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Tuesday 19 July 2011

Novatech's Cheshyr Pontchartrain Galaxy Market Interview



With the new Galaxy market in full swing we thought we'd occasionally have a look at the shops in the GFC's new full sim complex and talks to some of their owners. If you haven't been, Galaxy Market an expansive sim wide shopping area with 40 nicely sized shop fronts which spans whole sim in a giant circle.

It wasn't hard to pick the first shop to blag an interview off, its was staring us straight in the face. Not only is it a name synonymous with SL and especially sci-fi, to dare ignore it would be like ignoring the existance of air. The orders were set, check all known databases for Novatech in secondlife......providing you don't find it on google first. Its interesting to note their products have appeared in this blog afew times..1,2


We got our flashy communication system out and hailed Cheshyr Pontchartrain from Novatech, who replied via a subspace message filtered by two paper cups on a string. Our advance system of reel tapes recorded the conversation and a small army of Tribbles were employed to transcript the message before their next breeding cycle. Due to Union laws we were told that a tribble had to conduct the interview as it was a star trek minority character that doesn't get much screen time. We happyly complied and equipped a Tribble with a microphone and a recording device.

Tribble reporter: What's it like being in Secondlife for you.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: Here being Second Life? Not too different than anywhere else really. I've been active on the Internet since before it was called the Internet. Hosting MUDs in the days before MMO's and social networks existed, running BBS's and publishing software for my TRS-80 Color Computer back in high school, and more recently running GameSages.com until IGN bought it.

Tribble Reporter: What kind of relationship do you have with your customers?

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: Second Life is a bit more open than IGN's community, and *much* smaller. This is probably a good thing. I actually get to meet customers here. At GameSages there were millions of readers, but I knew maybe 30 of them, and half of those were on the staff.


Tribble Reporter: Novetech has a large star trek and doctor who influence, how did that come about and what are you most popular products

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: I've always been a fan of science fiction. Star Trek and Doctor Who in particular. I've been watching both shows since the 1970's. As for Second Life, well, that's more a matter of luck and word-of-mouth advertising.

Tribble Reporter: ah, tell me more....

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: I built my first Star Trek product years ago, a stellar cartography room made mostly because I thought the current offerings were overpriced, and not very interactive. The transporters and turbolift followed, to help tie things together.

Tribble Reporter: We see so many tardis's flying, rezzing scenes, changing shape and exploding, how exactly did that product come about.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: The TARDIS was more of a whim, to be honest. A friend of mine (Sen Pixie, who runs Hands of Omega) had sold me one of her builds, and I needed a way to get from it to the ground. I put my turbolift code in a police box and things sort of spiraled out of control. :)

Tribble Reporter: I've been fly around in a modified turbolift...who would have known :)
What are your best selling products?


Cheshyr Pontchartrain: Novatech's best-sellers are emDash

Tribble Reporter: Many members here use the emDash. We have teleport padds  placed in the sims at various locations so you can just select them from your emdash and the group feature has come in handy for private locations between division members. A very useful feature for use.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: the Type 70 TARDIS.

Tribble Reporter: Though this is a star trek influenced sim, many of our members are seen often flying arounds in the tardis. They are hard to track down as tardis's have a habit if changing shape, one minutes its a police box, then a pyramid, a chair, a briefcase and a myriad of other possible shapes and designs, it confuses our security team no end and we suspect borg involvement....who else would have an item turn from a policebox to a brief case and tens of other forms, who, but the borg.... Its an invasion i tell you...eh..em...back to the interview....

Cheshyr Pontchartrain looks a bit worried at this point, but continues...


Cheshyr Pontchartrain: HORIZONS (mostly the Home and Pro versions.) are also one of our best sellers.

Tribble Reporter: The GFC had a few of those around the sim, great for rezzing new sets and saving prim space so you don't have to have certain scenes in world all the time. Great prims saver.And finally, what's the future for novatech

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: At the moment, I'm working on a massive TARDIS overhaul, upgrading all of the console and expansion rooms, and eventually all of the Type 70 forms. The last piece of the puzzle was released with this week's server rollout.

Tribble nods in the a way only a tribbles can  considering it doesn't have a neck.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: With over 50 rooms and 80+ forms, it will probably take a few weeks.

Tribble runs to the Galaxy market to look at all the available forms on on show....Cool!!!!

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: If all goes well, TimoL's Enterprise sets will get the same treatment, so you could, for example, rez the bridge, click a button next to the door, rez a corridor, and continue on building the ship as you go. Same way the TARDIS works now.

Tribble Reporter: Looking forward to that, Cheshyr, thank you very much for your time.

And with that statement the Tribble put down his microphone, found a nice quiet corner of the room and reproduced itself more times than I care to remember.


Vist Galaxy Market and the Novatech stores HERE

More pictures HERE

2 comments:

  1. Bloody Awesome, I you ask me!

    Nice Job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ha ha a secret reporter we have.....
    might make tribble news.
    great interview snapper

    ReplyDelete