What is A World Of My Own? Well, it's sort of Second Life crossed with a 'real-world' arcade. Game Domain International will soon be offering this "super-fast digital distribution technology", which is promised to quickly stream games to PC gamers, in a virtual, online world. 

In addition to offering games, A World Of My Own is attempting build a virtual hangout for a community of gamers. They'll be offering prize cash-prize tournaments, and virtual hangouts, for gamers to loaf around in. The virtual world is set up into different areas, that feature different subsets of games. For example, Olympia village will be where you find sport games; and the Takana district -- that has "the look of Blade Runner, [and] the feeling of Soho with a touch of the Orient thrown in" -- will be where your customizable avatar may wander if he (or she) is in the mood for more mature-crowd games, like shooters.

While the idea is interesting in of itself, what really bodes well for the success of A World Of My Own are the massive money and minds behind it. The big backing is coming from Virgin Games. Richard Branson says that this new project "gives us the opportunity to do for PC games what iTunes has done for music." That is a pretty big claim, and it's a tough virtual-world out there, but AWOMO wants to compete with GameTap, and many publishers have already signed up or shown interest, including: Atari, Eidos, Vivendi, 2K Sports, Sega, NCsoft, THQ, and Koch Media (makes of X3: Reunion).

A World Of My Own is subscription based, so if you pay whatever the monthly fee will be, you'll be able to play any of the games in the virtual world.

An open beta is going on right now. They have about 10,000 keys to give out. Currently, their are over 50 games implemented into the service.

"Yeah hi, I'll have a steak, a mint julep, and Rise of the Elves please."