LOOT Invites You To Join the MIB
by BONZO, HSM team writer
The MIB headquarters has been a very cool hangout, as an expansive space and its ties to a blockbuster movie. Now you have the opportunity to make it your very own, as a personal space and as a clubhouse. With all the innovations in current personal space releases and future announced plans, there is a trend on large square footage — and this space is huge.
You have a main lobby, which opens up to a simulated shooting range, and a gallery of bad guys. The elevator at the far end takes you underground to an even larger area, opening to the armory store, MIB offices at the very rear of the headquarters, and yet another underground area. the third lower level is an expansive garage with some of the featured alien tech vehicles of the Men In Black universe. Beyond this point you will find the alien break room, the place those rascally worm aliens like to hang out in. You can visit this space at any time in the public headquarters, but you can’t do anything but be a visitor. There are perks to owning it. Mainly the ability to decorate it, and have it be your very own space. As a club house it serves a bigger purpose. Club houses by default allow any members to enter the space without the club owner hosting the instance. That in itself is a huge perk along with being a great themed space for club activity.
There are certain assets which is unclear if they will be available for the personal spaces. For one, unless you own an alien or MIB suit, currently you have to go through a quick quiz mini game which depending on how you answer will equip you with one of several alient outfits, or a Men in Black suit. Will this prerequisite be a part of the personal space and club house in order to be allowed access? The MIB offices, and the Alien break room in the public space are accessible only if you are wearing the agent suit or an alien outfit respectively. Will this restriction be carried over into the personal space as well?
LOOT has set a precedent for including their Entertainment On Demand screens into the personal spaces. However the Ghostbusters firehouse is the only space which doesn’t, it is also the only personal space which is based on a blockbuster movie, that is until now. The MIB headquarters public space has a few different screens, but there is no official word on whether these screens will have access to Crackle or the rest of the Entertainment On Demand channels.
When the space first launched, LOOT ran a promotion in which users could take pictures of themselves in the headquarters, post them to Flickr with a specific hash tag. LOOT would then choose from these and rotate the pictures they liked in the various frames hung all over the MIB headquarters. Currently one of the perks of the LOOT space station are the fourteen different digital screens which directly access images from Flickr. The public space has essentially the same functionality, the only difference is you don’t have control of the images accessed. It has not been specified if the personal space or club house will.
It stands to reason these perks will be available, but it remains speculative until their release. It would be beneficial if they would, as until the release of the portable EOD screen it would make the MIB headquarters the only club house with an Entertainment on Demand, and picture frames with access to a web picture gallery. How will the space work for a personal apartment? It is huge, and has only one hundred item limit, with a diminished count if you use active items. One of the best uses as a personal space would be an arena for mini bots. When spaces are large they can be overwhelming when you have to send out invites to get your friends over, and you have a tight limit on how many items you can place. However as a personal space you can only host twelve avatars including your own.
As a clubhouse it could serve a greater purpose. Since the club owner doesn’t need to send out invites, any members can show up at any time. It could serve to host several meetings at the same time, it could even serve as a great arena for competitive user generated games. The theme alone can generate a lot of user creativity if you do indeed need to equip either an agent suit or an alien outfit. The hosting limit is also increased a little as a club house.
If you can’t make you up your mind on which functionality to chose, LOOT is including a bundle pack at a discounted rate which includes the space as a personal apartment, and club house, and also eleven unique furniture items specifically created for the MIB headquarters and tie into that theme. If you haven’t picked up any of the current MIB furniture bundles, LOOT has announced it will be releasing an Ultimate bundle which will include everything. No date has yet been released for that bundle. The question is, do you really want to wait
The MIB headquarters ties into one of the coolest movie franchises, and breaks away from this very Home-centric environment by including real world pop culture elements. This is a major factor which made the Ghostbusters Firehouse such a favorite for a lot of the fans of that movie. Not only do you have a recreation of that movie set to explore, but you have the option to redecorate it any way you want. Think of the machinima possibilities here, particularly if you’ve purchased the alien outfits, and LOOT active item fog machine as well. Here is a potential to make a machinima blockbuster of your own.
August 7th, 2012 by BONZO | 2 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
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Call me a pessimist. Or just that I tend to lower my expectation in hope to be surprised.
But I still have doubt about the personal space being the entire MIB headquarters we saw.
But if it is…WOW New clubhouse on first day!
I was so wrong tyo doubt LOOT!!!
)
$7.00 for the full headquarters…AND the clubhouse skin!
oh wait! theres more ( heard that on tv before
11 MIB furnitures item included! WOW!!! Thanx LOOT!