Pearls of Distraction and Disunderstanding

February 16, 2008 4:01 PM

PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Players play without playing; clicking around the internet turns into experience points and currency. Players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions. Ordinary web sites become caches for items and currency. PMOG fuses an MMO into our WWW.
posted by arcticwoman (25 comments total)

How long does it typically take from you give them you email address till you get your beta invitation?
posted by sveskemus at 4:09 PM on February 16

Well, passive is in the title, so give it some time.
posted by Busithoth at 4:21 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]

So there's this Firefox extension that collects your personal browsing habits/history, and sends it to a central server to "turn it into experience points and currency"?

Their website doesn't seem to address the privacy concerns.
Color me skeptical.
posted by jozxyqk at 4:23 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]

See also: Progress Quest.

Progress Quest belongs to a new breed of "fire and forget" RPG's. There is no need to interact with Progress Quest at all; it will make progress with you or without you.

Keyboard quick reference
--------------------------------
| Key    | Description         |
|--------+---------------------|
| Alt-F4 | Exit Progress Quest |
--------------------------------

posted by Anything at 4:37 PM on February 16

World of Wiretapping?
posted by Benjamin Nushmutt at 4:49 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]

The FAQ says: Making play from personal data raises a number of interesting challenges.

I say: No thanks.
posted by doublesix at 4:59 PM on February 16

But I already won the internet...
posted by cowbellemoo at 5:10 PM on February 16

"September 2007
GameLayers, the company formed by the PMOG team, receives a seed round of funding from O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Joichi Ito, and Richard Wolpert"

Hello Joi Ito!
posted by mwhybark at 5:29 PM on February 16

Heh, Joi's current post is about... an MMORPG that has its' roots in real world behavior as envisioned in an SF novel.
posted by mwhybark at 5:31 PM on February 16

interestingly enough, gamelayers, the company who is responsible for PMOG, is an O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures protfolio company (who knew o'reilly had a vc arm...) . also, techcrunch gives a bit more detail about PMOG
posted by refractal at 5:34 PM on February 16

I Think it sounds pretty cool although its appeal is probably too limited for my world; in other words I wouldn't mind playing it if some of my friends did too, but I don't have enough friends who would be interested to make it worthwhile.
posted by cell divide at 5:42 PM on February 16

Players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions.

Where was PMOG when we were raiding and pillaging GiftHub?
posted by jayder at 5:54 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]

This is Justin Hall's thing. Remember him? He apparently doesn't age, from what I can tell, leading me to believe he's one of The Others.
posted by mecran01 at 6:11 PM on February 16

I'm only leaving to this comment to express disapproval in the idea of PMOGs...
posted by mikeo2 at 6:14 PM on February 16

Does porn sites give you gold pieces, or take them away?
posted by Balisong at 6:17 PM on February 16

Let me get his straight. This allows me to gain "experience points" without actively doing anything, other than surf the Internet? And all I have to do is to let some total strangers track my every online action? Sweet.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 6:41 PM on February 16

Do porn sites give you gold pieces, or take them away?

I don't know, but it really puts a new spin on "grinding."
posted by naju at 8:22 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]

Can you have different characters, so you can use Hector the Porn Barbarian sometimes and Constance the Metafilter Mage other times?
posted by smackfu at 8:44 PM on February 16

It takes a lot of passive aggression to win these kinds of games.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:52 PM on February 16

I will admit, I've always wanted a game that lets you combine your desktop along with everyone else's on your LAN into a multi-screen racetrack on which you and others can drive little cars, and/or a cloak-and-dagger game where you hide on each other's desktops trying to assassinate each other's little characters.

When this is that, call me.
posted by davejay at 10:15 PM on February 16

How long does it typically take from you give them you email address till you get your beta invitation?

I signed up end of January and got mine a week later. I've seen the game mentioned in a couple of newspapers and quite a few blogs since then though. So not sure if more people signing up mean longer times.
posted by blogenstock at 5:27 AM on February 17

entertainment surveillance

Now that's an interesting phrase.
posted by ook at 6:20 AM on February 17

Someone should pay $5 and corner MetaFaves as a MeFi uid. Then, that person would favorite every single post he or she encountered.

The effect would be amazing.
posted by mistersquid at 12:05 PM on February 17

okay... if this really isn't a lovely subtle joke/hoax exposing our willingness to be surveilled and open ourselves up for exploitation by corporate forces, then my head is turning inside out.
posted by RedEmma at 12:25 PM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Their website doesn't seem to address the privacy concerns.

What are you talking about? PMOG privacy policy.

You can believe it or not, but it's no different than Me.dium, let alone something like Mint.

You only share what you want to. Turn off the extension, and your sharing stops. You can always delete all of your personal information. I'll take that over Facebook (can you ever really delete your profile? I think no) any day.
posted by mrgrimm at 6:06 PM on February 19