Natalie Bookchin’s 2002 piece Metapet is a web game in which the user manages digital human workers who have been modified to have dog characteristics to make them more obedient. The game would immediately have an off feeling because of how uncomfortable we are as a society about genetic modification, especially in humans, and because of the idea of keeping a human as a pet is not acceptable in modern society. On closer inspection however, we are not unlike these obedient pets to our bosses and corporate owners, and if it was profitable and legal, they would likely not hesitate to mess with our DNA.  
The game has a number of other clever allusions to our real world as well. The object of the game, to make the most money and be a successful manager, is only achievable by mistreating your dog worker, and by being kind and ethical, it’s impossible to “win.” The rules of the system inherently encourage the player to be a bad person. However, Bookchin has made the other route, while not winning, to still be more interesting and fun to play, which gives a user incentive to explore multiple methods of playing the game and question whether making the most money is really the most important objective.  
Virtual pet games like this have been popular for a while. The interface for Metapet is not unlike a Tamagotchi with the center display showing the pet with tabs for different maintenance tasks along the horizontal edges. By putting her message into a game with a tried and tested, familiar format and releasing it online for anyone to play, it can attract a very wide audience. I found it especially interesting that some people took the game very seriously and would discuss strategies in forums. Bookchin also mentioned in an interview that human resource professionals would even contact her about using the game as a training tool. On this matter she also explained that she had designed the game to be easy to play at work, a feature which is mirrored in gameby having mini games available for the Metapet to play. This framing was a great way to get workers and their managers alike thinking about these issues.  
Olia Lialina’s 1996 work  My Boyfriend Came Back From the War is one of the pioneering pieces of net art. Web-based and still viewable over twenty years later, it’s an participatory story with countless different paths all made up of simple black and white images, text, and links. Rather than have the entire story handed to them in a single, linear path, the user must make choices to advance through the story which affects how it will unfold for them.  
The work is online for anyone to see at anytime, but it’s not quite as the artist first made it. In gallery exhibitions of My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, Lialina uses an old browser, old computers, and a slow internet connection. It was part of the feeling of the piece that the images didn’t load immediately This would add to the mystery and suspense of the story. She comments on the beauty of the Netscape browser, which perhaps even made a part of the artwork too. It’s interesting to think that the pacing and framing are things that are maybe unintentionally dynamic just due to technology’s progression.
