Written by Awportals.com

At companies I've previously worked for, I've interacted with the company directly on other projects before (I'm under NDA not to discuss them); they'll vouch that I'm for real (just putting that out there to explain that I'm not some sort of faker and/or exploiter). I'm leaning toward Activeworlds as an application mainly because of that experience (the folks were great to work with, and the build was done quickly), but now that I'm with a startup, budgets are tighter.

Plus, unlike the other virtual world options, they're a known quantity since I've seen it work before and I KNOW it can do what we're looking to do (versus "think" when it comes to the other guys).

We are looking for someone (individuals or companies) that specialize in the following:
-building database of users where users use unique product-delivered codes to unlock avatars (a la webkinz):

-a registration system that is coppa/caru compliant (it sounds harder than it is; I can explain)
-9 unique "non-human" avatars that share a lot of the same anatomy (think "Pokemon"...sort of)
-Currency system - users can buy new items to eat or clothes for characters to wear and store them in inventory; users make money by playing 2d flash games, where the score increases your currency (but you're charged to play them)
-Chat - for kid-safety reasons need ability to limit the aworld chat to either a dropdown menu (like disney toontown) or a unique idea that I've got in mind (don't know if it's doable, but we can discuss)
-Links in world to 2D content like flash games, bulletin boards, etc.
-Eventually, it will also have other components down the road, like using virtual money to buy a house, happy/health/hunger/friendship meters, etc.

It's a kid-targeted site, skewing slightly more girl, probably in the 6-10 year old range. MORE than OK with re-purposing/re-using pre-existing world items, buildings, components, terrain...these are kids, and I'm pretty sure they haven't explored every corner of alphaworld or other aworld sites!

Think of it like a junior (VERY junior) version of Webkinz. It'll be really fun, and so are we (in other words we're not "the suits")! If you want to do something creative, but a little corporate, and you can make the aworld sdk do backflips and sing like a canary (ok, we're mixing metaphors there a bit), hit us up, we'll send you an NDA, and then we can talk in more detail...

Thanks!