"Toontown" multiplayer online video game launches in June:

The game which has been in trial for months and lets young players collaborate on line in a battle fought with gags rather than bullets is the first unit of what designers plan as a virtual theme park.

"We have a very grand vision for what an online theme park is," Ken Goldstein, executive vice president of Disney Online, told Reuters in an interview. "The next land would be themed to another sort of traditional Disney genre and there would be a common area between them."

....Toontown has been available for $7.95 a month since October 2002 at http://www.toontown.com and been a hit with early adopters, Goldstein said. As many as 2,000 players sign on at one time on some weekends, he said.

The game, aimed at youngsters 8 years old and up, lets players wander a virtual 3-D world where they play games like tug of war to win supplies of gags and tricks. Those can be used to beat the machines, or Cogs, which cannot stand a joke and are trying to overtake the colorful world. [Reuters]