Matt Mihaly

Matt Mihaly / Matthew Mihaly (born June 21, 1972) is an American CEO/founder of Iron Realms Entertainment, a game designer, investor, executive, entrepreneur, and prominent member of the Burning Man community as creator and operator of the website Burn.Life. He was formerly CEO/founder of Sparkplay Media and COO of ZipZap Inc. He is known for pioneering the sale of virtual assets and virtual currency in online games, dating to the late 1990s. His MUD pseudonym is Sarapis.

Mihaly attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, receiving a bachelor's degree in political science in 1994. During college, Matt became involved with MUDs, especially Avalon: The Legend Lives, where he was a god, as well as BatMUD.

In 1996, Mihaly founded Iron Realms Entertainment and served as lead designer and producer on Achaea.

In 1997, he pioneered the Virtual Asset Sales (VAS) model, holding auctions for virtual weapons and armor in Achaea, the first business to use this business model.

In 1999, he built the first hard to soft currency exchange in an online game, allowing players to exchange earned in-game gold for purchased credits.

In 2000, he served as Senior Consultant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations-sponsored World Summit of Young Entrepreneurs, in New York, New York, leading development of a system with very low technology requirements to permit entrepreneurs in impoverished 3rd-world countries to participate.

He has since overseen the release of four additional successful MUDs. He speaks at conferences like Dragoncon, the Game Developers Conference and the Social Gaming Summit.

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