Stock Trek

Let me start by saying my wife is *not* a gamer. She has played some AOL casual games and once she gets going she can lose trak of time like the rest of us. But such episodes are few and far between. I have *never* seen her get into a game the way she has gotten into G4TV's Spock Market which is a web-based virtual investment game run in conjunction with the airing of G4's "Star Trek 2.0" episodes.
Essentially, players get a starting number of Federation Credits (FDR) and invest these in different characters (e.g. Scotty, Spock, etc.) and icons (Phasers, Communicators, etc.). No more than 50,000 shares of any stock can be owned at a time. Players who know how the fortunes of each character will rise and fall with the Star Trek episodes have an edge on buying low and selling high - because this is mostly what drives the stock prices in this market. A side benefit of adding "Star Trek 2.0" as a myspace friend is that you occasionally recieve investment "tips" prior to key episodes.
Somehow this game has my wife running back and forth between the TV and her computer - logged into the Spock Market - during each episode. She even stays up late to watch the price changes from the West Coast feed. The other day I saw stock prices scribbled on the back of a magazine on the couch. She is really into this game! Maybe there's an untapped demographic for more of this kind of media fusion based economics game. Fortunately, since there is no apparent way to exchange FDR between players we won't seem them up for sale on ebay.