Webkinz Rules my Family

[Dren]

Ok, I've been just waiting for somebody else to post about this, but since nobody here seems to have come across this, I'll spill. 

Webkinz.  My wife, my son, and my daughter work on their Webkinz account everyday.  My wife, in fact, makes sure she can do two "jobs" per day by getting up early to do the first, so that when my daughter gets home from school, she can do another. (There is a 12 hour wait time on them.)

Ok, I'll explain.  This is very much like Animal Crossing.  The name of the game is to collect enough cash to buy houses/rooms/stuff for your house, etc.  On top of that, you have to keep your Webkinz (pet) fed, watered, and exercised. My kids were given the pets in the form of real stuffed animals that had a tag with the account information on them.  They took their dog and cat to the computer and with my help set up their account.

Now, how do you make money?  Well you play tons of different mini-games.  Think Puzzle-Pirates but on a much larger scale.  They constantly come out with new little games too.  These are those types of games you find all over the Internet that take little time and usually mindless (except for the word and math games.)  The also have trivia games that could be considered pretty educational.

Anyway, you play the games to earn the in-game cash.  Each day they list one of the games as 20-40% more cash if you play, so you go try those first.  The "jobs" that I mentioned give the big bucks and you make sure you do those too.

You might be asking, "Why put this in the MMO section?"  Well, simply put, it is on the Internet and you can invite your friends to come over and play in your room!  My kids have been playing with their friends from back home over 6 hours away now.  They love it.  The chat interface is much like ToonTown in that you can only say the phrases they offer you in the interface, so it helps with the obvious drawbacks of kids in chatrooms.  You have to be invited to come over anyway, so it is kind of a double security feature.

In conclusion, I really never thought my family would get into Internet gaming, but this Webkinz thing really did it right to attract the non-standard gamer into this genre.  Or perhaps this is a separate genre on its own.  Discuss amongst yourself.

For my review:  It is a great little game and toy/pet for kids.  It has helped us have something that both the parents and the kids can do together.  It can be educational if the right games are played, and yet they are fun.  The mindless stuff is fun too.  None of has to take up much of your time either.  You can log in and play for 15 minutes and you can get quite a bit of cash to play with.  The pets are like $12-15, so it certainly isn't painful to try out.

Future:  I've already started seeing where they are going to start offering real life accessories for the pets that also give you virtual gifts in the game for your rooms.  I can see where this could be a big cash cow for this company and they are doing it the smart way.  It will be interesting to see where this goes.

www.webkinz.com is the main site, but I think you have to buy the toy at the toy store first.  These things are the rage around here anyway.  All of the kids friends have them and they are collecting the different ones like the old Beanie Babies 5-10 years ago.

Catch em while you can.

[Murgos]

Is one of the pets you can get a ... mole?   :-D

I keed, I keed.

[Dren]

I know.  I tried to think of some hate and ire for my review, but I haven't found it yet.  I'll update when I find it.

I did forget to mention that it doesn't have a monthly fee.....yet.  When it does, I'll come back here and spit blood.

For the most part, I brought it up as a fairly unique spin on merging real life products with virtual MMO type games.  I know there are other examples, but this one is the most mainstream I've seen yet.  I've been seeing kids doing this that would have probably never have had a clue about Internet gaming at all.

It reaches ages higher than I would have expected too.  Some 12-13 year old boys are playing it.  While they play down the stuffed doll aspect, the games are pretty fun and the rooms you can design can get pretty cool if done right.

I know I know....mole.  Sorry, I'm sure it will eat babies at some point.  I just haven't gotten there yet.

[schild]

I'd never heard about this til 3 weeks ago when I was helping someone with their Webkins website. Lemme just say.

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Good for kids. Bad for collector-type, self-control lacking adults.

[Dren]

Yes, my wife is quite addicted now.  I've also been known to sit and make money for them with my l33t skilz.

We are fairly convinced that most of these kids have their parents playing most it for them.  The difficulty levels where you get any decent cash is far beyond a child's capacity. 

It is funny to hear the wife complain that she spent all day making like 2000 cash and one of the kids will blow it all on stuff she doesn't like.

[Lantyssa]

No red panda stuffed animals.

There is a unicorn though.  Hmmm.

[Dren]

I caught my wife looking for some of the rarer pets last night on eBay.

It is a sickness.

[Mr_PeaCH]

Hmm... maybe this will be the one that draws my wife in.  But no, up to now it is my 10yr daughter and to a lesser degree my 7yr son and their friends.  And yes, between the online time and the eBay shopping it is definately a sickness.

[Venkman]

Webkinz has been a big trend for almost a year now. They're making money hand over fist. However, it's not really an MMO per se, more like a virtual chatroom with minigames.

But again, this is exactly why some of us have been broadening our scope of awareness beyond whatever SOE borks next to actually look at adjacencies, in both experience and age group. What's the next "big" MMO? It's not going to be a $100mil game targeting exactly the same type of player WoW did that attracted the same type of player EQ1 did. It's either going to be a dozen licensed-based things ala Nicktropolis, or it'll be one out-of-nowhere MMO from a company that got smart and let themselves be bought-out/absorbed by someone with serious resources to blow it out.

[Krakrok]

What if you bought an action figure in the store (like a GI Joe or whatever) and it included a CD and code for World of GIJoecraft. You pick your class by buying the physical action figure and then you play online as that character when you plug in the code. Same thing as Webkinz I guess but married to the MMOG subscription model.

EA could fucking KILL it if they did that with Warhammer.

[Venkman]

Why would you need the CD?

[Trippy]

Why would you need the CD?

So you wouldn't have to download it.

[Dren]

Why would you need the CD?

So you wouldn't have to download it.

The beauty of Webkinz is that it is completely Web Browser based.  You type in your code and setup an account and you're on your way.  Very low maintenance and easy entry.

I think one of the reasons this works so well and gets more mainstream is the low requirements for computers and it has very basic graphics, etc.  The more you complicate that, you're going to reduce your marketshare. 

Warhammer?  Yeah, if they don't do something with miniatures, I'll be very very surprised.  I figured they'd just put one in every box to start out.  Then, you can use the website, etc to get more later. 

It would be interesting if they used some kind of rewards system like WoW is doing now to get discounts or free miniatures later.

[Venkman]

That was my point. Tamagotchi has been doing this for, err, I think 18 months or two years now, and they dynamically generate such codes on their handheld units. MGA Entertainment took that a step further by integrating a custom handheld through USB to an online world (single world engine with three different client/IPs), but that's a bit more effort than is really needed.

This is an evolution of gift-cards redeemed online. Forward-thinking companies simply rewrapped the front end (handheld, plush animal, whatever) with a new way of delivering advergames on the back end (el-cheapo MMO-like/maybe/not-required experiences run inside a browser). It:

• Lowers the system requires
• Casts extremely-wide the net of possible players
• Removes a whole bunch of distribution logistics of replication and gold masters
• Allows them to stay in that somewhat esoteric perpetual-beta state Google loves to much
• Still adequately integrates brick&mortars to take what advantage foot traffic can still bring.

Expect a lot more of this sort of thing going forward.

[Dren]

• Allows them to stay in that somewhat esoteric perpetual-beta state Google loves to much

Confirmation on that point.  Their site is down quite often and changes about every 5 minutes.  It is in constant evolution right now and it looks like they planned it that way. I don't mind the changing around all the time, in fact I think it is refreshing, but the down times are annoying for my family.  If there is one thing that will get my wife out of the habit, it is too many times where she tries to get on and can't.