by Susan, HSM team writer

*Disclaimer – THIS IS NOT ANOTHER PLAYSTATION HOME.

I felt it necessary to put that out there, because already people are comparing one of the newest Social MMO’s, Lockwood Publishing’s Avakin, to Sony’s PlayStation Home. The only similarities that I have run across are:

1. Lockwood Publishing is a developer for Home and they are the creators of Avakin, and

2. Avakin has been designed as a 3D environment with social gaming.

And that’s about it.

Avakin is now available on some portable devices. If you have had the chance and visited Avakin, that last sentence should have everyone doing cartwheels by now. When Lockwood created this platform, they had enough sense to plan for the ability to access it through their personal mobile device or tablet. With the community utilizing a lot of their preferred mental distractions from reality games, this is a huge step forward for the success of Avakin. This opens the world of Avakin to the users of over 1900 different Android powered devices, such as tablets and cell phone with a 4-inch screen or larger.

I do not own either a tablet or a cell phone of those dimensions, but the feedback I have seen have been very positive. The interface – as I have been told by those users – is easy to operate, and the only obstacle has been getting used to chatting/texting, and that I am hearing is just a difficulty that is easily overcome with more use. Avakin advises that you should make sure that your Android device is operating on a 3.2 operating system or newer. Getting Avakin and Avakin Poker onto your device is a simple as going to Google Play and downloading both for free. Soon, this social environment will be released on Kindle and iOS devices, and will eventually include the ability for Spanish speaking territories to enjoy it as well.

Now, one couldn’t help but wonder if Lockwood would showcase items they created for Home on Avakin. As I understand it, Avakin was designed to be somewhat simple in the graphics department to make it easier for the various portable devices to utilize it, so I for one was curious what would they bring over. What they did was bring a sampling of their very popular Figment line over and created the Figment Beach collection. I have seen these and they are really done well.

The collection comes with almost everything one needs to look snazzy, such as a fedora style hat, a shirt, shoes and a pair of pants for the man who is looking to dress to impress. The girls get a couple of wide brimmed hats, a really cute skirt, a couple shirts and a pair of shoes for those times where you have to have some style to hang out in the social room.

Co-founder Joel Kemp has teased us recently with some plans for upcoming spaces and items coming to Avakin down the road. The poker room will expand to include a full size casino, which means Blackjack, slots and even different themed poker rooms. Avakin Life, coming out later this year, will include apartments, public spaces and maybe even some of the popular games from Home such as Sodium and even the Lockwood HQ. Rumor has it that even the ubiquitous Lockwood Dream Yacht might even sail into the world of Avakin.

Right now is the time to get into Avakin. The people over at Lockwood want to hear your feedback – and they listen; I can vouch first hand on this. The Community Manager is easily accessible, unlike on Home, where either GlassWalls or Tempest_Fire were/are never around to talk to us “common folk.” Avakin has been created with the user in mind, and in my opinion, Lockwood has excelled at this endeavour. Right now there is the social room where you can mingle with people, and a high and low stakes poker room, and I am anxiously awaiting the release of the Avakin Life concept. Joining Avakin is free and easy to do, and I hope to see you in the new social world of Avakin.

-Aloha and Ahui Ho~*Sue

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