matrix online hiring real actors to play in-game characters.

it reminds me of the diamond age. short intro: "Hackworth creates the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer of the book's title. It is not merely a book, but a vastly complex multimedia device designed to evolve itself in response to its user. But he makes a fatal error: he pirates a copy of the book for his own young daughter and loses it in a trivial mugging. The book is snatched by a thete -- a classless person, an illiterate boy who brings it home and gives it to his little sister Nell, whose life is gradually transformed by it." from here

The other end of the book, most of the time, was a young woman actress whose job it was to communicate through the book and make the book come alive, and also became a surrogate mother for the girl.