Hattrick

I've been playing this game called Hattrick since the middle of the summer. Liisa's cousin was nice enough to get me addicted to it as I had never heard of it but it is developed in Sweden and is apparently a big deal there. It's essentially a soccer simulation game that requires you to build a team, train players and play games to move up in your league. It's fairly complex and a very long game, it usually takes 3-4 "seasons" to improve enough to promote divisions (each season lasts about 3 months) and requires a lot of patience and fine tweaking. It's set up a bit like real soccer, you join your countries conference and play in your local league. There are international games, Cups and even a World Cup where the "best" managers play each countries best players against each other.

Since it's a passive simulation game you don't really need to do much to keep it going, usually logging in 3-4 times a week for 15 minutes to set your lineup, see a players training status, manage your team finances, etc is enough to manage the game so it's easy to from work once and awhile. The most active part of the game is during games where a game recap is updated every 5-10 minutes with some sort of event (scoring chance, injury, card, goal, etc).

The game has about 1 million players but is constantly adding players, there's even been a rumor recently that Fox may by the site (which could mess it up). If you're looking for something to waste a bit of time on during the work day and like these types of online simulations check it out at www.hattrick.org.