Tyr Akina and Aries Oh are running a Can't Stop Tournament on Saturday May 30th.
Sign up at the
Game Parlor in Dragon Nest. There is a $50 sign-up fee to join, but the more people who enter, the bigger the prizes. Right now the winner will receive $1250. There are also prizes for Second Place ($750), Third Prize ($500), and Fourth Prize ($250).
All games played on Saturday are scored in standard Local Scoring format. At midnight Saturday/Sunday, the top 4 scores qualify for a final three games to be played on Sunday.
Nonsmokergirl Tulip and Fruitcake Altstatter are running an En Garde tournament for two weeks, from June 3rd through June 17th.
Sign up by paying $100 to the
Yellow sign-up board at Paradiso Mall. This tournament runs on the World Ranking system, so you can play games on any En Garde set anywhere, as long as you've registered for the tournament. Guaranteed minimum prizes are $1500 for First, $1000 Second, $500 Third and $250 Fourth. Your tournament placing is determine by your World Ranking as of the end of the tournament.
The server glitches that brought things down for three hours on Wednesday have been continuing, with short interruptions on Friday and today. So my hosting provider Linode is migrating my server to new hardware. This will hopefully take less than an hour, and then the server will be back up and more stable. I'll update this post when the migration is complete. In the meantime, be aware that any games you play will not be tracked, so they won't count towards your ranking points.
UPDATE: That went considerably faster than expected. Everything should be back up now, and hopefully more stable.
The latest pronouncement from Linden Labs is that they are going after camping chairs. People who try to artificially inflate their traffic stats by using camping chairs will be warned that they are in violation of the Terms of Service.
This is a continuation of their previous policy banning traffic bots. Traffic bots are almost universally despised as a drain on the server resources, providing no benefit to the population at large. So that move was largely applauded by the residents. Camping chairs, however, have a larger base of supporters. And this move leaves some people wondering—if camping chairs are banned today,
will games like En Garde be next?
I don't deny that En Garde can be used as a traffic draw. In fact, I promote it as a key feature. I added features such as Local Scoring and Teams to give people more reasons to visit a particular site. Rez a copy of En Garde on your land, and people will have reason to stick around.
But I don't think anyone has any reason to fear that En Garde will become illegal. And that's because: It's All About Appearances. Linden Lab is concerned with the image of Second Life, above all else.
Consider, for example, the Linden Lab policy on gambling. Many people are confused by the Lindens' confusing and contradictory pronouncements on gambling in Second Life. Casinos across the grid were shut down, and games like poker and slot machines vanished. Yet other games where people can wager and win money, like Zingo, are still thriving, even though winning at Zingo takes arguably less skill than poker.
The policy becomes clear, though, when you think about appearances. How does it look to someone else—someone visiting Second Life for the first time? Everybody knows what a casino looks like. Everybody knows how a slot machine works. You can see poker games twenty-four hours a day on ESPN. "Everybody" knows that's gambling. It looks like gambling. Zingo, on the other hand, isn't well known outside Second Life. If a newbie wanders into a Zingo game, they might be puzzled over it, but nobody is going to be offended.
Now consider camping chairs, and the appearance they give to Second Life. Imagine you're a newbie. Hey, there's a space with lots of green dots! There must be a lot going on there! You teleport, and indeed there's a crowd of people. Some of them are dancing, or sweeping up the place. You greet them, "Hello! Does anyone want to chat?" but they ignore you. Nobody, in fact, seems to be talking at all. After a few more frustrated attempts, you try another crowded place, with the same results. Second Life seems to be full of avatars doing nothing, affording no chance of interacting with another person. Camping chairs make Second Life seem dull and lifeless.
En Garde, to the contrary, is a fantastic spectator sport. I often enjoy just watching people play. And of course, in order to play the game, you have to actually be at your computer. So if some new player is curious about the game, all they have to do is ask. I've had some people tell me that En Garde is the only reason that they still play Second Life. En Garde makes Second Life fun.
So, don't worry about having an En Garde game rezzed on your land. The Lindens aren't going to ban it.
The Procyon server got rebooted, and for some reason didn't come back up in a good state. So everything was down for about 3 hours. I've got everything back up and running now.
One of the great things about Second Life is its international community. Linden Lab hasn't published user metrics in quite a while, but here is a visualization from the end of 2007 that shows USA-based players are only 37% of the user base. I'm sure that number has only decreased. Through my store I've met and made friends with people from countries all over the world.
Playing games is a great way to get to know someone. You might not have anything in common with a dentist from Brazil, and not having any language in common might make communication seem impossible. But once you face off in a match of En Garde, the only point you need to make is at the end of your epeé. Euro-style games, in particular, force you to get inside the head of your opponent. And that works even if you can't talk to him.
I try to keep the language-specific components of my games to a minimum, so once you know how to play you're not hampered by an unintelligible interface. But that "once you know how to play" can be a barrier. So I've started to add translations of the game rules to the website. So far I have
Frootcake in French, and
En Garde in Italian. These were both contributed by bi-lingual players (thanks to Jyzabelle Andel for the French rules!). If you or someone you know can help translate rules into another language, you can either email it to me or drop a notecard on me in-world. A Spanish or Portuguese translation of En Garde would be great -- I know there's a fair number of players who would be helped by that. There's also quite a few Tinies who like to play Frootcake, but I suppose I could just make a copy of the rules in a really small font.
Do you have a story about meeting/playing against someone from another country? Post it in the comments here!
Kanomi Pikajuna is the new games reviewer at Wagner James Au's New World Notes blog, and for her first review she has chosen En Garde! It's a nice write-up and should hopefully bring a lot of new players to the game. I'd encourage people to post comments there -- especially if you're running tournaments and want to bring in some fresh blood.
Kanomi Plays: En Garde
NSG Tulip is running an interesting En Garde tournament. Instead of doing it with an elimination bracket like most other tournaments, she's using the World Ranking system to determine the best player. Here is the info:
The En Garde World Open
You can enter the tournament here by paying the Yellow Tournament Board 100 L.
UPDATE: This SLURL will take you directly to the board if you couldn't find it before (it's hidden in a corner of the mall)
Tournament Begins April 8th 12 noon
Tournament Ends April 22nd 12 noon
Thousands in Prizes!!!
1st Place 1500
2nd Place 1000
3rd Place 500
(prizes are guaranteed minimums)
The Details:
- You can play any player in SL...regardless of whether they have entered the tournament or not. All your games count!
- You can play ANY player ANY number of times. All your games count!
- You can play on ANY En Garde Platform ANYWHERE in SL! All your games count!
- To Win prizes, you must have entered the tournament. Non-entrants will appear on the scoreboard, of course...but they won't win any lindens! Also, they will be considered decidedly uncool.
- To enter the Tournament, please click on the Landmark Below, and pay the Yellow Tournament Board 100 L.
How to
Enter the SL World OpenRules:
Standard En Garde Rules apply.
The Tournament Ranking system will be The SL world ranking system. If you want to check your ranking quickly, just hop on any En Garde Platform., and you will see your up-to-date rank. Or,
check your rank at the Procyon Games web site.
To Win, you must enter the tournament. The highest ranked tournament entrants will win 1st , 2nd , and 3rd place.
