what's going to hatch." I marveled for a second, but by the time I reconciled the fact that I was looking at an egg in a videogame that cost more than my first car, Jacobs had disappeared down a hallway. "This way!" he called as he shuffled his way into another room.
When I caught up to him, he was inside a club-ish bedroom with three nude mannequins posing around it. "For special parties," he said. I asked him if the mannequins, you know, did anything. "No, just for show." Before I could get much more of an impression, he was off again, heading back in the direction of the event.
"The idea is to create the first global event to find the champions and the heroes [of gaming]," says Jacobs. "Using the rules as best we can to make it appealing to people who haven't built up characters over the years in Entropia. ... It could reach the level of million-dollar prizes and hundreds of thousands of people competing. We're gonna film the first one for TV, so we can show how exciting an event of this kind can be."
Other members of the tournament explain that it will last two hours; whoever accumulates the highest value of loot wins. With 30 minutes left, players will be able to set bounties on one another in an effort to slow each other down. With five minutes left, players will be able to attack anyone they like.
The competition goes as planned, with Neverdie continually flirting for a spot in the top three. I have to wonder, though, when does the king not win the jousting tournament?
"He never dies!"
Jacobs has taken steps to ingrain himself in the world's memory. He's commissioned a theme song, which plays on his website and throughout the club. Tack on a preternatural charisma and a genuine love for all things virtual, and you've got a guy who's not short for the world.
And that seems to be Jacobs' main push. How does a man whose parents put him next to a Beatle do better than the generation before him? Easy: Conquer a moon. And if that doesn't work, you've got forever to keep trying.
The Escapist, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Joe Blancato, a young Associate Editor on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the powerless, the helpless in a world of criminals who operate above the law. Joe Blancato, a lone crusader in a dangerous world. The world ... of The Escapist.
