Accepting nominations for Linden Lab's Arcadia Game Expo

On behalf of Roxanne, Jezabeth and myself, we would like to thank everyone who voted for our humble game and made this an interesting experience for us. Doesn't look like we'll make it the cut, but we're very happy with where we ended up. Not bad!

Looking for silver linings in this cloud, we figure:

1. Lots of residents know about the forum that did not before (we see lots of first posts). That's good.
2. We found out there is a games Wiki. Cool!
3. Residents in search of a fun time now have a 'list of things to do'.
4. I learned how to code in LSL. This could be good... or bad. A stallion with tools can be a dangerous thing.
5. LL (hopefully?) learned that open voting will tend to favor established games that residents can experience rather than open opportunities for new games they can only be read about (I tend to favor the latter goal, but I'm a hair biased).

Again, thanks to Hamlet and Ben and all the other Lindens for initiating this project, and we'll be cheering from the bleachers in Arcadia for the winners!

*whinnies*

Leonard Churchill

Thanks for the votes folks. And game developers, please join the Game Developer's Association goup!

> Lots of residents know about the forum that did not before (we see lots of first posts).
> That's good.

That was one of our hopes, too, and it was exceedingly cool to see it play out here-- thanks for everyone who nominated and was nominated. While only 8 folks can be nominated for this Expo, here's personally hoping that the Lindens keep running future Expos and slowly expand Arcadia into a giant continent of games.

Counting the votes now, will have the tally soon...

VOTE COUNTING IS COMPLETE!

A staggering 370 Residents made nominations of up to 48 games. Games are truly alive in SL. First, props to all the games that there were named at least once. Look for them in Second Life, because even though they didn't get many votes now, they may be the titles everyone's playing in the future.

32 NOMINATED GAMES

- Arena Ball
- Amalgamates
- Billiards by Bosozoku Kato
- Billiards by Iron Perth
- Brixx
- ELECTRIC BUGALOO
- Galactic Sludge Merchants
- Greedy Greedy
- High Rollers Craps
- Hockey
- Holoball
- Let it Ride Poker
- Look How Much Money My Friends are Happy to Pour into My Voting Machine so I'll Win This Competition
- Magic Battle
- Minerva2
- Ninvair Productions' Card Game
- Ninvair Productions' War Game
- Numbakulla
- On-A-Roll
- pizzeria
- RC Wacky Rally
- Rock Paper Scissors
- Second Life Boxing League
- sicbo
- Slingo
- Slingshots
- Space Rocks of Doom
- Spider Shoot
- techlazer systems
- Teledore Island
- Tringo
- Wizardry

More props to them all! And now, the Standby Runners-Up...

And now, the Standby/Runners Up!

These are called "Standby" because if for any reason any of the nominated Expo Developers are unable to have their game 70% ready a week before launch and 100% on the day of launch, these games will be asked to replace them in Arcardia, in this order of preference:

STANDBY RUNNERS-UP
- InBetween by Leonard Churchill and family- 21 nominations
- Combat Cards by Doc Boffin and Osprey Therian - 20 nominations
- Blood 21 by Sephiroth Raven - 19 nominations
- Bling-Man by Ushuaia Tokugawa - 9 nominations
- Lutamates by Tiger Crossing and Arito Cotton - 7 nominations
- Settlers of Second Life by Sprite Quartermass
- and Lex Neva- 7 nominations
- RC Indy Game by Les White - 6 nominations
- NeoRealms Fishing by Sweegy Manilow and team - 5 nominations

Double props to all 8 Runners-up!

And now, the Arcadia Expo Developers...

AND THE ARCADIA EXPO DEVELOPERS ARE...

Congrats! These are the 8 Arcadia developers selected by the Residents. I will be contacting you immediately to work with Adam Linden on setting up your land in Arcadia, to begin development ASAP.

