Real U is determined to introduce some of the production values and storytelling techniques of offline games to the MMO, whilst also avoiding a literal journey through the tale of the books, instead making every player like one of the books' minor characters - or, as Williams puts it, 'building story into the experience at a cellular level'. Moving on to the game's many worlds - by way of 'surfing', alarmingly literally, through a twisting network of data-splines and flight tubes - things become somewhat more structured. But there will be player-generated quests too, which you'll be able to charge an in-game fee for access to, in a sort of lottery system. Most quests will be set by NPCs, and have risks associated with failure - a reluctance on the NPC's part to offer it again, for example.

These social areas also act as a stealth lobby system, where 'hosts' will cross-reference players' data, and suggest quests in Otherland's multiple realities to them. Real U promises 50 or 60 of these for the finished game. Bars and shops with names like Alien Sex Friend host simple games with online leaderboards - we're shown a rhythm-action dance game in a miniature club where every avatar is shrunk to two inches tall. Real U doesn't want the fractured nature of the setting to lead to a fractured game - the largely co-operative massively multiplayer gameplay will be the same across most of its realities - but in Lambda Mall, it is indulging itself in an orgy of minigames.

Lambda Mall will be the social centrepiece of Otherland, and provide its most scattershot, lightweight and casual gaming.

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