In our last atlas entry I was astonished by what was on offer when it came to avatar customization with WeeWorld, and I have to say I'm almost as impressed with the options in Gaia Online. Choosing an anime influence rather than South Park, the characters are bright and attractive with a fair range of skin tones, hair, eyes and mouths. The starting outfit selection is far more limited than in WeeWorld, and there's good reason for that, as the majority of "play" in Gaia Online's world is related to earning new clothes for your avatar -- and in that respect there are certainly thousands of different pieces that could be worn in almost any combination.

Once you've created your character and logged in you're given a small amount of gold to start off with (Gaia's internal currency) and left to work out what to do on your own. Now, I'm a seasoned internet user who can even manage to navigate the worst excesses of MySpace, but Gaia is instantly bewildering with its huge range of options and a start page cluttered with information that, for a new player, is confusing at best. I decided to ignore the information overload and start trying to customize my character more to my liking, as I found him rather generic.

You can alter your character's dress from your avatar page (and in fact have a MySpace like profile page which to show them off with) but to purchase new clothes you have to hit the shops. There are a wide range of stores which sell differing styles of clothing, housewares and other objects, including some sponsored stores like MTV's "Sunset Couture". After looking for a while I realized I had nowhere near enough money to purchase anything, so decided to get my house in running order.

Though the majority of the time on Gaia Online is going to be spent on the html website, whenever you do anything such as play a game or explore the world it loads a Javascript client in a separate window. After you choose your home's style and place it somewhere in the player towns, you can visit it or place objects in it. Placing objects or visiting the home happens in separate clients, however, which can get a little confusing. The player towns themselves are vast "suburbs" with few players milling about -- like many "instanced" player towns in MMORPGs homes are more for inviting friends to (or as personal trophies) rather than an active part of play.

After setting up my house (it comes with a set of starter furniture) and purchasing some wallpaper and a new floor (disappointingly, I like neither) I decided to purchase a car, a segment of the world that was developed as a result of sponsorship from car manufacturer Scion. I decided to ignore the option to pick up a Scion xB and go for a Possum Coupe. Cars are free to begin with, but like everything else, cosmetic upgrades cost a lot of gold.

I decided to take my unmodified car and "meet up and rally". This launches a new window where, I guess similar to real street racer culture, you park your car in front of a convenience store along with a bunch of other racers and stand around waiting for something to happen – or at least that's what I did until I realized that you're supposed to challenge other racers. Racing is a simple sort of slot car race (hold down accelerate, but slow down when you see an obstacle).

The other games are all similarly kind of simplistic, but can be quite interesting. There are the usual kind of games (jigsaws, slots) but also a fishing mini-game that kept me playing for quite a while (mostly because it's so difficult with the starting rod and bait) and a pinball game that's pretty passable.

The 'worlds' are arguably more interesting. As seen with rallying, the way Gaia works (or can be thought of) is as a MMO where the player spends most of their time on the web, but launches an instance each time they want to explore a more traditional MMO experience, with an avatar to navigate around, other active players milling about, etc.

As a result the world isn't particularly cohesive, but it allows them a vast ability to create some wildly disparate worlds. I found myself investigating Virtual Hollywood for a short period of time, but was (surprisingly) most enamoured with the Skittles Quest world, perhaps because it had some very obvious tasks to complete -- such as being asked to watch a Skittles advertisement in the cinema to gain an object.

The cinema is kind of cute too. Think of it as YouTube with avatars -- you can enter a room and watch even full movies(!) with up to 30 other users, who seem to spend most of their time chatting and throwing objects at the screen. It's like an unbearable Saturday matinee if you think of watching videos as a personal experience, but it'd be a great way to watch videos with other friends on other computers concurrently. And hey, I managed to win some clothes by watching the "Don't Mess With the Zohan" trailer! (Though I don't know if it was worth it, really.)

I haven't talked too much about my feelings on Gaia Online yet as I want to save that for the conclusion, but in advance of that I will say that Gaia might be the most interesting world I've seen yet in terms of culture -- it's an almost completely bonkers mish-mash of anime and corporate sponsorship spread over a willfully strange mix of MMO and social network that has an absolutely huge community. I almost don't quite know what to make of it, but conclusions are forthcoming.