- Tech Warfare by Eckhart Dillon - 47 nominations
- Boogie Board by Hox Hauptmann - 39 nominations
- The Collective by Grim Hathor and Matthias Zander - 38 nominations
- Danger Zone by Rifkin Habsburg - 38 nominations
- SLictionary by Salem Penguin - 38 nominations
- Dark Life by C. Prefect, Mark Busch, and P. Cotton - 35 nominations
- Castle Wars by RacerX Gullwing - 32 nominations
- BloxSL by Moriz Gupte - 31 nominations

Big shout outs to our Arcadia developers and everyone who nominated them! Be sure to check their games when Arcadia is open to the SL public!

I nominate my very own in production techLazer. This lag free fps is based off of id's quake 3 and is ready for play in deathmatch. teams should be set up around march on the deadline and i beleive you will find this very fun and creative. I dont have any screens (wish I had gotten some before posting) but you can find me testing my game at 500m high in the sky at any of the sandbox's around sl. most of the time I generally stay around sb island.

--- just relized i missed my chance to be nominated lol o well myabe next time when my game is much more improved ----

Where is Arcadia on the map Hamlet? I can't seem to see it.

Will it be possible to fly over to have a look at progress?

It'll be up to the developers whether they want to make Arcadia open to the public before launch date. Working on that with them now.

I cannot see a downside to making these games available to the public using the land.

Low lag environments where ppl can come and play and learn and even just see has many positive publicity advantages and would be a good way to help developers deal with bugs.

I seriously hope everyone can get together on this and open the sim up to the public for playtime

- Calix

(p.s. Conrats to all the game developers, winners, runners up and those who got their games out there for ppl to learn about...hopefully this all will lead to bigger and better things and ideas and collaboration instead of competition so often found in SL...kudos to everyone who voted too! Way to be civically active in SL and show that doing so does in fact cause change...that rocks! WTG ALL! ^^)

Everyone, get on the wiki as well. People do read it for good ideas for fun in SL!

a reason for not opening the land until release date is that curious people might interfere with the developers working there... out of expirience I know people like to watch where others are working (I can understand) but sometimes those people get bored and start playing with 'funny' objects they own, or start clicking on your scripted stuff or just get a bit annoying... which would get in the way of developing...

You can always restrict access to the parcel which would eliminate the so-called people who you are afraid might interfere? I've not had a problem with anyone interfering in private sandboxes Ive used.


Just a thought. Especially since several of the games are done or at least at the beta stage

It would be just nice to be able to fly close by and see how things are progressing, even if it isn't possible to land/do anything.

just because you never had any 'over-excited' visitors when you were working doesn't mean I didn't... there's no reason to call it 'so-called' as if to say I made it all up...

now I actually only got 1 or 2 people who actually were annoying, while all others were just being nice and interested and not clicking on in-development-stuff, so I don't really have a problem opening it up...

I was just replying to "I cannot see a downside to making these games available to the public using the land."... just to say there COULD be a downside....

Hi Ben,

I've wondered about the voting system myself. The act of counting the money itself does form an incentive to cheat the system and skew the actually results of how many people actually played the game because they loved it. Stats that are very important to both the Lindens and the developers.

You might consider seperating any vote system from the money. Consider a simple web page behind the login that is driven by a CGI type script that counts votes. This url can be promoted at the game sites (and as we know even opened from SL).

This can be simple as having a check box for each game and a submit button. Since it would be behind the login like this forum is, a simple CGI or Script/Php etc can track if someone has voted or not. With the number of votes listed it appears your vote numbers don't even get high enough to require a real database, just a list that can be read or written quickly by the program. Considering how simple these are to write it might offer a solution for everyone.

Votes would be clean and one time only. Nobody accused of anything and it would fit natural with the way things are done now on the Lindein site. Most important is you remove the *Incentive* to cheat the system and cloud the stats. It basically automates the same voting system you have used in this forum.

-Corbie

I nominate Tech warfare by Eckhart Dillon ty

Ouch.

