Gather.town – Spatial Audio & Video in a retro gaming look

In conventional video chat applications, only one, main conversation can take place: Whoever talks is center stage.

In many cases, it is beneficial if an online event’s attendees can take part in smaller conversations on the sidelines as well, so that they can connect with each other as well as take part in the main event.

Spatial video or audio applications make this possible by providing a map you can move on and opening up video (audio) chats with other people who are “close” to you.

There are several websites providing this type of service and I’m currently testing them to determine their individual strengths for certain applications.

The first one is gather.town, whose special feature is an old school video game aestetic with highly customizable maps. Learn more by viewing the video below!

My main take-aways are the following:

If you’re interested in a more detailed expedition into gather.town, here is the long version of the video above, where I explore the tool for the first time:

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