Sirius Knight just sent me this interesting demo of his new Network2080 "event engine" now in public Beta. Kind of like a multiplayer game server, it matches available players to available roles and scenarios for a metanovel called "Caledon Castle" and a dating service called "Nectar". So instead of picking counter-terrorist missions and weapons or whatever, you choose a character you want to play in the romantic melodrama of "Caledon", or the kind of blind date you want to have. Then the network matches you with players who've been assigned to their own roles/goals. Judging by the video, at least, it's an idea that has a lot of potential. Even if this particular system isn't ideal, Second Life will definitely need one or more extremely popular match-up systems if it's going to develop as a viable game platform.