One Tringo to Rule Us

It isn't just about fashion anymore. Two months ago, over his Christmas vacation, Kermitt Quirk created the game Tringo within Second Life. It has become a huge hit and has earned him over L$1,000,000. But that was apparently just the beginning. The Wall Street Journal (alas, no easy linking) reported today that Kermitt has sold the real world publishing rights of Tringo to Sean Ryan's Donnerwood Media for "low five figures." They plan to publish Tringo for mobile phones and on the web.

Comments

[CmdrSlack]

1.

FYI, this link, pulled from the Second Life forums, seems to work just fine for me.

Although I guess I could have registered for the WSJ a long time ago and just spaced it...

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110980439705868789-IhjgoNnlah4oJuuZ36GaKiHm5,00.html

[Alan]

2.

Is this the first Seond Life in-game creation to make the transition to the real world?

What, if any, are the precursors to this? That is, what other examples are there, from other MOGs, of "things" to similarly make this transition?

[Cory Ondrejka]

3.

The critical issue here is that Second Life's EULA allows its users to do things like this, by not forcing them to grant all IP rights to the publisher.

To my knowledge, this is the first commercial transition from SL to the real world.

[SLer]

4.

Under clause 5.4 (a) of the TOS

YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT BY SUBMITTING YOUR CONTENT TO ANY AREA OF THE SERVICE, YOU AUTOMATICALLY GRANT (AND YOU REPRESENT AND WARRANT THAT YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO GRANT) TO LINDEN:

(A)THE ROYALTY-FREE, FULLY PAID-UP, PERPETUAL, IRREVOCABLE, NON-EXCLUSIVE RIGHT AND LICENSE TO USE AND REPRODUCE (AND TO AUTHORIZE THIRD PARTIES TO USE AND REPRODUCE) ANY OF YOUR CONTENT IN ANY OR ALL MEDIA FOR MARKETING AND/OR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERVICE;

Linden could also market Tringo or liscence a 3rd party to do so just so long is it was doing it to promote second life and not for profit in and of itself – right?

[CmdrSlack]

5.

Probably not. It could use Tringo as part of an E3 demo. It could use video or stills of the game in its ads. I don't think this clause allows them to necessarily port the game to external uses tho.

I could be wrong.

[Pirate Cotton]

6.

Not sure on the specifics but LL have always maintained that "what we make is ours" and I've not seen any action from them to counter this view.

For a list of games in Second Life, check my SL Games Wiki - http://wiki.tinypirate.com

DarkLife, a MMORPG game me and a mate made, would have to rank up there as one of the most popular, along with a selection of RL conversions and games unique to SL.

[Hummus]

7.

The only other instance I can think of where a real company dealt with a player-created virtual entity was several years ago, when a small computer company sponsored a clan in EQ. This was the first such sponsorship of any clan from any virtual world, and the first instance I know of where this took place. Unfortunately, I can't remember either the name of the clan or the name of the company, but perhaps someone else remembers this story and can recollect the details.

[ren]

8.

I have not looked at clan sponsorship in FPSs but I believe that its been going on quite some time there.

Back in January last year we covered the sponsorship of The Syndicate by Thunderbox: terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/01/syndicate_spons.html