Virtual-Life Games Quiz: Can You Spot the Fake Fake World?

Yahoo Tech
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Still from a Game of Thrones MMORPG trailer. (Winter Is Coming/YouTube)

Thanks to the HBO series Game of Thrones and the modern phenomenon of binge-watching, I have lost vast swaths of discretionary time over the past few years. Some endeavoring sociology grad student could get a PhD thesis out of this: How much collective national productivity have we thrown away thanks to binge-watching and digital distribution? I bet you could find a hard-number effect on the GDP.

Anyway, reports this week suggest that the long-delayed Game of Thrones online video game is finally getting some traction, which could prove to be another massive time-suck for fans of a certain intensity. The game is being designed as an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), the industry’s most unwieldy acronym. These are the games like Everquest and World of Warcraft, in which players create an alter ego and live an entire virtual life in the game’s always-on, 24/7 perpetual world.

There are hundreds of MMORPGs out there, with thousands — even hundreds of thousands — of people interacting online for hours and days at a time. The worlds are often based around fantasy or science fiction, but there are many other variants — including some game premises that are pretty far out there.

Check out the list of virtual world MMORPGs below. Some are still going, some are now defunct, and three are entirely fake. Can you spot the fake fake worlds? (No fair using a search engine.)

1. Club Penguin: Live a whole new life using your penguin avatar in a winter-themed world, with a variety of games and activities. You know, for kids.

2. Urban Dead: Fight zombies as a human survivor, or eat brains as a proud member of the mindless, shambling undead. If you die as a human survivor, you automatically switch to the zombie team.

3. Toontown Online: Fight back against hostile corporate robots by becoming an old-school, Saturday-morning-style cartoon and deploying classic gags — banana peels, seltzer bottles, dropping anvils, etc.

4. Bachelor World: Create your own carefree bachelor alter ego — complete with filthy apartment — in this bizarre multiplayer game set in 1970s Cleveland.

5. Sociolotron: Fight monsters, wield ancient magic, and have virtual sex in a 21-and-over game world.

6. Hello Kitty Online: Help Hello Kitty fight a “mysterious and malevolent power.”

7. Scotsmen! Ever heard of the Scottish Mafia? Of course not, and that’s just how they like it in this Gaelic crime-syndicate simulator.

8. Continuum: Abandon the third dimension entirely and live forever in a frictionless, 2D cosmic world.

9. Blackout Rugby: Manage a virtual New Zealand rugby team by scheduling practices, designing stadiums, and hiring and firing personnel.

10. Third Life: Try, try again in a virtual world exclusively for those who have managed to screw up both their real lives and Second Life.

(OK, #4, #7, and #10 are not actual virtual worlds. Not yet at least.)

Glenn McDonald writes about the intersections of technology and culture at glenn-mcdonald.com and via Twitter @glennmcdonald1.