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 on Feb 16, 2008 - 25 comments

Metaplace
"We modelled this on the web," said Mr Koster, "You can think about each world being a webpage and every object within in it is a link."
Raph Koster has unveiled Metaplace, an easy to use virtual world creator. The BBC reports: article, video of Raph demoing the app [youtube].
posted by MetaMonkey on Sep 19, 2007 - 16 comments

As virtual worlds economic activity and populations grow, the importance of Real Money Trade comes to the fore. When does fraud inside game worlds become illegal? when do earnings from online worlds become taxable? [discussion], and what happens when real day traders get interested? [more inside]
posted by MetaMonkey on Oct 21, 2006 - 25 comments

A little over a year ago, the Guiding Hand Social Club issued a stunning press release - after months of infiltration and planning they had fulfilled an assassination contract on the CEO of a major corporation and ransacked the corporation's hangers, stealing almost 20 billion ISK, worth over $16,000 USD at the time. See PCGamer's excellent detailed description of the event: pages 1, 2, 3, 4. As synthetic worlds like Eve-Online and World of Warcraft gain popularity, what should we make of this kind of behavior? Eve's own players respond. Also, a response with a little more perspective. And what's going to happen when the IRS catches on?
posted by heresiarch on May 14, 2006 - 58 comments

Massive Multiplayer Pong
posted by furiousxgeorge on Feb 25, 2006 - 24 comments

The Neopets Addiction: Neopets.com has a staggering 25 million members worldwide... Four out of five Neopians are under age 18, and two out of five are under 13... Neopets calls its model "immersive advertising... an evolutionary step forward in the traditional marketing practice of product placement."... Kalle Lasn, editor in chief of the advertising watchdog magazine Adbusters says, "It's the most insidious mind-fuck ever."
posted by MetaMonkey on Dec 7, 2005 - 54 comments

Vader Boosts Morale [via golublog]
posted by kliuless on Mar 8, 2005 - 16 comments

Mobs move into 'Sims Online' power vacuum: "An underground group known as the Sims Shadow Government has taken over the fantasy world that is 'The Sims Online,' meting out mob justice." I don't play the Sims Online, but I'm curious: Has anyone on Mefi run into this phenomenon while playing the game?
posted by eclectica on Jun 11, 2003 - 29 comments

The thinking man's MMOG is now live and accepting subscriptions. Someone on mefi noticed this game in development last July, but very little attention was given to it at that time. What has evolved in the game is an interesting social experiment, rather than your typical hack and slash Massive Multiplayer game. Many have equated it to Sims Online, but whereas that game appears to have failed to result in anything that doesn't smell of pig excrement, this title appears to have a soul. In fact, it's garnished its first review since opening on Feb 15th (shameless self-linking).
posted by thanotopsis on Feb 25, 2003 - 16 comments