Virtual strategy card game moves from Second Life to real life

This month Second Life residents Doc Boffin and Osprey Therian released a real life edition of their original strategy card game Combat Cards, a game that previously existed only in the virtual world of Second Life. In doing so, Combat Cards became the first original game build in Second Life to become a real life physical game.

Real life card games based on virtual worlds like World Of Warcraft and Eve Online have existed before, however these games have been created or licensed by the companies who create and operate the virtual worlds. Because the virtual items in Second Life are owned by the the people who create them, Boffin and Therian were able to build a card game within Second Life featuring avatars and locations in Second Life and then release that game in the real world: the community-created virtual world now has a novel community-created strategy card game.

Combat Cards has been in development since early 2006 when Boffin and Therian met in Second Life. Not only did the virtual world provide a fertile environment for the pair to rapidly prototype, test, iterate and develop the game with help from a community of enthusiastic fellow residents, the profits from the sales of the virtual game in Second Life completely covered all of the production costs of the real life edition. Situated on both sides of the Atlantic, Boffin and Therian have never met in real life.

Real life combat cards are now available for delivery to domestic US addresses from http://us.shop.combatcards.co.uk and for delivery to UK domestic addresses from http://uk.shop.combatcards.co.uk. Real life cards, virtual cards and the free Second Life edition of the game can also be bought inside Second Life for Linden Dollars (the Second Life currency) from http://slurl.com/secondlife/Europa/101/138/56

Images of the real life Combat Cards are available here: http://flickr.com/photos/33476848@N05/
Images of Combat Cards in Second Life are available here: http://flickr.com/search/?q=combatcards&s=rec
A video tutorial for the Second Life edition is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SNVGmVEmHk
News and information is available at the Combat Cards blog here: http://combatcards.co.uk