I like to participate to contest as it is a way to practice writing on a specified subject, but this time I had no idea what to write.
What is Upland? On their Twitter profile, they write: "Property trading metaverse, connected to real world addresses, powered by #EOS Blockchain".
I said to myself: let's have a look.
First of all, I signed to Upland and got the 6000 token bonus.
No, it didn't go so.
I signed but for some days I was not able to log in as the system always replayed that something went wrong.
Finally, after a few temptative, I was in. I had neither the time nor the desire to follow the tutorial so I went a little random.
I had an idea of the fact that it was a sort of game-like "Monopoli", that I had to buy some properties and try to resell them for a profit, but it seemed all slow as I was in front of West Coast map where two cities were highlighted: San Francisco and Fresno. Until that moment I had never even known that there was a town called Fresno.
Properties prices in San Francisco seemed to me too much high so I decided to spend my token in Fresno and I bought three neighboring properties with the tokens I had left were not enough to buy a fourth one.
I had been playing for five minutes and I had already finished so I said to myself: that's all?
The game starts immediately very static, slow, with little exchange with the other players. Until you have a total of at least 10,000 UPXs you are considered visitors and you cannot put the properties up for sale.
Honestly, I'm not going to spend money (FIAT) to buy UPX and I don't know if I will ever be able to become a (virtual) citizen of Fresno. For the moment, as the game establishes, I am a visitor and I must remember to renew my visa while waiting to accumulate other UPXs with the bonuses for daily logins and with the interests that the properties "earn" me.
If someone asked me what is the thing that struck me the most about the game, I would answer the connection with reality.
San Francisco and Fresno are real cities and the properties I virtually own exist in the real world.
It is possible to have a street view already in the game, it possible to find them on city maps, aerial photographs, and images that can be found on the web. I discovered, for example, that one of my (virtual) properties has a swimming pool. The other ones have large gardens.
I think that is a bit fascinating to (virtually) own "real" real estate properties, but I have a little question: Whose car is parked in my garden?
The thumbnail image is taken from the Upland Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/UplandMe
