I funded a couple guys that wanted to do something like this a few years ago...but they completely dropped the ball because they were really only interested in the tech challenges instead of the creative and business aspects. (They basically made the cardinal geek sin of getting too focused on the tech instead of customers, so they've been spinning their wheels with a distributed game server that no one wants instead of working on an actual game they could sell.)

If you get anywhere with this, shoot me an email. I'd also be very interested in online murder mystery games.