Solid Geekery

A lot of people have gotten into massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) in recent years.  You just have to look at World of Warcraft with its ten million subscribers to see how popular they’ve become.  There is one major problem with MMOGs that keeps a lot of people from playing them, and that’s the amount of time that you have to invest in them to keep up with other players.

An attempt is now being made to make a MMOG that doesn’t involve such a huge investment of time in order to play.  In fact, the game is played while surfing the web.  It’s called the Passively Multiplayer Online Game, and it’s promising to change the way gamers play.

How the game works

If you point your browser to the PMOG website, you can sign up for the beta test.  The only requirement to play the game is that you use the Firefox browser and download their extension.  The extension will overlay text and images on the pages that you visit while you browse to report events in the game.

Like most MMOGs, you have a character that gets developed as you play the game.  Whenever you visit web pages, you earn points that can be spent on items.  You can take part in missions that send you to different web pages.  You can even leave mines and gifts on web pages that are found later by other players who stumble upon them.

 The game borrows many elements from social networking sites like Facebook and offers a more casual experience than other games in the MMO genre.  Because the game has a passive interface and emphasizes social interaction, it is likely to attract more casual and female gamers than traditional MMOGs like World of Warcraft.

What is it like?

I haven’t gotten a chance to play the game, but it appears to be in open beta now.  Check back for comments about thoughts on the gameplay.