Thinking out loud here -- excuse the smoke.
I'm not sure if James (or was it Ricky?) that had a smallish bounty for the best 5 ideas to make money with Nxt (I'm probably wildly misremembering this).
Damelon and I had a quick casual chat over at reddit that got me thinking. He was discussing how mining in EVE is similar to forging NXT in that they're FUN. Having mined a lot in EVE, I agree and see the overlap.
What if we had an old-school style
MUD plugged into the AE? It may be crude enough where it would have to be turn-based (like the old play by mail games). But holy !@!$ -- a persistent, online world, sitting atop the blockchain. WITH MICROTRANSACTIONS.
I'm such a geek that the very first thing I thought of when the AE was described here months ago was WoW's auction house and EVE's market.
A simple, online, text-based MMORPG, using NXT as in-game 'gold'. Could definitely get users involved who don't have the technical know-how for coding but have a passion for gaming and design.
This would have to start off small (a single room Inn) and expand to a village, to a countryside, to a nation, continent, etc.
2016, our own little user-generated online world? Would you pay 3 NXT for a +5 Vorpal Sword that a user found in the depths of a dungeon and puts it up for auction?