DALLAS: Jo Ann Hicks doesn’t identify with gamers, but she spends hours online every day playing ‘Kaneva’.

The 41-year-old homemaker likes the shopping-and-partying game — where she operates a virtual nightclub and hosts parties — because it helps her interact with people, not provide escape from them as traditional games often do.

Social and gaming networks, once considered polar opposites, are cross-pollinating as online interactions replace prime-time TV and other, more traditional media experiences. Games like ‘Kaneva’ are attracting players that games like ‘Super Mario Brothers’ never did.

“I run around and act like a 40-year-old person. I have my little clan we hang with. What people will say is more interesting to me,” Hicks said of her preferred game. “As opposed to Mario, who’s only going to jump.”

Game developers say there’s money for both sides in this convergence. Social networks that incorporate more features of “massively multi-player online games” could enhance their already-substantial earning power. And gaming sites would benefit from increased membership and broader acceptance.

David Dague, a 34-year-old executive in Chicago who runs a website called tiedtheleader.com, said games have changed fundamentally since the early days of ‘Space Invaders’.

“I’ve seen gaming go from a solitary thing to where there really is a cinematic experience going on in front of you that you can share in a social capacity,” said Dague, whose site coordinates matches in Xbox Live games like ‘Halo 3’ and hosts forums about gaming.

Played in virtual worlds with advertising and goods for sale, games like ‘KartRider’ and ‘Kaneva’ now go beyond the scope even of early interactive games. They’re less about skill levels and escapism and more about joining friends and strangers in virtual spaces where chatting, comparing fashions, going dancing are all options.

For their part, networking sites are encompassing more interactive features that consume increasing amounts of users’ time — long considered a defining feature of computer games.

MySpace and Facebook are massively multiplayer games in disguise, says Gabe Zichermann, who is developing ‘rmbr’, which he says will make a video game out of tagging and sharing digital photos.

“The reason why Facebook is a really compelling MMO is because it’s fun and you get something out of it,” he said.

“They’re going to be able to monetise their users at the same level (as the games do),” Jessica Tams, managing director of the Casual Games Association, said of the social network sites. “That’s a lot of money.”

Nexon, which has offered free, socially rich video games for years in South Korea, introduced its English-language version of ‘KartRider’ for use in North America in September.

Launched as a beta program earlier this spring, ‘Kaneva, created by an Atlanta-based company of the same name, had 84,000 members in October, according to comScore. Once players download the game, they see advertising and can buy all sorts of virtual clothing and upgrades for a few dollars apiece.

It’s a substantially different business model from online fantasy games like ‘World of Warcraft’, which tend to require subscriptions, at $15 or so per month, and usually don’t allow users to buy things for real money, online or off.

“Think of ‘World of Warcraft’ as kind of closing the book on this generation of games,” says Christopher Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management. “Those folks who are developing the next generation of massively multiplayer games really need to raise the bar anew.”

Venture capital, technology and media firms invested more than $1 billion in 35 virtual worlds companies between October 2006 and October 2007, according to a study by Austin-based Virtual Worlds Management, a company that organises conferences to discuss emerging online trends.

‘Second Life’ — where users can buy their own plots of land to build stores, castles or anything else they can imagine — is creating a game within a game with CBS, called ‘The Virtual CSI: New York’, that melds networking and gaming. Avatars will be able to go to crime scenes and figure out what happened.

The lure of interactive online games is so strong it can cut into users’ sleep and boost the time they spend playing, according to a month-long study by Syracuse University psychology professor Joshua Smyth.

Smyth found that players spent on average 14.4 hours a week playing —twice as long as video game players who don’t interact online.

Stephen Prentice, a senior analyst for the Gartner Group in the United Kingdom, believes the time is right for such online social video game services to take off. The big question is who will succeed first.—AP