New Planet Announced - Planet Arkadia

I'm very pleased to share that today Arkadia Studios has announced the development of Planet Arkadia.

Check out the website and let me know what you think.

Full Press Release:

Singapore – November 3, 2010 - ARKADIA STUDIOS DEVELOPING TREASURE HUNTING MMO PLANET WITH REAL CASH ECONOMY
Singapore game developer Arkadia Studios announced today that it has partnered with Swedish platform developer MindArk PE AB to create an exciting Treasure Hunting Planet. Planet Arkadia will be part of Entropia Universe, where it will be the first virtual Treasure Hunting environment.

Participants will have the chance to search for treasure that has a real cash value and have the option to withdraw profits back to their real life bank account.
Utilising the world class capabilities of the Entropia Platform, Arkadia’s new colonists will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the outstanding graphics of a 3D world, interact with their friends, hunt, mine and explore together, and be entrepreneurs as they take a real part in the building of the new world.
Planet Arkadia CEO, David Dobson explains, “When colonists arrive, they will be able to explore Arkadia’s rich and intriguing history, and have the chance to become skilled treasure hunters, with ancient ruins to explore”.
Arkadia Studios brings together an international team of experienced game developers from Malaysia, Singapore, India, Korea, Australia and the USA.
“This experienced group of people who have worked in different studios around the world, all coming together, really adds to the creativity of the team,” says Dobson, “and I’m confident people are going to notice that.”
Of note is Planet Arkadia’s partnership with world renowned concept artist Feng Zhu (best known for his concept work on movies: Transformers, Avatar, Star Wars Episode 3 and on games: Guild Wars and The Sims 3). Zhu has created some breathtaking concept art, and this forms the foundation of the cities and themes being developed.
“David originally provided me general ideas on what he wanted,” says Zhu, “which are based on Eastern architecture, such as that of India, Mongolia, China, Thailand, these kinds of areas, that have very cool architecture, that’s rarely explored in the game industry.”
Planet Arkadia is set to launch within the first half of 2011. People are able to visit the website at www.planetarkadia.com to follow the production and get involved in pre launch competitions. Three instalments of the back story are being released on the website today, and there will be regular updates right through to launch.

About Planet Arkadia
Planet Arkadia Pte Ltd is based in Singapore and was founded in 2010. The company was formed to bring the virtual world of Planet Arkadia to life. Additional information about Planet Arkadia Pte Ltd is available at www.arkadiastudios.com


About MindArk PE AB
MindArk develops, operates, markets and provides Entropia Universe. MindArk is based in Gotenborg, Sweden and has 80 employees. Additional information about MindArk PE AB is available at http://www.Mindark.com
ENTROPIA UNIVERSE® and MINDARK® are registered trademark of MindArk PE AB. MindArk supports and monitors the services and maintenance of the Entropia Universe platform.

About Entropia Universe
Entropia Universe was launched in January 2003 and has grown to more than 950,000 registered accounts from over 200 countries. It is the only virtual universe with a true Real Cash Economy (RCE). The currency, Project Entropia Dollars (PED), has a fixed exchange rate of 10:1 with the U.S. Dollar. The business model is unique as it is based on micropayments, meaning that the client software is free to download from the Internet, and there are no monthly subscription fees, thus Entropia Universe provides a way for new players to immediately start exploring without having to deposit money. Virtual funds acquired in Entropia Universe can easily be exchanged and then withdrawn into real-world funds. The business model has been very successful; The 2009 turnover of Entropia Universe topped $422,000,000 U.S. For more information, visit http://www.entropia-universe.com
Entropia Universe © 2010 is created and owned by MindArk PE AB. All rights reserved.

nice find :)

Always nice to see our universe expanding, this might stop some of the doomsday theories...

A storyline? :O

this looks like a planet that Calypsians will like.

narfi

Hey George,

Yes I am Dave Dobson, CEO of Planet Arkadia.

I'll message you regarding an interview.

Cheers

Looks awesome Ozi, some great talent on board there for sure, best of luck and I look forward to playing archaeologist :)

very nice,.....................

i thought of you Ozi, as soon as i saw the name "arkadia" posted on the other forum, dont know why... good to see.

Oh way the website looks great and WOOT a real life communiyt manager THAT MAKES VIDEOS !!!

I am still waiting for that dance event (gothenburg fesitval) of FPC and here we got a new planet already making more professional video's

This might be the Planet Claypso killer .. cant wait till it comes (and see if it indeed becomes cool )

I'll be honest: When the website loaded up my initial line of thought was like "how old is that page, 10 years? no wait, it has a twitter button..." So, the first impression was bad.
BUT. and it is indeed a big but. let's have a look at the other planet partner websites:
calypso: fancy, multilingual (even if you dont want it to be, oh, btw, the harbinger is only announced on the english version :D), extensive guides, that dont help much. a little confusing maybe. overall nice looking but they've been around for a couple days longer, so any less would be embarassing ;)
cyrene, my favorite upcoming planet: nonexistent? at least I get a 403 error message anyway...
next island, my 2nd favorite so far: crap. no, really. hope the site gets a redesign - and content - once the planet goes online
Beladcom: no website
planet michael: nothing to see if you dont allow flash. and if a website doesnt have a normal version, it cant convince me to enable flash for it. noscript: rulz. SEE: fail.
rocktropia: also flash only for the most part, but I wanted to see it before I got there. dont see why anyone would start playing after looking at that oO. 3 pages, a login button and links to neverdienews and forum...

and then comes arkadia, sneakily prepared, unexpected,... and... at second look...
wow. an actual game preview website. with info and story and concept art and videos and interview and a youtube chanel and... and... well, it's great. get a redesign and it'll be awesome. you know, fancy buttons instead of those text links
and could anyone tell me why I finished writing this little bit of text just now, considering I first looked at the arkadia website TWO HOURS ago? where'd all the time go?

duh. looks like I'll have to find out how twitter works after all ^^

Does that mean there's fb exclusive content? cause in that case I'd finally bother to get my account unlocked. (yes, I did something very bad: I tried to login while on holiday in another country. facebook decided to block me )

Hi Kay, the content isn't FB exclusive, its just the YouTube videos embedded there. You can see them on the website just as easily. Twitter and FB were catered for, for those that use them but if you frequent the forums, i'm sure you won't miss anything. I suspect that EP will grab the RSS Feed from Arkadia as well so if you are around here then i think all your bases will be covered.

Looks interesting, it's nice to see a planet being made by players. Now you have the chance to have MA frustrate you on a completely new level :D

Good luck guys :)

Could you tell us more about EU players who are involved and what they're doing?