Footfall
Footfall is the number of people who arrive at a location inside a virtual world for their own reasons, independent of the operator's marketing. It is the scarcest of the preconditions for in-world commerce, the only one that capital cannot manufacture, and the one the 2021–22 cycle assumed would follow ownership.
Why it cannot be bought
Every other precondition responds to money. Persistence and scarcity are engineering. A redeemable unit is a treasury decision. Labour can be hired or automated. Footfall is the aggregate decision of a population about where to spend an evening, and no acquisition budget has ever reliably moved it — advertising brings visitors, not residents.
How to measure it honestly
Concurrent users at the specific location, not registered accounts for the platform. A world with ten million registered users and four hundred concurrents has four hundred, and a parcel two districts from the action has none of them.
See also
Related entries in the Register. Every see-also is reciprocal — if this entry points there, that entry points back.
Metaverse Group, The Register, REG-005 “Footfall”, as at 2026-08-28. https://metaversegroup.com/encyclopedia/footfall/
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