• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, April 16, 2008

Do you ever get bored surfing the Web? Believe it or not, it can be rather dull at times and you can get stuck once in a while -- but one way to spice it up a bit is to make a game out of it! That's pretty much the gist of PMOG, or passive multi-player online gaming.

I stopped by the MI6 gaming conference in San Francisco last week. During one of the random interactions I had with a passerby, I got into a discussion of PMOG. The topic is one I've been researching for the last couple weeks and I was amazed to find out more about it. It erupts from the idea of MMOG, or Massive Multi-Player Online Gaming. MMOG refers to games like "World of Warcraft" and other virtual worlds where you interact with other players and participate in missions to achieve higher status in the game. These games are wildly popular, but in order to play them you must have loads of time to spare (hours and hours), because they're quite involved and intricately complex.

PMOG is for the rest of us: those whose time is valuable, but still create time for some passive entertainment. You download an application, which is basically a toolbar, and that toolbar allows you to see what missions have been created and posted by other players. You can also interact with other players and get into "battles" -- which sounds way more exciting than it really is. You can leave little surprises for your friends and your colleagues or you can just watch and play along. The simplest explanation is to think of it as an easy way to create little digital "Scavenger Hunts" that you post and others participate in! With the toolbar in use you can see little notes that other players have posted and left behind for you on a site and you can leave messages for others. It's sort of a little "Fellowship of the Web," but without Hobbits.

There've been lots of applications over the years that allow you to leave messages on Web sites, but none of them took off because they didn't add true value to the consumer (in fact they could be a little annoying). The concept of a Web Ring was big back in 1996 through 1998, as rough "networks" of sites related to a specific type of content and referring you to one another, guiding your journey around the Web. There were Web Rings of all topics, from music to politics, but with the advent of search they became less valuable to the consumer.

The PMOG concept is interesting to me because it marries together the best of both concepts; it's self-selecting, user -initiated and creates a more enticing user experience. It also allows me to find sites and content that I may not have otherwise come across. For people like me who are truly goal-oriented, this is a great motivation in itself!

From a marketing perspective, I find the concept to be of interest as well. What's to stop a brand marketer from creating "missions" that feature content related to their products, their sponsors, or other related category items? Why not create and sponsor these missions, creating the chance for your brand to provide value to general Web surfing? What about promoting those missions in their offline messaging, driving consumers online and taking them through a specific landscape while monitoring their path and providing something of value along the way? You could offer coupons or special information to the users who take the "tour," so to speak! As for creating brand interaction and possibly increasing brand favorability or driving consideration, I can't think of too many better ways to do so!

The PMOG landscape is nascent right now, but the future has many possibilities. Will the concept go mainstream? I don't know. Does the concept have legs that could get it there? Yes.

Check it out and give it a play and let's see what you think about it!