  This work presents the design and implementation of our Browser-based
Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Living City, a simulation game fully
developed at the University of Messina. Living City is a persistent and
real-time digital world, running in the Web browser environment and accessible
from users without any client-side installation. Today Massively Multiplayer
Online Games attract the attention of Computer Scientists both for their
architectural peculiarity and the close interconnection with the social network
phenomenon. We will cover these two aspects paying particular attention to some
aspects of the project: game balancing (e.g. algorithms behind time and money
balancing); business logic (e.g., handling concurrency, cheating avoidance and
availability) and, finally, social and psychological aspects involved in the
collaboration of players, analyzing their activities and interconnections.
