We talked just a few days ago about HiPiHi getting a chunk of venture capital funds to start a virtual world similar to Second Life in China. And we discussed whether they could beat out Shanda and Frenzoo to be the leading virtual reality game site in China. Now Swedish software maker MindArk, creator of Entropia Universe, has thrown its hat into the ring.

Mindark has entered into a partnership with the city of Beijing's Cyber Recreation Development Corp. (CRD) to create a virtual world for the Chinese audience. Mark Wallace looks at some of the details of the deal in his blog on Merverse and the 3D Web.

Entropia differs from Second Life in a couple of ways. First, it doesn't completely leave the multiplayer online role-playing games (or MMORPGs) genre that has usually involved fantasy based sword-and-sorcery games. Second, it involves a Real Cash Economy (RCE) in its virtual world so that players can earn money in the game and convert that money into real world currency. The CRD hopes to create just such a real cash economy game for China with the help of MindArk.