The Guardian (of all places) has an interesting article about
griefers, people who go into online worlds and
lie, cheat and steal their way to a higher level character. As someone who just succumbed to the dark addictive pleasure that is
World of Warcraft, I can say that I'm not a fan of this kind of virtual shenaniganery.
There's also an article at
1Up.com about
machinima artists (people who make films using a game engine and the characters within it) looking at the feasibility of
making their films full-time. While I can see quitting your day job to blog and living off Adsense revenue (and instant noodles), I think it'll be a while before machinima can pay the bills.