The Matrix as online game

Are their Matrix fans at your house? The Matrix Online (rated "Teen," or 13+) sucks up as many as 30 hours of every week in 26-year-old Christina Carkner's life, and she's just fine with that, the New York Times reports. So is Warner Bros. and the gaming industry. They're counting on the move of the massively popular Matrix film series to the online world to make MMPGs - massively multiplayer (online) games - a mainstream thing in the US, like it is in Korea and Taiwan, for example. Not that Christina's helping - she was already "deeply involved" in another MMPG called World of Warcraft but ran out of challenges in it (Christina's interesting - read more about her in the Times piece). "Unlike traditional video games, which have their roots in arcades, these games have more in common with role-playing pastimes like Dungeon & Dragons," according to the Times. That potentially makes them big moneymakers, because players get immersed and become willing to pay subscription fees of around $15 a month in addition to buying the software up front for $50-or-so (Sony expects EverQuest's sequel, which launched last November, to make $500 million in its first eight years). To see what The Matrix looks like, go to CNET.

Also from the "How They Might Spend Their Allowance Dept." - This says something about how immersive these games can be: Sony just unveiled an auction site for EverQuest II players to buy and sell virtual artifacts, CNET reports. It's called "Station Exchange" and, yes, that's real money for faux goods, such as an opportunity to buy that "Flaming Sword of Destruction" your Shadowknight always wanted.