Coming Soon: AJ for older kids?!

Hey Jammers! Remember that post I made last weekend where I was wondering what the heck is going on at AJHQ? Well, it turns out that on the same exact day I published that post, another post was made on Animal Jam Archives that may just answer this question... among many others that we have had over the years!

So apparently in January, the podcast Kidtech interviewed Clark Stacey where he revealed some potentially big info about things that are soon to come on AJ.

I have no idea how anyone at AJ Archives could find this podcast– I'm always going deep to find news about Animal Jam and I've never once seen this.

There's already a summary of some parts of the interview in the link above, but as I write this I'm listening to the podcast to summarize the interesting stuff for you guys, and at 9 minutes in here's the first new thing:

- The partnership with Nat Geo was to help AJ compete for attention with bigger kids games like Club Penguin. 

This makes sense! It's hard to gain publicity as a small kids game when you're overshadowed by giants like Disney. 

It's common sense, but it's good that this was mentioned because it implies that the break-off between Nat Geo and AJ may have just been because AJ didn't need them for publicity anymore.

Additionally:

- The partnership with Nat Geo was expensive, and even though they have a huge library of animal video and photography, licensing issues made it hard to use. Much of the educational material on AJ was collected by AJ itself!

It's starting to make more sense why AJ split with Nat Geo.

Also,

- Animal Jam was close to having partnered with Animal Planet, but eventually ended up with Nat Geo instead. 

Just thought that was interesting. 

And another fun fact:

- 20,000 pieces of artwork are sent in every day through the Masterpiece system and each is checked by a real person twice. Wow

The main idea, however, comes around the end of this 45-minute podcast:

Wildworks has been working on... Animal Jam for younger kids, and Animal Jam for older kids.

(Ok, for the record, neither of the above screenshots are "leaks" of the potential new games– the one above is an example of early AJ animal designs from the Animal Jam Archives, and the one below is a screenshot from the game Lif. They were just the first things that popped into my head when I heard about this lol)

According to Clark Stacey, there has been a lot of feedback from Jammers saying "I'm a junior or senior in high school. I've been playing AJ for 5 or 6 years but it feels weird to still be playing at this age. You guys should do something like Animal Jam but for older kids with less restrictions."

I can relate to the quote above except that I don't feel weird about playing AJ anymore lol– it's something that makes me happy, so I don't really care if I'm not exactly the target demographic.

But anyway, Clark Stacey goes onto confirm that Wildworks is in the process of developing these two new games and that they should be announced soon publicly. 

He described the one for younger kids as a "bridge into Animal Jam" and the one for older kids as "what happens after Animal Jam". They probably won't be exactly like Animal Jam, but I wonder if the one for older kids might use graphics similar to beta testing given how older Jammers might be nostalgic for that. 

Personally, I think the 'Animal Jam for older kids' is a nice idea (I'd probably play both that and normal AJ), but the 'Animal Jam for kids below 8' seems a bit much. If kids grow up fixed to a computer screen while they are very young... it's just not good, no matter how cool the game is. 

I really hope that the kind of uneventful updates AJ has been having don't continue even after these upcoming games are announced, but regardless, it seems from the interview that Animal Jam is a labor of love, for the most part.

Thanks for reading, and see you in Jamaa! :)

What's going on with AJ?

Hey Jammers! This will be another kinda short post. Sorry that it seems like I'm always on hiatus– I have a lot of things I'm nervous about right now (mostly involving school) so when I'm not doing homework I'm kind of just being lazy. /)>_<(\

Alright, before we get to the main topic of this post, I learned some kinda interesting info!

Remember when the Spring Carnival was announced a couple of updates ago?

It said a rare carnival item would be released for one day, and the fact that the Spring Carnival was in the scheduled party list instead of being somewhere permanent made it hard to really check every day. 

Every Spring Carnival, something similar happens (I think the 2017 rare was the NM recolored Feathered Mask and the 2018 one was a recolored nonmember Jester Hat– or was it the other way around?). The general idea is that the rare item is a recolored nonmember variant of a member item. It's a little different this time, though.

It was reeeeally hard to figure out what this years Carnival rare was, but I finally learned when I asked people in the Chicken Smoothie AJ thread.

And the rare is...

The Rare Butterfly Wristband!!! If you can believe it, this is the best image I could find.

It's pretty as a sunset, but as you can see it's a recolor of an already nonmember item, breaking the trend of member-to-nonmember Carnival rares. Honestly, though, I'm just happy that there was a Carnival rare at all– I was convinced that AJHQ forgot.

Which brings me to the main point of this post... what the heck is going on with AJHQ?

Now, I'm not one of the people who thinks that AJ is ~dying~– I think the majority of people who think that are just losing personal interest in the game or are upset by the YouTubers who have also lost personal interest in the game.

Still, the past couple years on AJ have been, er, annoyingly uneventful. We've just been cycling through routine seasonal updates without much new at all.

In contrast, I think 2017 was probably one of the MOST eventful years on AJ, especially in regards to lore events.

In 2017, we had...

- Message in a Bottle
- The Solar Eclipse event
- The opening of the Forgotten Archive, with new passages from books coming out every so often for a while
- The 'lines of power' thing
- The destruction of Club Geoz (not a fun event, but a very big change nonetheless)
- New adventures

And in 2018 and 2019, we've had...

