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.
