www.play.net/gs4 -- 30 day free trial, this is the best MMO ever created.

http://www.flashdevelop.org/ + http://www.flixel.org/

...that Disney deserves.

inb4 skynet

..until I can paste images into it, and paste into lists. I hate to say this, but Microsoft Outlook 2007's compose email is pretty much what I am looking for =)

http://www.nme.io/ cross compiles to most desktop and mobile platforms and has additional features like UDP sockets.

..it's still awesome!

Life is pain. My five-year-old doesn't even cry anymore when she gets her shots -- she is brave as hell -- and when we are done, we go get ice cream. I can see this as good for preventing infection at the site of the vaccination, but shots aren't that bad once you get used to them.

So I guess Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter aren't large scale enterprise deployments?

Linear algebra, matrix math, and set theory are pretty much pre-requisites to any serious graphics implementations, not to mention physics engines. Sorry to go anecdotal, but my web/art background prepared me for making models but certainly not rendering/shading them.

...and to be clear, I don't mean "game design."

Any creative math major can be a game developer with some CS. Education masters? Serious games: http://www.gameslearningsociety.org/

The most basic user story:

1. go to www.google.com.
2. search.

is really how people are getting shit done. I can see niche search, like Wolfram, or maps.google.com, or Amazon for products, but social search is bs.

...so long as they tax violent movies and television first.

...or Psonics!

+1 to this, start small with simple mechanics in a 2d space. Flashdevelop is a great, free tool that is easy to setup and use.

If you want to try using a Flash game framework, try something like Flixel.