Immersive Environments Part 5

Remember when you were a kid around the ages of 8-12 or so and you suspected that there was a secret world of knowledge about the world, society, and nature that everyone except kids knew about?  Adults held these secrets close, just out of your grimy-handed, cookie-breath reach; your fascination with what might be out there would keep your developing brain busy for minutes at a stretch.  As soon as Santa Fraud was exposed you began to think "Oh boy, the ball is rolling! Any day now another big secret will be revealed. Yay!"

I can't be the only person who was preoccupied with this notion before my rational, cognitive mind developed.  Here's how I envisioned the big event: these mysteries of the universe would be parceled out to me at some point and my astonishment would be off the charts initially, later subsiding into that zone where I'd share knowing glances with others in my same age bracket who were also in the club.

We'll look at 3 more sites today, all for pre-teens and teens.
First up, Super Secret, owned by JumpStart.  www.jumpstart.com

JumpStart is a subsidiary of Knowledge Holdings, Inc. The company is privately held and based in Torrance, California.  The site has a link to a pretty good blog under the 'what's new' tab on the home age. It's target audience is teenage girls, and even though it says 10-16 above, I suspect it might be a bit younger, even.  16 seems to be the new 20 these days.

The next one, Smeet, targets a bit older audience and also sets itself apart from its competition by being "a unique 3D online world in which users can style and customize their avatar, chat in real time with other users, and play online games." www.en.smeet.com

"Unlike other virtual life games, Smeet is completely browser-based, so there are no downloads necessary - you can log in from anywhere".  It's a free 3D virtual world that seems kind of hipster-esque and uses that word again, 'flirt', which you see on sites for teens.  http://en.smeet.com/virtualworld   The name is a portmanteau, the process where two words are artificially combined into one, rather than when two words are combined to describe a new concept or item (e.g. Hatstand or lamppost).  Think chillax, sup, guesstimate. Provide others you can think of in the comments.
Smeet = let'S MEET.  But, I must confess that smut was the first word that came to my mind when I saw the name on our assignment.  Also, meat is often associated with meat market, which is sometimes linked, unfairly, to dating websites.

Without looking for it, I found a comment on the next site's forum about the whole 'flirt issue'.  I didn't know prior to writing this blog that it was an issue...I just had a hunch. Look:

This site, PlayTown www.playtown-game.com, seemed like a younger child's gaming website based on the graphics, name, etc... But on closer inspection I see that its developer is a multi-layered, and diverse group called Avaca Technologies, based in Athens, Greece. That might explain some of the cultural differences I noticed in the animation, the person begin put off by using 'flirt' (Greece is still somewhat conservative isn't it?) and in general the different 'vibe' of this promotional trailer:

 Among the many other ventures this group Avaca is involved with, I gained a new respect for the forces behind the gaming industry by investigating this site.  As part of the




sponsored by the E.U., their "KTS project aims to design, develop and validate a serious game that will provide medical students and (novel) surgeons with innovative ICT-based psychomotor MIS training. The KTS serious game will be based upon previous and extensive experience in training and learning models for surgeons."  Gaming's applications go beyond entertainment in a "Serious Game" for minimally invasive surgeries:

For people familiar with gaming or the medical industry, this use of gaming technology comes as no surprise, but I was excited to see this surgery training video.  http://www.avaca.eu/en/avaca-portfolio

See you tomorrow for the last installment of this project! :-)