From Virtual World To Mobile Gaming

The site Clickable Culture has a piece on a game coming soon to a mobile device near you. The game, Tringo, comes from an unusual source: the virtual world Second Life. From the article: "Tringo, invented by SL resident Kermitt Quirk over his Christmas holidays, blends the sensibilites of Tetris and Bingo. It's a game of skill, but the stakes can be quite high. Not only is Tringo well-designed, taking Second Life's technical parameters into consideration, but its popularity is growing."

Sounds Interesting...

[gimpynerd]

Sounds like an interesting game. I wonder who they pay to sit around and think up new puzzle games. Being a programmer myself I know it is not easy to think of puzzle ideas. Do some people have jobs where they sit around all day and think up ideas for puzzle games. I wonder if we will see clones of this on PC and consoles in the future...

Re:Sounds Interesting...

[DaveKap]

Actually, I don't think the developers of Second Life (as in Linden Lab workers) do much in-world development of their own. The coolest thing about this story is the fact that it was just a resident who made the game and he did it for fun. Getting an offer for it was simply a bonus. I've been a resident for a while and have made a few games of my own. I have to admit that this is awesome news in my book because I've always wondered if there was any legitimacy in the games I made inside Second Life. Thi

Re:Sounds Interesting...

[BudFox007]

I read an interesting article at www.pokerlistings.com about how the poker industry is now trying to make poker for real money available on cellphones. Since online poker has become such a hype, the poker rooms are now ready to cash in on a new market. I think this is a great idea and will probably take off too.

Re:Sounds Interesting...

[BudFox007]

Sorry, you find the article at http://pokerlistings.com/ [pokerlistings.com]

Tring licensed in the real world!

[Critter92]

What the Clickable Culture story missed is that today's Wall Street Journal reported that the Second Life [secondlife.com] resident has sold the real world publishing rights of Tringo to Sean Ryan's Donnerwood Media [donnerwood.com] for "low five figures." They plan to publish Tringo for mobile phones and on the web. Also mentioned over at Terra Nova [blogs.com].

Original story.

[DaveKap]

The original story of Tringo getting purchased is with the Wall Street Journal. This link [wsj.com] doesn't require membership either (but you do have to scroll down). It also covers another thing missed by the Clickable Culture story: The publishing rights go to Donnerwood in the real world but the developer, Keir, keeps his rights to the game within Second Life.

Reportage

[tony_ratboy]

Hi, I'm the author of Clickable Culture [clickableculture.com]. I did report about the "low five figures." I didn't mention Keir retains the in-world rights. Whoever posted the Slashdot story should have just linked to the WSJ source (as I did). I certainly didn't break news on this one, although I reported on and described Tringo last month [secretlair.com]. I'm going to edit the post over at Clickable Culture to add the missing info. It was an oversight, thanks for pointing it out.

Re:Reportage

[tony_ratboy]

Ah, I'm confused. The Slashdot story linked to my original Tringo article, which was written last month prior to the licensing deal. The more recent story [secretlair.com], posted yesterday, discusses the licensing issues. I have edited this one to clarify the licensing arrangement.