If you're looking for a different game, there's Second Life. It's a sandbox/3d chat engine envrioment though. The game is more like a webhost than a developer team. 95% of the content is user made, you can build objects, upload textures for them, create clothing textures, script (using the LSL language, based on c++), create animations using Poser 5 to upload.

You can also sell your creations. The current exchange rate is L$301.0698 / US$1.00. You can make decent money if you're good at creating things. Animations (particularlly dancing and "adult" animations) sell the best, followed closely by high fashion designs.

You can also get hired out to use your skills, such as building a store or club for a group of people.
As an example: http://house-of-blade-mall.blogspot.com/
That first post about House of RFyre is a build I made.

The thing is, don't go by what you see at first. The bulk of the mainland builds are amatuerish, and the different methaphors people design on their lands don't always mix well. Island sims are where you want to go to check out real style and design. Isle RFyre and a few others are example of good designs.

If you do find yourself wandering to second life, my user name is Samuel Frost. Give me a shout.

Oh yeah, the game is free for normal use. You get a L$50 allowance of lindens each week, and you can't own land. If you pay the $10 a month to hav ea premium account, you get L$300 lindens a week, a 512 plot of land that you don't have to pay any monthly fees on, and the ability to buy more land at a price each month. It's worth checking out at least for a little while.