Tags:
Blogs, Other, PKR News, Avatars, Community, Environments, Psychology
Where to begin?
I suppose the beginning is a good place to start, and although we’re now a few years into the life of PKR this is (I think) my first development blog. It'll be first of many, so I’m looking forward to sharing what we’re up to with the community in a lot more detail than I have in the past. I'll be bringing you an update on what new ideas the development team have around once a month and I want it to be a two way street – so please use the comments facility.
It’s been a long road to get where we are today with the release of our new version, and I’m actually very happy to say that we’re now getting rather close to the early vision we had for PKR. When we started out four years ago we didn’t just want to re-invent online poker in a 3D world, we wanted to completely revolutionise the way people interact while playing online poker. Now, with the social networking capabilities just introduced we’re almost there. I say almost, because this is not the end of the road - far from it. We have a lot more to come and a lot of the work ‘under the hood’ of version 1.9 lays the foundations for some great new features that will make the PKR experience even more fun. But more on that next month.
The most obvious change we've made is the look and feel of the front end. When you first boot up you're presented with a very different looking menu system where you can manage your account, edit your avatar, view your friends newsfeeds and add/remove any of the PKR games. What we've actually done here is develop a social network portal that is also a digital distribution platform. Once you head off to play you're back in the familiar PKR lobby.
But, I think the greatest step forward we’ve made is the evolution of the friends system from a single non reciprocal connection (which is a bit, well, ‘stalky’) to a multi level, fully functioning social network where you can see what your friends are up to, follow them to tables (as well as chase those fish) and interact with them across the game client and website in a much more meaningful way. From the all new Forum (yes I know, about time too) to community and 'Raise your game' strategy content the whole social side of the PKR experience has changed enormously with this release. How well the community and account integration has worked has actually suprised me in all honesty and it's only going to get better.
So what else is new?
Well, we've added some very cool new rooms for Avatar editing with each loyalty level now having it's own custom room, which also then shows in your Avatar profile picture. We love bragging rights at PKR. In fact, bragging rights are a cornerstone of a lot of online game design not just at PKR, but at any massively multiplayer operator.
We've also spent some time making the way the chips move a little bit more realistic, which I think looks great and I know everyone's going to really love.
So as you can see, the development team have been pretty busy and I hope you enjoy what we've done. As for what's next, it's a case of watch this space (or read the latest issue of Stacked Magazine) and I'll be talking a bit about new ideas for multitabling, interface and even a Mac version of PKR in the next few weeks.
TTFN.