Unhidden Lindens: After Leaving the Lab, Jim Purbrick Outs Himself as Combat Cards Co-Creator Doc Boffin!

The ultimate mixed reality image: As Doc Boffin, Jim Purbrick holds up a Combat Card featuring Babbage Linden, his other avatar.

Combat Cards, the acclaimed Second Life-based strategy game made by Doc Boffin and Osprey Therian that's been featured on New World Notes several times (as here), turns out to have an interesting backstory: Doc Boffin is actually the alt of UK coder Jim Purbrick, who was known for years as Linden Lab's scripting wizard, Babbage Linden. A victim of the company layoffs last Summer, he now writes on his blog about what he learned as an SL game developer, and the challenge of managing two well known avatars for so long:

Keeping my Babbage Linden and Doc Boffin identities separate for over 6 years has given me incredible insight in to what it’s really like to be a Second Life resident, but it has been exhausting. There was an awkward moment in 2006 when I had to tell Philip [Rosedale] that I worked for him when he came to check out Combat Cards... I had to come up with a dweeby Doc Boffin voice to disguise my identity when commentating on Combat Cards matches on YouTube. It’s a huge relief to finally be able to come out of the closet and talk about Combat Cards openly.

In this he's like the former Qarl Linden, who's also still creating excellent features for the Second Life community. I suspect we may see other brilliant Lindens reveal their Second Life alt avatars, and the passionate side projects they did apart from their day job. As for Combat Cards, Jim tells me the game has distributed 89 distinct cards, attracted hundreds of players in thousands of games, and they've also mailed out thousands of real life cards for the mixed reality version of the game. There's going to be a new expansion pack dropping on October 31, with a launch party at 2PM Pacific -- read about it on Jim's blog.

Comments

[HBA]

So I *did* know a Linden after all!

[Rin Tae]

While I have never been interested in combat card games of any sort, I really like to see, that at least some Lindens have been very much involved with what is going on in SL. There is a lot of negative comments about how many Lindens seem not to get inworld at all and, without seeing and experiencing it themselves, are unable to develop a fully understanding of what SL is actually about.

I am not sure in hos much this is true or not since .. well .. secret alts ftw!

^_^

I hope more of them are enjoying SL secretly like he did.

[Little Lost Linden]

He can try to hide it with alts, but either way, in RL, he still looks like Bill Paxton.

[Adeon Writer]

Yeah, you can't really go around saying the Lindens don't spend much time in-world when they aren't allowed to (or wouldn't want to, not sure what the case is) talk about their alts!

[Rob Knop]

Lindens were strongly discouraged to be public about their alts. I ignored that discouragement, and was always openly Prospero Frobozz and/or Prospero Linden, and was just as happy that I was open about it.

I know some Lindens who keep their alts separate to avoid complications, pleas for special favor, accusations of favoritism, etc. If you're doing any sort of business in-world, it probably is to your advantage not to be known as somebody who works for Linden Lab.

(I never did much in the way of business in-world. I made all the stuff in my gadget shop freebies when I was hired by the Lab, and most of what I've done in-world has been in the form of theater and educational outreach talks.)

[Rob Knop]

Oh, and, by the way, when I was server release manager, Babbage and his team were probably my favourite* developers to work with. (Andrew Linden was also up there.) Babbage was rock solid, extremely dependable, and could get stuff done. It's a shame that Linden had to lose him. (Of course, it's a shame they had to lose a lot of the people they lost.)

(* Do you like how I spell all Canadian now?)

[Eggy Lippmann]

LOL, you mean for everyone else it was a secret all these years? Damn. I guess I was FIC back in the day, I used to know pretty much every Linden's alt :P

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

OMFG!! I had absolutely no idea!!!! Hahahahahahahahah

I know Doc Boffin for eons, I think I've even given him some combat anims ages ago, when I helped to test a very early version of the Combat Cards game... and he has a plot not far from my home in SL... I was there a couple of days ago, not having read this article, and thinking: "it's so great that some oldtimers are still around and doing great things and still haven't given up on SL"

I'm laughing and in tears now! Babbage/Doc, you certainly kept your secret well. :)

Eggy, you know *everything* ;)