by Terra_Cide, HSM Editor-in-Chief

Think of the name Lockwood, and nearly every individual who has ever spent enough time in Home to know what it’s about will immediately think quality. It’s a company who has, for the past four-plus years in Home, built a reputation that even larger, more publicly visible gaming companies would be envious of. It’s very little wonder then that when their new, non-Home venture, Avakin, was announced, it sent ripples of excitement through the community.

Avakin represents an unique opportunity. For Lockwood (and any developers who may choose to provide content for Avakin), it’s an opportunity to create projects that otherwise may not be feasible in Home. For the users, it represents the chance to actually have a hand in creating the virtual world they’ll socialize and play in.

If a social MMO is to be successful, it has to give a user a reason for being there. There needs to be casual tasks in which the user can choose to participate, with consequences ranging from earning in-world purchasing credit for completing tasks, to getting nothing at all. They also need to feel like an organic, integral part of its evolution. If the community desires a certain space or activity, they need to feel as if those desires are being heard and met. Thus, it’s also on the shoulders of the community to make those requested spaces and features successful.

Avakin also plans to open up the concept of social MMOs to a wider audience. Running on the Unity engine, that wider audience is possible. However, with a wider audience, this also increases the need for interconnectivity. Look at many current sites – these days, people are given the choice to log in under a pre-existing Facebook or Twitter account. The possibility of this happening with Avakin is still a work in progress.

So what is Avakin? Who better to answer that question – and many others – than the co-owner of Lockwood, Joel Kemp.

In brief, what is Avakin, and how did the idea start?

We have had such a great success with Sony and PS Home we wanted to extend that to other platforms and sell our virtual goods there, so we had to make Avakin and we hope the users like our MVP (minimum viable product) as we would like it to grow and to develop into a much richer experience. We have also been looking to start doing more mobile content so Avakin was a sensible way of doing that as it’s very close to the business model we know in PS Home.Avakin is a cross platform, browser based and mobile 3d social network with casual games.

Why did Lockwood choose to stay within the realm of the social MMO?

We have all of our expertise and experience in that area, so it makes the most sense to try and extent that experience out onto other networks and platforms.

What are the differences between designing for Avakin and designing for Home?

There is a very small amount of memory on mobile so Avakin has to be very simple compared to Home and the downloads kept very small. Also as we fund Avakin ourselves it has to be kept simple otherwise we’d never be able to get to market with Avakin. The users support is much appreciated as it’s been hard work getting to this point.

The tablet and mobile markets are the fastest growing segment in the tech industry today. Since Avakin will soon be available on tablets and mobile phones, how does Lockwood plan on position it to make the most out of these fast emerging markets?

We will be looking to do JV’s and cross-promotions to get traffic. I think trying to get featured on the app store is very difficult so we hope the iterative nature of Avakin will make it slowly grow. We hope our loyal PS Home community will enjoy using Avakin on their tablets and mobiles as well as still continue liking our content on PS Home when they are on their PS3.

Example of the node-based navigation, represented as diamonds.

Avakin has started with a social lounge and poker. What other spaces can we expect to see?

We will be releasing something we call “Avakin Life”. This will enable users to buy apartments, place furniture, make their apartments public if they wish and have parties in their space, either in private or open to the public. We are looking to port some of the more popular spaces from PS Home into Avakin by the end of this year. We will get the slots machine working in the social lounge, have a few differently themed poker rooms, as well as a central social area much like Lockwood HQ in PS Home.

Let’s talk about the node-to-node navigation within Avakin’s social lounge for a moment. People are curious as to why this method was chosen. Care to explain?

Two main reasons, one was the memory constraints of having the social lounge in the same load as the actual poker and the other was the node-to-node navigation is much simpler so enabled us to get the MVP out much earlier. As mentioned before, Avakin Life will let you walk about and navigate in a similar way to PS Home, that should be out by the end of this year.

Why was poker chosen as the first game for Avakin?

We know the poker is popular in PS Home, also it’s a social game, easy to pick up and evergreen without a real ending like a level based game. It’s an easier starting point as well than trying to think up a new game concept.

What other games could we expect to see?

We would like to port Sodium in the future. Initially though, poker will develop into a full Casino with a lot more games in such as the slots and Blackjack etc. We would also like other developers to make games for Avakin as well, so we’ll be looking to recruit a few hopefully.

Let’s talk about the community’s role in the development of Avakin. How much of an influence will they have?

The community are the core of what we want to do… so growing the community and the user experience are our key drivers. We want to get the community totally involved in how they would like to see Avakin develop and we obviously totally rely on their support to get Avakin off the ground. We have really appreciated the help from the early beta users to iron out some of the bugs and give us valuable feedback.

The big question is, undoubtedly, what this means for Lockwood’s involvement in Home. Truth be told, it won’t – nor should it – affect Home at all. Each has its own unique features that the other cannot replicate. Simply from a business point of view alone, it’s not in Lockwood’s best interests to discontinue support for Home and supplying it with content for as long as it lasts, never mind the fact that it’s clear they enjoy working within Home.

With Avakin, that ability for the community to actively mold will be one of its most prominent features. Lockwood has made it very clear that they want Avakin to be what its users want it to be. There is no better time than now to be offering suggestions.

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