It's been a while since my last (first) post about Combat Cards, the SL game of strategy and mayhem. In the intervening months, there have been a lot of changes. There are more cards to be played, more locations in which to play them, and more combatants as well. In fact, Combat Cards just finished a tournament that saw the top 4 scorers battle it out to the delight of all. If ever you were intrigued by this idea, now's the time to check it out!

I recently posed to be on one of the cards, and was told that Osprey Therian and Doc Boffin are looking for horror-themed models, so if you think you have an avatar that will fit right in with these, do contact them in-world. Here's a link to their website, and here's their blog, and here is their in-world location. Forget Tringo; this is a great example of an engaging, complex, absorbing game produced entirely within SL! Check out the tutorial here, then go fight the good fight!

Linden Lab have just released a FAQ that is intended to clarify the new gambling policy. Discussions with Second Life users suggest that the items clarified in the FAQ are the ones that our focus group members didn't really need clarification to, and that a few issues are still open.

Depending on how you choose to read both the policy and this new FAQ, items such as the various *ingo games may be prohibited (which are generally analagous to poker in terms of the balances of chance and skill). Still and all, the FAQ does serve the useful purpose of clarifying the legal applicability. The full FAQ is reproduced below the fold.

Kermitt Quirk continues to make bucks on his game Tringo by signing a deal with Two Way TV Australia Limited to publish his game as a PC title. This is great news for him, but non-news for any other game-makers in-world, as his so far is the only game to have been turned into a RL property.

I've always thought SL makes a fairly good platform for at least a proof-of-concept prototype game. It's a great way to bring potential investors to your game. You can develop your game in SL, bring folks in to look at and play it, make changes in real time, etc. Is more of this going on that I just don't know about? If you're a game maker/designer and you're working on something you'd like the world to know about, drop us a line!

Kermitt Quirk is the by-now famous inventor of Tringo, the heralded game-within-a-game now ported to the Nintendo DS. Australian news source The Age recently interviewed Kermitt and grabbed a little video of both his land and a short introduction to Tringo itself.

Now, I've not played Tringo, because frankly I don't need another method of frittering away my time; I'm the addictive type, and I know it. Kermitt, however, is another example of 'residents gone good', to be lumped in with the likes of Anshe Chung and Our Aimee -- that is to say, residents with an impact so great that they've become the RL's touchstone to SL. While the videos are short, Kermitt comes across as a fairly sober-minded individual, which is probably a good thing, considering all the overblown hype the mainstream media usually generates around SL. Go check it out; links to the videos are at the bottom of the article.

(Thanks, Corey!)

Man, I'm such a dork; if it comes to picking a punny title over no punny title, I'll hurt people every time. Anyway! Resident Lev Kamenev (euphonius name, Lev!) has contacted me regarding the concept called geotagging. For those Outside of the Know, geotagging is a way to add Real Life geographical information to a piece of content, whether it be an image, a website, etc. This information typically takes the form of latitude and longitude coordinates, though any system explicable to others is possible.

In that vein, Lev has described a possible geotagging system to be used within SL itself on his blog. Unlike RL coordinates, I can see the use of embedding SL coordinates in a document, or a blog post, or an image on Snapzilla. If you're looking at someone's Flickr photo and get some geotag information, it's unlikely that you'll be able to just travel there on a whim to check out the action. In SL it's a simple button push. You can go visit that crazy yardsale with the giant statue of a panda bear. You can patronize that atmospheric rave club with the pretty people. You can go play that wacky Tringo-derived game. So it's good. Go check out Lev's thoughts on the subject and help this become a reality!

I am indebted to Mathew Kumar's blog for the news that there is indeed an offworld way to improve your Tringo skill. you know, I have been sending invitations to Mathew to come explore Second Life with me, but he isn't biting yet.

I have only played Tringo twice that I can remember. The first time I played with Hiro Queso, in the first few weeks after Tringo was introduced into the world, at which point he beat me soundly every game. He was better than me at Tringo too.

The second time was many months later and a complete disaster. I only went to the event in order to support a friend, and had entirely forgotten how to play. It wasn't so much the aims of the game that I had forgotten as the practicalities. In this short reconstruction, BOOM! is the pieces of Tringo falling ....

I have yet to play a game in SL. *gasp!* No! Say whut? Yes! It's troo. There might be all manner of entertaining wastes o' time in-world, but SL is where my social life is, and that's why I go there. If I wanted to play a game, I have a bunch of them just sitting there, impatiently awaiting my attention.

Having said that, I am intrigued by the notion of constructing a game within the paradigm of a world that is, itself, somewhat like a game. A Metagame, I suppose is what you'd have to call it. Blech. Remind me later to rant about the current buzzwords. Anyway, I've heard of the Numbakulla project, and by now the whole Tringo/Nintendo DS story has been well covered. Are there any other games in Second Life that, if I suddenly got it into my head to play, would be worth the time? I don't know; I'm asking!