I’ve been trying out a game I saw mentioned in yesterday’s article about achievements. It’s called Nethernet: The Passively Online Multiplayer Game.

As you surf the web, you can leave cards and crates full of points on webpages, or you can leave mines that go off. Other people surfing with the Netherweb Firefox toolbar installed will find these treasure and traps.

The thing is, you can leave a reward for someone to find, or you can leave a punishment… and that’s about it, really. Stumbling over them is largely random, though there’s an events page where you can watch what urls people are dropping rewards in.

The framework of something resembling a game is there, but there’s no opportunity for creative play. There’s some anti-traps and some meta-links and such, but their use seems limited.

I think Netherweb is trying too hard to make “the game of the Internet” rather than a game loosely based on the Internet. Character classes are aligned along order and chaos, people who like to point out new and interesting things on the web versus those who like to rickroll. To be honest, though, I’d rather step on a mine than suffer the endless parade of helpful “My webcomics list!” popups left by order players on my daily website trawl.

A game that uses the web as a base rather than an end model would be interesting, however. Maybe something like the territory control of EVE Online, but with top-level domains instead of star systems. The value of a system could be linked to its Alexa ranking, with Google.com as the prize hub “system” that factions constantly war over. Passive players could fuel their faction by browsing the web, much like they earn points now.

Well, it’s just an idea. Netherweb is still in beta, so maybe more creative play will come with more iterations. I think I’m going to uninstall it for the time being, though.

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