Announcements: New Developer Dimension5 Labs launches
Dimension5 Labs, a new development studio based in Cerrillos, NM, announced its launch and its virtual world platform.
The company says that its platform combines elements of commerce, trading, live chat, interactive games, private messaging, friends lists, and the graphic rendering of rooms, furniture, and avatars as well as other features new to virtual worlds.
The platform is coded entirely in ActionScript 3, enabling users to jump into virtual worlds through their browsers without having to download and install additional software or plug-ins. The system is also XMPP compliant and features a back-end moderation system to ensure COPPA compliance for worlds targeting children under 13.
Dimension5 has been working on Virtual Family Kingdom, a prototype system that received some 100,000 users during its private beta phase. A public beta for VFK is planned to launch within the next few weeks.
The studio also offer services in web design and programming, software design and programming, printed media, virtual world advertising, and virtual world commerce.
Says marketing VP Justin Handley: "We wanted to make sure that we could safely approach any company looking to build a virtual environment and tell them on no uncertain terms that we could build what they needed. The only way we could see to do that was to create one of our own that demonstrated a rich feature set, highly detailed graphic design, and scalable stability into the hundreds of thousands."
Comments
Yeah, just for the record, the game had 25,000 registered avatars max. Still good for a game like this, but they had a captive audience of former VMK players to work with. I've walked around this game every few days since it opened and aside from a small core group, it doesn't seem like many of those registrants returned. It's easy to see why when there's no real gameplay, or any way to really engage kids in their typical VW play patterns.
There are so many great games out there, there's little room for developers still trying to figure out this format. It seems like these guys are just trying to jump on the KidVW bandwagon, even though it's a crowded field already.
Posted by: Grace | August 27, 2008 11:51 PM