Gaia Online

Gaia Online (pronounced /'gaɪ.ə/ Online) is an anime-themed forums-based website. Originally named "Go-Gaia", it opened to the public on February 18, 2003 by Gaia Interactive. Gaia originally began as an anime linklist and eventually got itself a small community but after a statement by founder Derek Liu (username "Lanzer"), the website moved towards social gaming. It eventually became the forum-based website it is now. A website named big-boards.com reports Gaia is the largest forum on the Internet with over a million posts made daily, over a billion posts total, and over 2.5 million unique users each month. Gaia also won the 2007 Webware 100 award in the Community category.

Gaia Online

File:Gaia-logo-red.gif
Company type	Corporation
Industry	Internet
Founded	2003
Founder	Derek Liu Long Vo Josh Gainsbrugh
Headquarters	San Jose , California
Key people	Craig Sherman (CEO)
Number of employees	92
Website	www.gaiaonline.com

Users of the site, denominated as Gaians, create a customizable avatar and a customizable virtual home for which they can purchase items using what is called Gaia Gold. This virtual currency is given to the users after engaging in some of the website activities, like playing a series of Flash games or the regular posting inside the forums; the site also rewards users everyday with random quantities of gold and items with the Daily Chance feature. In July 2007, Gaia released a new kind of currency denominated as Gaia Cash that can be bought at Rite Aid or Target stores.

Special events

Gaia holds various special events during the year, ranging from special comic updates to holiday celebrations (Halloween, Easter, Christmas, etc.). During the event, the users take part in an always active storyline of local plots (on occasion, the users even get to vote upon the plot outcome) and in multi-user interactive games. These events also reward Gaians with virtual commemorative items according to the users' participation during the event. Sometimes, rewards will even include a new Avatar "base" for Gaians to use, such as the Zurg (alien) and Vampire skin.

Events usually last around two weeks, though some have lasted longer.

Forums

Forums are public message boards that users use for everything ranging from regular conversation to roleplay and even to in-depth discussion. Gaians are free to either make their own thread, or to join an existing thread by replying to another's post. Sometimes, a thread is accompanied with a poll of some sort, which many users answer for little other reason than to earn the virtual currency available throughout the site.

Guilds

Gaians can form guilds and invite others to join their guilds. Some guilds require payment for membership. Posts in guilds will not show up on a Gaian's "Recent Posts".

Avatars

Members of Gaia Online receive an avatar when they sign up. Users have the ability to customize their avatar in many ways, including skin tone, eye style and color, hair style and color, gender, and attire. Numerous items, accessories, and clothing pieces can be purchased, with gold or Gaia Cash, and equipped on the avatar. Avatars appear next to posts in the forums and profile comments (the post itself encapsulated in a "speech bubble"), and in Towns and several other environments, the avatar appears as a movable character that can travel from place to place, interacting with the environment (catching bugs, shaking trees for gold) and other users.

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The inventory screen and an avatar

Donation items/Monthly Collectibles

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Sealed envelopes throughout the years

Monthly Collectibles (formerly Donation Items) are special items that can be bought with real money meant to support Gaia's maintenance and costs. Established in June 2003 after users of Gaia Online petitioned for a "donation system" in an attempt to increase site revenue, for every US $2.50 a user gives to the site, he or she receives an item known as a "Sealed Envelope" in his or her inventory.

On the 15th of every month, the Sealed Envelope disappears from the user's inventory and is replaced by a "Thank You Letter" for the current paid month (for example, a "Thank You Letter for August 2004" represents a payment made in that month of that year). Users are then able to "open" these virtual letters to choose one of two or three limited-edition items to be granted into their inventory from each letter. These items were known as Donation Items until potential legal problems prompted the name change. Monthly Collectible items and the "Thank You" Letter items they are found in are specific to the month that they were released in: for example, the items found in the "Thank You" Letter for April 2006 can only be found in that letter, and one could only purchase that letter in April 2006. Letters can be purchased over the phone, with a text message from a mobile phone, via PayPal, credit card, traditional mail or with the aforementioned Gaia Cash cards.

Users can also purchase these Letters and specific Letter items from other users for gold via the Marketplace (see below). Because of this, many Gaians sell Thank You Letters each month to earn vast amounts of Gaia gold.

Games

Gaia Online currently offers eight Flash games: Fishing, Towns, Word Bump, Jigsaw, Slots, Cinemas, Cards, Rally, and most recently, 'Virtual Hollywood' (sponsored by MTV). These games comprise of 10% to 15% of total site activity.

In most games, users can win different items or gold. For example, in Gaia Fishing, users fish on the banks of various lakes and often catch anything from different species of fish to garbage. These can be exchanged for fish-shaped hats and/or clothing made out of recycled garbage, or sold on the marketplace or back to the fishing store. The gold received is based on the rarity of the fish or item.

