Kingdom of Loathing

In the land of polished MMORPGs and media studio game production vying for 3D experiences, lie some interesting backwaters. I'm not referring to the casual gamers, although that is a significant slice of population that aren't WoW'ed by the immersive environments, rpgs and simulations; nope, that's an artform unto itself. I'm talking about something else. Something that looks like it was made by scanning pre-schoolers' doodles in a place where the object is to beat up drunken goats and battle hippies. Something called:

The Kingdom of Loathing

It's free, relying only on donations. But here's the interesting thing about "scale" on the internet: just the donations were enough for its creator to quit his day job and hire 6 full-time employees. They even have a virtual currency. Current exchange rate is 480,000 hunks of meat for one US dollar on ebay.