An interesting article : What WoW Can Teach Web 2.0.

A few years ago I got to thinking, what is the difference between computer games and working on the computer? This came at a time when I was working in crystallography, we had great SGI workstations with 3D graphics showing beautiful pictures of rotating molecules, so it felt quite similar to games, but there was a difference between playing a game, say, Nethack, and work? Somehow to bring these two worlds closer together, so that work could be just as fun as playing a game.