The breakout success of Microsoft’s Defy All Challenges campaign has led
us to up the ante. The games are back, complete with puzzles embedded in
elusive eggs - but this time they’ve been devised by the winners of the
campaign’s first phase. The games
have thus come full circle, with the challenges now being developed by
the elite logicians of the Coder’s Cove community.

There was a celebration party yesterday for the winners of Phase I; the

Come and try to Defy All Challenges: Phase II!

Good luck!

PRWeek has covered the ongoing Defy All Challenges campaign for Microsoft’s Visual Studio, placing Second Life activity in the context of a larger program that harnesses social media along with traditional methods. This is a great example of how virtual worlds marketing can complement and smoothly align with existing campaigns. Some companies continue to view their virtual world programs as experiments, and there is a case for that ‚Äì the environments are creatively diverse and unscripted (I would argue that’s a good thing from a consumer’s perspective) . That hasn’t stopped Microsoft from extending a high-profile campaign into Second Life, with jaw-dropping user engagement results that we highlighted a couple of weeks ago.

My own background is in PR agency-land, and I’m pleased to see PRWeek highlighting the relevance of virtual events and programs for its readership. All of the proven tools of the trade ‚Äì media relations, community relations, event management ‚Äì are readily translated into virtual spaces, albeit with the help of a little savvy tweaking and an open mind. As the technology improves, user numbers grow and interfaces with other forms of social media emerge, PR practitioners will find virtual worlds to be fertile ground for their work.

Building on the runaway success of last month’s “Mystery of the Blimp” at Microsoft Visual Studio island, the games are back. Winners of the inaugural games faced a particularly difficult set of math and logic puzzles; when they had solved all 10 puzzles, players gained access to the blimp and plots of land on neighboring Coders Cove. Consider that while the average player spent 24 hours on the game, winners spent 74 hours playing — these people weren’t fooling around. In version 2.0, players will be competing for the chance to collaborate with the elite residents of Coders Cove in developing the next iteration of the game….winners will earn admission to the blimp and to the Coders Cove Society, a group otherwise open only to the puzzlebusting homesteaders of Coders Cove. This group includes RL software professionals and SL residents from the US, UK, Japan, Russia and beyond. It’s a great chance for budding or aspiring programmers - or puzzle fanatics (there seems to be considerable overlap) to get a seat on the game design team and begin writing the script.

Kicking it all off is a developer forum at 6pm SLT/PT tonight at Visual Studio Island, hosted by Microsoft’s Carol Grojean and Neil Enns (in avatar form, naturally). Carol and Neil will discuss how Microsoft radically changed its approach to the process of developing product for a project codenamed “Orcas.” They’ll address how Visual Studio was used to design and implement these changes, and they’re keen to meet and take questions from participating developers. So come on over and earn your spot on the winning team…

The last ten days have been something of a blur.  We launched Microsoft Visual Studio Island last week, not knowing how the Mystery of the Blimp would be received.  Since then, thousands of avatars wearing armbands have quested through Second Life hunting tiny eggs and solving logic puzzles.  The average player is spending dozens of hours and the truly hardcore substantially more.

Those detemined few have won access to the Blimp and¬† been given land in the adjacent island, aptly named “Coder’s Cove”.¬† Watching this society take shape is wonderful, mysterious and invigorating.¬† On the one hand, you might wonder what these people actually have in common aside from lots of patience and determination.¬† The truth is, they seem to share a lot.¬† First, they’ve shared a particularly intense experience.¬† Secondly, many of them actually coped with the difficulty by forming teams and solving the problems collaboratively.¬† We’ve had winners from the U.S.,the Netherlands, Japan, the United Kingdom and Russia to name a few.¬† And in true Second Life fashion, they’ve begun building some amazing things, ranging from mathematically inspired homes to tiki bars.¬† So swing by Coder’s Cove and say hi.¬† And stay tuned for more.

After many grueling hours hunting down eggs hidden all over the grid, the first two winners have emerged.

Here are some photos of last night’s party and pics of Little Penguin, the 1st avatar to make it through the 10 eggs and into the blimp.¬† His prize?¬† A plot of land on Coder’s Cove next door, which as you can see below is being built out into a techno-utopia.¬† Better hurry egg hunters — only 58 plots of land remain. . . .

Wow!¬† After some small audio glitches, the opening night party for Microsoft Visual Studio is drawing to a close.¬† We had 55 avatars on the main island and 25 - 30 on the overflow sim.¬† And the games have begun with people donning their scoring wristbands (specially designed with 10 lights, one of which ignites as you find each successive egg on your quest to discover the secret inside the blimp).¬† So far we’ve had 7 people find the first egg and 2 find the second one.

Unscramble this clue to find the 1st egg’s location for the brainy folks searching the land,. . . . “A LOBE PLOT”.

Happy Hunting.