Torque it, baby: a Fool’s Gold post mortem.

What do you get when you have three game developers, one new tool set, seven days, and a really bad idea? You get Fool's Gold, a true turd of a game. Before you read further, go check it out for yourself on the Fool's Gold download page. It's small, and you'll get a giggle.

The goal was to build a game in seven working days using the Torque Game Engine 1.5 and as much free or pseudo-free content as possible. The result was Fool's Gold, a bit of a joke of a game. We went into a seven day game knowing that the end result was not necessarily going to be 'fun' or even a 'game', a toy was permissible. The whole reason we did it was to teach ourselves about the experience of making a game with Torque, and what we could expect when doing it on a full fledged project. Torque turned out to be an amazing product, and while not without it's glitches it did perform quite admirably.

We had been discussing a number of ideas for our 7 day game, and had more or less settled on a space farmer harvesting space yeast, space hops, space barley, space ice to bring home and make his beer, while managing his resources and dodging baddies. The idea was silly and fun and had a space theme to it, which appealed to everyone. We were just goofing around and I had a sudden idea for a game where you were a gold farmer, getting chased by Blizzards who want to ban you in an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque mash-up of all the different MMO's out there. Everyone thought it was funny and started adding to it, and Fools Gold was quickly born.

The good gentlemen at Linden Labs have invited the feds into their casinos to "[seek] guidance on virtual gaming activity in Second Life" and that they had "not yet received clear rules from U.S. authorities".

Some spine chilling statements from the article:

"Britton said Linden Lab could potentially face criminal charges under the 1970 Illegal Gambling Business Act or the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The latter law, passed last year, takes aim at credit card companies and other electronic funds transfers that enable Internet gambling."

"If you're buying money on the Lindex (a virtual currency exchange) and utilizing it for gambling purposes, Linden could have a much higher level of responsibility," he added. "If they would be found in violation, that's difficult to say, but I can see a much stronger case being made."

And the real heart stopper...

"It's not always clear to us whether a 3-D simulation of a casino is the same thing as a casino, legally speaking, and it's not clear to the law enforcement authorities we have asked,"- Ginsu Yoon, currently vice president for business affairs for Linden Labs.

Finally Linden's admission of the hard reality:

"Even if the law were clear, he said the company would have no way to monitor or prevent gambling in Second Life."

Ouch! Let's hope this isn't the spark that ignites that big pool of very flammable gas we all know has been pooling around the whole currency in virtual worlds and government regulation issue.

So, this is based on a discussion we've been having off and on here at Verse Studios. Picture a world where the government decides to tax virtual goods as if they were honest-to-goodness real solid things.

What happens when someone finds a bug. A duplication bug. They duplicate a shield worth $100.00 ten times?

Does it become a federal offense, is it counterfeiting?

Is legislation the only way you can protect the vendor ( us ) from the criminals ( them ) for making duplications of our virtual goods ( really good fakes ).

And what does it mean for us ( game developers )? Do we have to put a value on our virtual stuff ( commodities market ) so that the government can properly tax ( 35% of $0.00 value ) us and our players ( capital gains )?

And what happens when our game tokens ( currency ) are used to buy things on ebay ( exchange rate ) and money market traders get involved ( lunacy )?

And do will our company have to issue W4's to every player ( overhead! ) or will players running player run in game corporations have to do it ( is this fun? ) and will they also have to pay social security ( nanny state ) and provide daycare facilities ( baby boom )?

I really hope the government ( the man ) stays the hell out of things ( laize faire ) and tax the corporate earnings from selling game tokens ( coupons! ) and be done with it. ( unlike China )

So, the crew over at Loading... posted not one blog post, but two, and one was a review of Fool's Gold! And you thought we were done with that...

It was nice to see another game blog site picked up on what we were doing, and the real joke behind it. Took us here at Verse Studios a while to find these posts, sadly, or we would have pasted this message up sooner.

Walksafe kids.

The Virtual Worlds Conference 2007 wrapped up a while ago. I really wish we could have attended, since we are dedicated to building virtual worlds and social games. Sadly, no time and no money to attend this particular conference.

Thanks to Gamasutra though, we have a lovely synopsis of the event.

Every where I look these days companies are putting two-and-two together, and seeing the same, or similar, vision that we here at Verse Studios are seeing. The internet has become a social environment and community of unprecedented proportions. Games have become one of the largest entertainment forms. Combining the two has shown to be extremely compelling, enjoyable, and profitable.

I am just glad that we are, in a lot of ways, ahead of the pack. Larger companies seem to be scrambling to 'get it' and 'get in on it'. Not to brag, but we get it. Big time. We live it, and breathe it, and love it. It is good to see others coming along with us. In the long term, this could be the next evolution of not only gaming, but how people use the internet.

Could this be the next level of the 'dot com' industry? I like to think so.