Neo-Realms Goes Fishing in Second Life

As a game and content developer, Neo-Realms Entertainment has hooked the big one in Second Life. Their flagship game, Neo-Realms Fishing, can be played at three different fishing camps in-world. "We created the first fishing camp in 2004," says co-founder and designer Steven McCall (known as Sweegy Manilow in Second Life). Steve and his fellow Neo-Realmers,Thanh Ha and Bryan King, were casting in real-world ponds when they realized the dearth of fishing games online. "We thought 'All MMPGs really need fishing,' " Steve says, laughing. Although it sounded a little esoteric, it turned out that Neo-Realms had their fingers on the pulse of consumer taste. Their little fishing expedition became a huge hit. Featuring various rod and bait types, an xp and leveling system for the rods, their system offers fishing quests, reward points redeemable for prizes, and daily multiplayer tournaments for prizes and money. "It's also just a good place to hang out with your friends and socialize." says Steve.

"We've had great success with the Neo-Realms fishing camps," Steve explains "and we've used the money generated from the game to fund other real world Neo-Realms projects that would have never been possible otherwise. In-world, our popularity let us expand our current camps as well as develop our Neo-Realms brand for real life and Second Life projects," he says. "We've built over 200 models, and we know building and scripting tools. So we were ready to expand on what we learned and help clients in the real world. Today we offer services for recreation and game development, custom-built models, and pretty much anything a client would need in Second Life. We also offer web services and graphic design. And we know that, through scripting, you can easily integrate Second Life and the Web."

Steve says the first step to success is actually finishing the projects you start. "It's very easy in Second Life to have a bunch of half-completed projects, and it's important to buckle down and see them through to the end. Once the honeymoon phase is over, you have to go through and finish it up. It's so easy to build and get an initial reading, and there's not a lot of overhead to create a concept, but then fleshing it out and building it takes a lot more effort," he explains.

Also, "getting the word out is also an obstacle, and people should not be afraid to use advertising, both in-world and through related media like the Metaverse Messenger. Second Life is getting so big that it’s hard to let everyone know that you exist or where you’re at. There was one community round table where someone said it would be cool to have fishing in Second Life, and we'd been there for seven or eight months at that point. So advertising is definitely important. In-world we've used classified and find tools. We've had the best results from Metaverse Messenger."

"One other thing," Steve adds, "in terms of releasing a scripted object or game, it's important to test, test, test! I also believe it's important to try and provide as high a level of customer support for the products released as possible and to continually update the products to reduce lag and ensure stability. We've updated our whole system three or four times to reduce lag. I take advantage of being able to go straight to the Web, so I offload a lot of lag to my own server. And, as the technology of Second Life takes off, I can do more and more. But it’s very important to test and to have several back-up systems embedded. It just makes everyone's life easier."