After spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.
It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.
Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.
Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.
Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.
Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.
This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.
If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.
View more Time Wasters
Fellow AOL blogger Tom Taulli at Blogging Stocks speculates that YouTube may be preparing for an IPO. The evidence? 1) YouTube's investor is Sequoia Capital, which was also an early investor in Google and "is not about making a great returns on its investments; rather, it wants to make blow-out returns." 2) YouTube just hired Gideo Yu, former Yahoo! treasurer, to be its CFO. Despite YouTube's youth--it was founded just 19 months ago--Taulli says a YouTube IPO would be "easy" considering its 40% market share and 100 million videos viewed each day.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Haimson said 2:57PM on 9-05-2006
Honestly, who would invest in it. It will probably do good because of pure hype. But it has no monetization strategy, and probably wont for a while. Plus, its loss wont be that big a thing, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and a myriad of other similar sites will pick up the slack.
I think if they can figure out a way to just break even, then it will have a glimmer. Rite now, its just too big an elephant to move.
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Jeffrey McManus said 3:19PM on 9-05-2006
Which VC firms aren't about making blow-out returns?
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Rob Conery said 5:38PM on 9-05-2006
Who would invest in it? No monetization strategy? Are you FRICKIN NUTS! 100 million videos watched a day... Hello? Did you know that in terms of "Eyes on video" YouTube outpaces all the major US TV stations - combined! In case you weren't aware, networks make money on advertising. Math anyone? YouTube is almost impossible to evaluate - how do you put a $$ value on something that will deliver advertisements to a loyal following, with ZERO production costs (video production) and a staff of 40-something with so little overhead... well it's stifling.
I'm not a .com kook - but just look what Google's doing in the market, and that's with search and a smattering of other apps. This is media - a rich experience that people go to when they want. It's the American Passtime (watching TV); I for one think the only possible problem here is their competition.
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Fabulo said 6:13PM on 9-05-2006
1. Create a popular free service with millions of subscribers generating a demand for trillions of gigabytes/s of bandwidth.
2. ...
3. Profit!
= youtube
= myspace
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