You are here: Saturday evening at Otakon I was able to attend the Gaia Online Industry Panel. I’ll admit, walking into this panel I had no idea the zealous nature of Gaians. The line was among the longest I had seen at the convention and from I heard this was common place. For those of you who don’t know, Gaia Online is an anime-themed social network site. Through Gaia users can design custom avatars, upgrade them, play mini games to unlock more items, participate in forums, and various other activities. I’d also call it the anime version of Facebook, but you can also get to Gaia Online through Facebook Connect.
After a very enthusiastic hello from Chris Castagnetto, Community Event Manager for Gaia Online, one of the main reasons people showed up became apparent, prizes. At the door we had been handed “Gold Cards” with codes that would allow us to win items much like a raffle. These cards could also be redeemed online for coin and mystery gifts.
The first news they broke was over the Achievement system that is currently in beta. Users in gaia gold can activate this now through the “Gaia Labs”. The entire system works pretty much the way we have come to expect, do things and earn badges. These achievements also give you points that eventually you will be able to spend and down the road “may” unlock new items. Chris made not that eventually people who attend these live events would be able to earn achievements when they redeemed their “Gold Cards”. You will have the option to place a few achievements on your profile screen to show off what you have accomplished.
The next bit was about the upcoming manga story line. They went over screen shots of black and white, less-dialog, pages from the forthcoming story. The artwork was dynamic and exciting. Lanzer, founder of Gaia Online took the time to explain how the pages are created. He spoke of the technical details in overview in how the process of creating these pages. Then next was news of a new NPCs, items, and pets. (Cathulu!!)
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