Colony City: A Next-Generation Community Site for Games and Science Fiction Fans
Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA, June 25, 1998 - Today, Cybertown and blaxxun interactive, leaders in the development, marketing, and operation of online communities, announced the launch of Colony City, a next generation community site for fans of games, science fiction, high-tech, and related themes.
Colony City is based on newly developed blaxxun technology that provides community members with all required tools for managing the community and includes state-of-the-art multimedia communication with 3D (VRML) places, real -time chat, message boards, 3D homesteading, and many other advanced community features.
Colony City is designed to become the central meeting place for Internet users who are interested in games, science fiction, fantasy, virtual worlds, and related high tech themes. The service is completely free for visitors. It's also free for registered members, who can take full benefit of all advanced features. The site is financed through advertising, sponsoring, and e-commerce.
The unique aspects of Colony City include the ability for members to take over the operation of the service themselves. There are in-built political structures, that allow members to run for the position of a City Mayor, a City Council member, and various other public roles. And volunteers can take responsibility for public places, such as libraries, theaters, shopping malls, cafes, and city halls. As members gain more experience with the city, they get access to additional features. An in-built incentive system rewards regular contributors with privileges and higher status.
All places have integrated communication features, such as Java or 3D Chat, message boards, events calendars, posting mechanisms. All places can be visited either (with older hardware) in their HTML representation or in their 3D/VRML representation with avatars (graphical figures) that represent the visitors. All places are fully multi-user enabled, allowing members everywhere to meet and chat with other people.
Beside the public places, Colony City has various residential areas, organized as colonies. Community Leaders can set up new neighborhoods and blocks for additional themes. Members can claim their own properties, including an icon on a SimCity-like block, a 2D and even a 3D home with integrated chat, a link to their preferred home page service, definition forms that allow them to regulate the level of privacy for their guests, and many other personal elements. Soon, members will even have their personal bots, taking care of their homes, greeting guests, taking messages, and gathering information of interest for their owners.
"With blaxxun's brilliant technologies enabling Colony City, we can now offer our members the most advanced community infrastructure in cyberspace. Now the members will be able to grow the community and take part in shaping the future of the net", said Tony Rockliff, Cybertown's producer and CEO.
"We are proud to have Cybertown as our partner and first showcase for our new technology generation", said Franz Buchenberger, CEO and president of blaxxun. "Cybertown has extensive experience in building and operating targeted communities. And their creative talent is fantastic, resulting in a coherent and highly impressive design and interface for Colony City."
Colony City can be visited at http://www.cybertown.com and will be extended continuously. New capabilities and areas will be supplied by Cybertown and blaxxun, as well as by members directly. The unprecedented involvement of members is expected to lead to a new level of member involvement, loyalty, and feeling of ownership.
For more information: blaxxun interactive Inc Cybertown Patrick Kitano. Tony Rockliff San Francisco, CA 94100 Los Angeles, CA 91011 Tel.: (415) 273 -7000 Tel.: (818) 759-6670 Fax.: (415) 285 -4702 Fax: (813) 298-8334
http://www.blaxxun.com http://www.cybertown.com
About blaxxun interactive
blaxxun interactive, an international company with offices in San Francisco, CA and Munich, Germany was founded in 1995. It offers products and solutions for multimedia communication on the Internet and intranets. Applications include online promotion, online shopping, online services, and online teamwork. The award-winning blaxxun community server and clients are an open platform for interactive 2d and 3d (VRML) solutions.About Cybertown
Cybertown, set in the year 2087, is a huge and increasingly popular cutting edge virtual community on the world wide web where people can have fun, be entertained, learn things and explore the best of Earth's Internet. Cybertown was created in 1995 and has built what C|net Central called "one of the most dynamic and entertaining cybercommunities on the web." Cybertown also offers sophisticated graphics/web design and VR applications to the entertainment and corporate industry.