- Nat Geo leaving
- Balloosh
- Sabretooth/Direwolf animals
- A couple of Forgotten Archives adventures
- My Shop
- ...and probably nothing else significant

It's funny, updates started getting really uneventful since AJ and Nat Geo parted ways. It's probably just a coincidence though.

In the quote above from Clark Stacey's Instagram 'Return of Animal Jam FAQ', he said that the reason why updates have been so sparse is because WildWorks is 'working hard on something that will be announced soon.'

That was posted in mid-December last year, and it's practically April and we still don't have the slightest clue about what AJHQ might be working on. Wouldn't they give us some sort of a hint?

I'm always researching news about Animal Jam in the hopes that I'll find some kind of explanation. A few weeks ago, I went on the WildWorks page of Glassdoor (a website where current/past employees of a company talk about their experiences working in a place) and while reviews were usually positive, a sizable amount of reviews mentioned creative stagnation, issues with different departments not having enough communication, among other problems.

Of course, people generally go on review sites if they have negative experiences, so the ratio of negative to positive reviews might not be an accurate representation. Still, it can make you anxious to realize that a game you love might be balancing on an unstable foundation.

I'm gonna try to be hopeful and positive, because it seems people at WildWorks are genuinely working hard. Though it would be nice to have more communication about what's going on. :T

Thanks for reading, and Jam on~

P.S. I messaged the CEO of Animal Jam on Instagram with a link to my 'Why AJ should be educational again' post. I don't think he's seen it yet cuz he probably has 100 messages already, but it's a start!

Animal Jam Animated Series?

Hey Jammers, short post today! 

I was cleaning up my screenshots when I found this thing:

A few months ago I was searching for Animal Jam related news and press releases (as I often do) and I found an article that I'm too lazy to find again and link for you. 

I just remember that it was published last year, meaning that the animated series promised at the bottom of the above passage might be due soon!

...or is it?

If I remember correctly, the idea that AJ was making an animated series surfaced a few years back, but nothing really came of it.

If there is an animated series, I hope it's 2D animation like this beautiful older video. It probably won't though, given how 3DCGI is more popular.

Ok. Time to actually work on my overdue homework >_<

See you in Jamaa!

Why AJ Needs to be Educational Again

Hey Jammers! Sorry for the long hiatus, I've been balancing art class and a huge project for a school club that I took on– I'm posting now because that big project has finally concluded, so I have more mental energy for this blog! :)

So, you might be wondering about the poll I put up to the side of this blog a month or so ago. Or maybe you're not wondering– it just looks like a normal poll:

Thank y'all who voted– I made sure to limit it to 1 vote per person, but hopefully you didn't go on a different computer to vote again :P

There was a purpose behind this poll, and it has to do with the main subject of this post:

There is not enough nature-focused educational content on Animal Jam, and what little there is is pushed to the side. This may be a major reason for the decline in AJ's popularity.

What does that have to do with the poll? Well, if you'll notice, all the educational content on AJ is concentrated in the least popular elements of the game: Journey Books, educational videos, and mini games. 

AJHQ might be quick to assume that the way to increase the popularity of the game is to remove and minimize what little educational content there is left– kids hate learning, right?

But it isn't that simple. 

Over time, Animal Jam has become more and more homogenized– meaning, it's becoming the same as Every Other Kids Game. 

No hate on Webkinz, I have nice memories playing it, but you've got to admit it's a pretty basic game. It's all pretty colors and items with not much about it that's unique at this point. It's hard to really care about it– while Webkinz is just a collection of fun and cute online activities, Jamaa is like a world in itself.

And because Webkinz is so homogenized, it's lost popularity fast. I remember when a plush Webkinz cost 10 or 20 dollars, but now you can literally buy them for 5 dollars or less. The demand has gone down.

While Animal Jam is very different from Webkinz, you have to admit that the homepage, the newer items, and the overall character of the game is feeling more homogenized than ever.

Sometimes I see people use the word "nostalgia" when talking about beta AJ, but I think it's more than that. 

Beta testing was the time when Animal Jam was at its peak of uniqueness, and nature-focused content was what made it unique. 

Nowhere else could you find a game that used both science and fantasy lore to foster a love of the natural environment. And now that educational nature content is being pushed farther and farther away, that game is struggling to keep its integrity. 

I view the nature-focused character of beta testing as the core of the game, and something that current Animal Jam should strive for even as it changes.

Yeah, the ease of chatting, the complex animal animations, and the high level of customization was what hooked me into the game. 

But without the nature-based fantasy that both immersed me in the fictional world of Jamaa AND got me curious about the real Earth around me, I would not have played for more than a month.

I hear that generally, people don't play games to learn something, but more and more I've been questioning that. 

I'm always talking to Jammers who are really excited about plants and animals, and as I scroll through comments on the Daily Explorer and AJHQ's Instagram, I usually see at least one or two people asking for more stuff involving nature.

When it comes to helping the environment, I see adults put a lot of faith in younger generations to right the wrongs that past generations have done to the planet. 

The truth, though, is that it's adults' jobs to help younger generations understand the value of our Earth. These adults might be teachers, parents, authors... or creators of the most popular kids MMO ever.

WildWorks, you may not think so, but you have a lot of power in shaping younger generations. Your game is literally the reason why I am going to be an environmental scientist.

Thanks for reading,

~DoomyPanda

Notice

Hey guys! Sorry that I haven't posted in a while. Along with homework and personal projects, I've been sick the past five days so I'm just trying to recover. 

Posting will resume soon– I don't know how soon, but SOON!

~DoomyPanda