As a project, consider the development of a Java-based mobile game using J2ME, see  [Morrison (2005)], or a web-based game using Visual Basic .NET, see  [Santos Lobao and Hatton (2003)].

You may further explore multiplatform game development, and find arguments to choose for either Java-based or managed code based implementations.

For further reading, I advice to have a look at the special issues of the Scientific American,  [American], and the CACM on the next 1000 years of computing,  [CACM (2001)], and, for getting an idea where this all leads to, Schneidermann's Leonardo's laptop,  [Shneiderman (2003)]. For Second Life, see  [Rymaszweski et al. (2007)].