Gen G

I just recently saw the Discovery Times documentary "Gamer Generation" and I especially perked up in the segment that showed a married couple who both play City of Heroes. Since the wife had more duties with the household, the husband was able to spend more time playing and had surpassed his wife by 10 levels. This kept them from participating in some of the same activities - which took away some of the fun they had by doing things together in the game. So the wife actually hired a power leveling service to get her up 10 levels so she could play together with her husband again. First point here - a need was created for a service due to an inequity of how much time companions could devote to the game. On to the second point.
The show now cuts to a person who started making a little money by leveling people's characters for them. Then he was getting so many requests that he started hiring people in Romania to do the leveling work. The people in Romania were delighted to do the work and felt they were actually helping the players employing their services - in this case, making it possible for a couple to be able to play more together. The working conditions were decent and all the surrogate players sit in a room and chat with each other as they go through the mechanics of leveling their clients' characters. No "power leveling" seems to be taking place - just grinding out one battle after another to earn exp for their clients. Second point - the people providing this service are not "cheating" and they have both an appreciation for the job they are and how it is helping someone else.
Third observation. The power leveling business was so successful that the company was opening an additional site in a country with even lower wages. Sounds evil? It's a practice followed by mainstream corporate America. In this case, particularly, no factories, warehouses or any infrastructure other than an internet connection is required. Software programming and service professionals need to expect this form of competition and have a strategy for winning and keeping work in this very open market.
As an aside, the mechanics of the power leveling (10 levels in 10 days) is that the client gives their account information to the service and the owner is locked out from their character during the leveling period. When the leveling service is completed, the player gets an email notificaiton and can resume playing.
One issue remains open that was not explored by the show. Does the player playing for themself earn more value - e.g. through in-game currency or items which can be sold, or does the player playing for someone else at a presumably fixed wage earn more?

iPhone MMOG

The iPhone was launched just a couple of days ago and the whole experience to me is eerily reminiscent to an MMOG launch.
Based on ads, hype and beta testing, many players were ready to join "iPhone World" as soon as the game went live. They waited outside stores to buy their copy while other potential players are sticking with their current game, watching to see if the new game is good enough to pay the cost of switching. Like any day one launch there were some issues with communications lag, but demand for the game was so high that players have already profited by selling new characters on eBay the very same day of the launch. Fortunately, a potential launch bug was staved off by a last-minute patch, in contrast to a competitor's recent patch problems. Fan sites, FAQs and even fan fiction are already up on the web for the benefit of new players and lovers of the game. Even guilds are talking about it. Soon there will be cheats and new patches to prevent them, then what? - expansion packs? action figures? comic books?
Anyway, thank you Apple for doing something interesting - it's always good for the industry and the economy.