Towns

Gaia Towns (often simply called Towns) is a virtual world where users' avatars may move and interact with each other, collecting gold and small items along the way. Users' homes can be found throughout Towns and one user can visit another's home. Homes can be designed by items obtained from the Furniture shop or the Marketplace.

Rally

On June 18, 2007, Gaia Online and Scion announced a partnership that allowed users to create virtual Scions, with customizable wheels, decals, fog lights, tail lights, and spoilers, and race and display them to other users in a Adobe Flash game called Gaia Rally.

Other cars that came with the game are the fake Possum, and Musculero. They are also customizable but have much fewer accessories than the Scion. The Scion tC, Scion xD, and UFO were later released, bringing the total to six possible cars to choose from.

In this game users are able to race their cars in a simple track. Clicking the left mouse button beckons the car to move, gradually increasing the speed. Numerous obstacles appear in the road for one to overcome, such as cows, UFOs, ramps, and zombies.

Before the rally, users can chat amongst themselves in a system similar to Gaia Towns. Users park their car in an available space, and may challenge other users to begin a rally.

Cinemas

Gaia Cinemas was released in April 2007, and allows users to sit in a virtual theater, and watch anime, education shorts, cartoons, etc. with other Gaians. Users have the ability to throw tomatoes, fireballs, popcorn, as well as other things during a cinema session. Programs shown in Gaia Cinemas are anime or cartoons shown with permission from Gaia Online's sponsors, films in the public domain, or films made by Gaia or by Gaians. Gaia has old classic films as well as new anime in their theaters like Suzuka and Moon Phase. Recently, Gaia has created its own 3-D animated films, under the title of MMVII, that correlate with the Gaia storyline. Quest movies also take place in cinemas, when a user finishes watching a trailer for a movie they may receive a quest item. Gaia VJ is where Gaians can make a virtual living room cinema with playlists composed of videos from video-hosting sites such as YouTube. In a recent announcement, Gaia announced a partnership with Sony and Time Warner, allowing Gaia to screen films from their libraries, either for free, a one time gold fee, or a Gaia Cash rental fee. New films are released in Gaia Cinemas every Monday.

Gaia Battle

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Gaia Battle's Logo

Gaia Online has announced it is developing an MMORPG where users will be able to battle monsters and participate in RPG style quests. The official name of Gaia's battle system will be chosen via a user contest. The game will utilize special rings to simulate abilities such as throwing fireballs or making a shield. While a forum for the battle system has been established, the official release date has not been announced. An Announcement has been made that the MMORPG will be available to play sometime during this year. Some have said that it might come out to play closer to Summer. But the true release date is still unsaid. Also an informational site has been made for it, which can be viewed at battle.gaiaonline.com

Arena

There are three arenas on Gaia Online. Housing, Art, and Avatars.

Members can vote in the arenas and comment on art, avatars or houses.

When entering the Avatar arena it only costs 1,000 Gaia gold. Entering art is free, but there are not prizes awarded. Housing area normally cost 1,000 Gaia gold, but currently they are "updating" the housing area so it's free for now and no prizes are awarded.

These are the prizes you could win for entering your avatar in the arena:

1st place: 50,000 gold

2nd place: 20,000 gold

3rd place: 10,000 gold

Market

There is a full-fledged Gaia Market. Market is divided into four parts - Shops, Trade, Marketplace, and Gaia Cash Shop.

• Shops: There are various shops where NPCs sell different items for avatars, house, cars, etc. These shops are of all types, upmarket as well as economy. A player can buy items using Gaia gold or Gaia cash. Items found in the shops can also be sold back to the shop for 50% of the shop price.
• Trade: Users can trade items and gold with other Gaians.
• Marketplace: Users can have up to 10 items for sale at once in this eBay like vending system. The cost of this convenience is a 2% tax on all gold earned from sales, a feature implemented with the recent remake of the Marketplace.
• Cash Shop: Is known as "La Victoire" is the most recent addition to Gaia's economy and sells items for Gaia Cash (which itself is bought with real money). It includes high end items and special "evolving" items, that change over time. Items are always subject to be rotated in and out of the Gaia Cash Shop's "stock".

Quests

The Gaia Quest system grants users items for performing certain tasks. Most quests on the site are for promotional purposes, granting items related to the featured movie or anime series for watching trailers. Movies promoted by the Gaia Quest system include Gracie, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, The Golden Compass, Nancy Drew, The Last Mimzy, The Spiderwick Chronicles and Bee Movie. TV shows have also been promoted, such as The Hills. There are a few for games such as "Dragon Quest Swords".

External links

• Gaia Online