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Mine space: PMOG players can leave gifts or traps for other players, which remain invisible to nonplayers. When tripped, a mine, shown above, pops up in a red window and (harmlessly) causes the victim’s browser to flash red and shrink, simultaneously docking the victim points. Players can buy armor that defends against mines, and they can use tools to take revenge on players who set traps.
PMOG
Hall says that the company is now experimenting with business models, and it's likely to try to make money by building missions that would be sponsored by advertisers. Although the details aren't set in stone, Hall says that PMOG would probably contain a category of sponsored missions that players could take, and players might be rewarded for taking them by receiving something like bonus points. However the business plan shakes out, Hall wants to be careful not to abuse the access to personal data that PMOG has. "Users are trusting us with their personal surfing history," he says. "Users are trusting us with their screen real estate. We like the idea of giving them a total opt-in solution." Hall thinks that some films, in particular, might be well suited for advertising through PMOG. He envisions one day creating similar games for mobile phones, or extending the concept to transform other types of data on the Web into play.
Similar ideas have been tried before. Third Voice, a startup that lasted from about 1999 to 2001, allowed users to annotate websites. Although the site sparked some debate among people who worried about Third Voice users leaving graffiti on websites--by advertising for competitors on corporate sites, for example--it was the dot-com flameout, not controversy, that brought down the company. Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, who was also a member of Third Voice's advisory board, says that the demise of Third Voice shouldn't be taken as a comment on the viability of giving users the chance to interact with Web pages and to share those interactions with others. "I think that's exactly the feature that could be very powerful," he says. "It will depend on how well it avoids spam, both literally and figuratively, from people that you're not interested in hearing from, and [it] will no doubt trigger, I think, similar forms of outrage from webmasters, who want to know that the site you see is the site they intend for you to see."
GameLayers is now testing PMOG with a small, initial group of users--about 6,000 have registered as of this week. Hall says that the game will open to the public soon, although no exact date has been set.
The failure of a highly anticipated, multiplayer game shows the limits of academic virtual worlds.
People who love to create their own blogs, podcasts, and movies have a new outlet for self-expression: home-made video games.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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chrisjmiller
64 Comments
Sensitive data
I'm glad to see this is 'opt-in'. There's a UK business called Phorm that's proposing to co-operate with ISPs to capture 'anonymously' people's web activity in order to deliver targeted adverts. This 'service' would be 'opt-out', which has caused considerable controversy over here (and Phorm is already talking to ISPs in the USA).
No matter how high-minded the business, I would be uncomfortable sharing all my surfing habits with them. For example, if I visit a site providing information on cancer cures, will this somehow get back to my insurer?
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Shiladie
56 Comments
Re: Sensitive data
I have the same concern, what about secure sites? how much information will be transfered via this?
although:
If you are OK with turning it on when you are doing casual surfing and off when you need to go to more sensitive material it looks like it may work quite well.
A feature that would be excellent is to allow you to footprint sites, so other people on the site can bring up a list of the people with the program who have been there (and have had it turned on to footprint) and how often they are there. This would let people network with the people interested in the same obscure things who would otherwise never know who else was on that site.
to clarify, as long as you are intelligent about when you have it on and off, it sounds like it can be a powerfull networking tool allowing you to meet those with the same interests even easier then trying to match keywords/groups with somebody on the existing networking sites.
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