Something Similar
In the early days of the web, there was an online game. The name escapes me but the idea was to build a business empire, building and managing stores and so on, competing against other players, building new properties, buying out or extorting theirs and so on.

It soon became clear that growth came from paying attention and downtime caused stagnation. It didn't require a huge amount of time so every hour or two, I'd log on, tweak some bits and prices and then go back to what I was doing. Presumably the other players couldn't or wouldn't devote the time and soon, I was the major player on the board. This continued for one or two weeks, a low-level of constant attention. Other players fell before me, fairly large empires shrank and disappeared. I owned 96% of the map and the remaining players were mere splodges not long to resist my overwhelming might...

The next game turn came and...

The map was empty. Well, I say empty. The tiny splodges remained. The game's financial year had come around and my taxes exceeded my income (many millions of income, a couple of grand discrepancy). I had been a bit over-aggressive in buying other players properties the last turn and the game decided I was bankrupt.

I closed the browser and never looked back.
(Richy_T hundreds if not thousands of dollars, Mon 22 Dec 2008, 19:16, Reply)