In-game drug addiction!
Following a brief note in Politiken (yes, I have had time to make up for several days of non-news reading today), hereby a link to the text-based online world Achaea , that has introduced a narcotic drug into their game. Gleam boosts certain of your skills for a while (like dexterity), but might also lead the drug-using character to be addicted to the drug or having serious withdrawal symptoms, or even dying from an overdose.

Follow-ups: see this comment at Slashdot; a Wired article discussing Gleam and other drugs in other worlds (like Speed of the Serpent in A Tale of the Desert - you need to take an antidote to counteract the drug within a given time limit in order not to loose your character (this world has permadeath); a player discussion at MSN community for Achaea - and some interesting comments over at Terra Nova.

[My personal interest in this is not so much the addiction discussion, but rather the way that this discussion of in-game drug use and its effects also help bring out people's views on death and bodily malfunction in the gameworld, and on the relation between game design choices and player strategies]

# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:12