The Hunter is a revolutionary hunting simulator that unites traditional gaming and social networking. Download the game client and you'll find a visually stunning hunting world, populated with a huge range of highly realistic animals, from small game and birds to heavy weight trophy targets like bear, deer and elk, all created by Avalanche Studios, the award winning developer of Just Cause.

Entering its beta testing phase next month, The Hunter features an incredibly realistic and visually detailed hunting environment with true to life animal behaviors. Uniquely, the game gives players the social network tools and web interface to build an online community of hunters, all of whom experience the thrill of the hunt within a connected environment.

With regular roll outs of new content, missions, items, hunting areas and animals, the Hunter will always stay fresh, and the community plays a big part in shaping the future direction of the game. Features and updates can be created based on the way the game is being played, and players can send suggestions to the developers about new things they want to see and the direction they want their game to take.

And if being a fine upstanding citizen of a social network isn't your thing, you can even become a poacher, create your own rules and shoot whatever animals you want. Watch out for the game wardens though...

This new technology forms part of Emote’s social platform Participate which allows game developers to build advanced social networking functions into their games. The character creation element allows users to create incredibly realistic avatars for use on any device. The resulting quality is startling as avatars can now boast ‘next generation’ visuals that people are already enjoying in their games and other digital content.

When integrating Participate into a website or game, the avatars are created to order on dedicated servers and the resulting high quality imagery can then be viewed on any web-enabled device. No matter what the specification of the user’s device, they will still enjoy the unrivaled realism – even if their device is outdated and could never generate such imagery on its own.

This announcement of Emote’s Participate software follows the recently announced news of a £600,000 funding boost from The Technology Strategy Board to support the company’s development of vastly improved AI controlled social agents, in collaboration with the Imperial College, London.

“Participate can generate endless character combinations and once the user has made their selection they can continue to personalize, adding make-up and jewellery, changing their hairstyle and clothing, and even the environment they appear in,” says David Rose, Emote COO. “Our forthcoming game www.thehunter.com uses all the features within ‘Participate™’ and allows gamers to share their online identity within the game’s environment as well as across other social networks.”

This breakthrough technology created by Emote Games opens up exciting new opportunities for digital creators and consumers. Developed by Emote’s own studios, Participate™ suite of software allows games to be enjoyed on all kinds of devices and in many different ways -- from console to PC to handheld devices, and from playing missions to sharing photos or writing blog entries.

The character creation technology offers all kinds of opportunities for digital content creators or service providers who can use it in conjunction with other Participate™ functions, or as a stand-alone technology.

The Hunter will be available on PC with console versions to follow.