I guess I just remember when Tech Warfare was being tested in a pvp sandbox, where random ppl could shoot us, not really caring. But hey what do I know I'm just a low level grunt .

The main reason I entered the contest was so that I could have a nice quiet area to finish building Danger Zone. I've had to move from sandbox to sandbox trying to find one where random people wouldn't

1. Walk in front of me as I was building
   
2. Sit on my game
   
3. Shoot me ("Oops! Sorry, I missed my target"
   
4. Press random buttons without asking
   
5. Spam the same fart-noise sound effect over and over
   
6. Beg me for clothes or money
   

If you want to allow the public to fly over and look, that's fine. Is it possible to make it so they can't actually land?

Well you can have ban lists, you can have fences up...its your land. Fences I believe are 40m high so ppl can yes fly over...and you can set auto-return etc...I assume youve owned land.

You can use a busy sign which allows you to get im's and is a great way to tell ppl you are working. I think the main thing is ppl are excited to see the games, and I don't think that players and customers and voters and supporters are a bad thing?

Personally I have a testing sandbox I currently use. To keep it quiet we do stuff from handing out temp passes to editing access list...to ban lists...to fences. It stays quiet. It works good. Even build up in the sky works good.

There are 8 parcels...I would hope that the owners of each could decide the permissions on their land.

Just some thoughts...

-Calix

Calix: Ban fences, acess lists, etc actually only go 20 meters up.

I won't post my opinions here on whether or not I think the islands should be opened quite yet, as I don't feel this is the proper time or place to be discussing such things. The group for the expo would be much more proper, in my opinion.

Anyway, good luck to the other 7 teams competing, and thanks for those who voted for The Collective!

I'm discussing the vote machine issue with Ben. Far as whether the sims should be open to the public before launch, as I've told developers, they'll need to get either anonymous consent from all 8 developers to do that, or at least from 4 of them so they can go on one sim while the others are on the blocked sim.

I vote Blox - Moriz Gupte!

Corbie, I'm a little confused, so hopefully you can explain some of your thinking a bit further. You are worried that counting the money creates an incentive to game the system. You suggest creating a system that does not judge a game based on how much money it makes, rather, as a poll (the implementation is not important right now).

I do not understand how our counting the money gives more or less incentive to "cheat." As I understand it, the prize that the game developers are competing for is the use of the quarter sim to host their game on. This is the only incentive that Linden Lab is offering directly. There is a second indirect incentive of making money involved because we want you to charge for you game.

Now, it is possible that someone would want to cheat in order to gain the land. However, while this is the direct incentive, it is not a very powerful incentive - the land is not worth that much when compared to the worth of a profitable game. The more powerful incentive is the money, however, this is essentially impossible to cheat at.

Why? There are two ways to put money into your game - first, a regular player can put it in - this is what we want to see, and what we are counting as "votes." This is money in your pocket, and you get to keep it or do what you want to with it - great. The second way is to put the money in yourself, whether directly, or laundered through friends and alts. This might seem like a good way to cheat, but really, it's pretty silly - because you are no longer making a profit from the money, the most you can hope for is the land, which will be taken from you as soon as you stop running the game. So really, it's a lot of work for no profit.

Now, the reason we want to base it off of how much money a game makes is because that will provide a pretty accurate indicator of it's value. People won't pay for a game that is no fun, but they will gladly pay for one that gives them... ahem.. their money's worth. Not to mention the fact that we would like to see more of, and show off games that can make their creators a profit - money, as you notice, is a incredible incentive, and we would like to see more people making more fun interactive experiences and games. The more examples of this we have, the more we can show people and say "See! Now get in here and make your own game in Second Life!" Making games for games sake is awesome, but you will find that more people want to make them for money.

OK, my battery is running out, and I need to get back into the courtroom.

ben

I nominate Tech Warfare by Eckhart Dillon. i love the game alot its so fun i think this guy did a good job .