LFV football - A community driven football simulation in Second Life

In December last year I have presented to you VE-Soccer, a football video game in Second Life. But there are many other exciting SL game mods for football/soccer, he most popular team sport in Europe, South-America and Africa. As you have seen in my video of VE-Soccer, the players need to remove all prim attachments and scripts in order to keep the sim performance sufficiently high. The result is that the graphics in general and the players in particular look very poor compared to modern sport simulation console games. 

However playing a team sports in Second Life gives you an experience that you can't find with typical game franchises: the necessity to learn coordination with 10 other human players. Unlike in the console games, you really need to learn tactics and develop a good team play with your mates or you will not stand a chance. One game simulation in SL that has taken this community spirit to perfection: LFV (Ligafutbolvirtual.com).

The stadium of the Scorpions, an LFV team

LFV (Ligafutbolvirtual.com) is also the most established football simulation in Second Life. It was formed in 2008 and after 5 years and a total of 1400 participating players in all these years, it continues to be a vivid and fun sports community with many highly active players. No wonder that LFV has been running their 22th tournament of simulated soccer in Second Life this year and there are certainly many more to come.

Ligafutbolvirtual is not a sports game that you can play spontaneously and quickly. You need to invest some time and become part of the LFV football community. There are players and club presidents, coaches and referees. Players need to sign up for a club and come to regular training sessions in order to build the team. LFV has its own website with tutorials that help new players to understand the sign-up process and to find their teams. An indication how serious the LFV-players take their hobby is the long list of rules and clarifications on the website.

Final standings of a previous LFV season

The LFV community organises tournaments regularly and plays competitions all year. There are leagues, cups, champions league, world cups and more. Matches are usually played from Monday to Thursday at 1.30 PM PST. Ligafutbolvirtual is completely free to join and play. Even the necessary equipment is provided free of charge. Unfortunately I haven't found any recent videos on Youtube showing the gameplay. The one below is from 2011 but shows the basic moves nicely. 

The player mode works as follows: Players can only sprint for a certain time and they will loose stamina. When there is not enough stamina left, a player can only move slowly until regaining strentgh. A low pass is conducted by a short click with left button of the mouse. High passes and shots can be achieved by keeping pressed the left mouse button for a while. Longer the button is pressed, the more power will go into the shot. It is possible to accomplish header and chilenas by pressing the E key, before having the ball. Players can tackle and take the opponents ball by shortly clicking the C key. By pressing the C key for a while, the player can slide on the floor and steal the ball.

If you want to join the LFV community, you should register at their website: Ligafutbolvirtual.com.