Bright future for games in Second Life...

... possibly. Towards the end of last year Linden Labs officially announced that Rod Humble would become the new CEO. Having had a very successful career in the games industry, there are justified expectations that under his leadership Second Life will become more game-like. Whether that includes a focus on content or is more the "feel" of the experience, we'll wait and see.

With Mr Humble not due to actually start in the role until mid-January, I wouldn't have expected to see any impact until around the Summer. However, there are already some signs of shuffling at Linden Labs, such as the new blog post on games. It relates mainly to the category in the destination guide - which has gone from no mention of games at all, to a combined 'sports and games' category, to giving games an entry all on their own.

As I mentioned in the comments of that post, I don't see the point in separating sports and games in a virtual world like Second Life. The distinction between sports and games in the real-world is mainly due to culture and organisation - for example Kabaddi compared to British Bulldog. Currently Quackerstone Duck Racing is in the sports category; really? Categories are always tricky, which is why we shouldn't be using them anymore - see "Everything is Miscellaneous" - but for sports and games in SL I think that if you're looking for something in one, then you'll enjoy what's in the other.

Second Life Games Directory Update

15 more games added; many more still waiting.

http://thoughtfulmonkey.com/slgameslist/

llDetectedTouchUV function

I'm not sure when it was added, but the ability to determine where the user clicked on an object's surface is very useful. To try it out I threw together two examples, shown in the video below.



Subbuteo:
The HUD calculates the distance and angle from centre of the point clicked, and applies an equivalent force to the Subbuteo player. ((I wasn't impressed by Ronaldo's finishing))

Star Fleet Command III turning:
You can click on the ring surrounding the ship to set a heading.

SL Games List

There doesn't seem to be one around at the moment, so I've made one myself:

http://thoughtfulmonkey.com/slgameslist

This will be a steadily expanding list of the games available within Second Life. They won't be reviewed; just briefly described and linked to.