This is not a game, it's the future of how we might work
Updated: Aug 2, 2021
While most of us use Zoom, Discord, Google Meet, or Microsoft teams for meeting our colleagues, friends, and family, we all can agree that online meetings can be boring after a while, no matter how many tools, filters, and external apps we add to it, but this tool which I am going to talk about, kind of changed my perspective on this situation. It's called Gather town and here are my thoughts on the same. Disclaimer: This article was written before the launch of zoom marketplace and zoom apps. I am still testing it and I believe that its a cool add-on, which might make zoom calls slightly less boring but that doesn't mean that gather is obsolete (at least not yet) because its maine feature is kind of unique, read on to know what I am talking about.
What's Gather?
Gather is a fun video calling app (it can be accessed using it's website as well), which allows you to have fun or co-work in a unique way. Here is what it looks like -
Source: Frame grab from an official Gather.town video
As you can see here, this looks like zoom meets animal crossing but what actually impressed me was a unique feature which gather has, which might just change the future of remote work and online communication in general.
My Favorite feature
Source: Gather town
Gather has a lot of things to like but what really moved me was the ability to emulate human conversations in a way no other tool (at least a free one) does. They are able to do so by doing the following -
As seen in the video, just like a natural conversation, you can only talk and listen to the people who are (virtually) near you (until and unless you are put on spotlight or you enter a spotlight area {which is present in certain rooms only}).
As soon as you start to move away from a person, their video and audio will start to fade automatically until they are not visible or audible.
The same is also present in chat, apart from messaging everyone or directly messaging a particular person, you could also message information to people virtually near you, which is pretty useful in maintaining context.
While the above keeps the conversation human, it can be confusing for a lot of users initially, which is the one thing which I believe they can work upon. Apart from this, there are a plethora of cool features which gather has which I have listed below.
Other cool things in Gather
Source : Gather.town
It allows you to switch to video call when you are talking to someone, so it helps in avoiding any possible distraction.
A variety of maps with different themes meant for different use cases (like there are some made to emulate an office environment, another to emulate a game room, another to emulate auditorium and conferences).
Speaking of maps, gather also has a map maker tool to customize your room and add objects that one can interact with.
It allows you to play games like codenames, werewolf, cards and a few other games (although I haven't tried that part yet, it seems pretty cool to me).
Apart from the above, it has most the features a video calling or voice calling app has but it has it's own unique issues, which I have listed in the next segment.
Caveats in Gather
The free version allows up to 25 people in a room.
Certain maps might not perform well on lower end devices and is obviously more resource intensive than it's competition in the video call segment.(Which was also the reason why I didn't write this earlier as my old laptop was unable to run it smoothly)
Gather's 2D art style is something which might alienate some users from using it.
Initially, understanding the platform, it's intention and it's capabilities is difficult for some users, so the onboarding process could be improved.
Unlike Zoom, Gather doesn't offer end to end encryption, instead it uses DLTS and SRTP (which is also used by Google Meet)
My Final Opinion on Gather
Source: Gather.town
While Gather has it's pros and cons like every other product, I strongly believe that it's the closest we are to embody real world like conversations in the online world so far because it allows one to maintain the spontaneous and humane touch of a physical world conversation. Although the world is opening up once again, we all know that remote work is here to stay and companies like Google, Twitter, Salesforce and Facebook are allowing employees to be full time remote workers or work in a hybrid format (where one comes to office only on 2-3 days and works remotely for the remaining 2 days or only comes to physical office when needed to do so). Which means that tools like gather will still be required, due to which I believe that more tools like Gather might come up and gather will continue to add new features to meet the needs of its users, which is also why they recently launched Gather for remote work. Also Kinetech team if you are reading this, let's do our next meeting on Gather.
TL:DR - I recommend you to try out Gather.town with your friends or team as a change from zoom or meet and keep an eye out for Gather and apps like this as remote work is here to stay even after the pandemic ends, due to which these tools will continue to improve and we might be a step closer to humane interactions in the virtual world.
ความคิดเห็น