Webkinz Wonders

I recently had the honor of interviewing Leonidas Kouvaris, a digital artist and singer for Webkinz. Some of his most popular projects include The Pet of the Month songs and Zum designs. It was an amazing experience to correspond with him directly and gain some more insight into the game. Below is our interview, some words have been changed to fix typos, but for the most part is it word for word. I added some context via images and links to some topics discussed. An unedited transcript of the interview is here.

Do you consent to have the information discussed in this interview to be published on my Tumblr blog (WebkinzWonders) for the purpose of my composition class?

Yes.

What is the timeline of your time at Webkinz, when did you start and stop working there?

I started working at Ganz back in March of 2008, and I left early 2013, so around 5 years total. 

What were your main responsibilities when working at Webkinz?

I was first hired as a digital artist for the Interactive Art department and worked on creating new virtual pets exclusive to the eStore. I also created art assets for the Webkinz games and for Webkinz JR. After about a year I was given the opportunity to design a new series of characters for Webkinz called Zums. These were fairy-like creatures that would exist as both virtual characters on the Webkinz site, and as a product line of plush toys. I eventually worked primarily on product design and marketing for various Ganz properties, including Amazing World and Nakamas. 

From what I can see you are primarily an artist/designer, how did you get involved with the Kinztunes? Were you interested in music or was it just a side project?

Well, it all started out by chance. One day I was working away at my desk when my boss walked in and yelled out for everyone to hear "Who here can sing"? I put my hand up and his first response was "yeah right!", but after convincing him that I wasn't joking he said if I were interested in performing on a Webkinz tune to go visit tour resident sound guy. I love music and this was a great opportunity to get away from my desk, so I got the rundown from the lead sound engineer and we quickly started work on the very first Webkinz Pet Of The Month song. 

We had the lyrics written for us and a general direction...problem was, at the time, there was no formal recording studio on site and so we had to improvise. We found an empty office to record in and in lieu of any proper soundproofing, we ended up draping a Snuggie over my head while I sang. It was a great experience A proper sound recording studio eventually was built as the sound team grew, and I continued to get involved with the production of the Kinz Tunes. All of this extra work would happen during the work day, when I had time from my other responsibilities as a digital artist. I sang, I wrote, I even lent my voice to other projects doing character voices for the Webkinz JR site. I quickly became the go-to person for recording whatever random sound was needed. 

What was your favorite project you did working at Webkinz?

I would have to say that designing the Amazing World vinyl figures is what I am most proud of. I ended up designing three series for the toy line but only the first two ever made it to shelves. The project was canceled pretty soon after launch, along with others including Nakamas and Tail Town. I have to say, working on Kinz Tunes is a close second, as I am still good friends with the sound engineer I met on that first day of recording. I actually just met up with him today to check out a retro arcade in downtown Toronto.

How does Webkinz keep a consistent style since there are various elements of the game? Were there guidelines when designing?

One of the challenges that the Webkinz team faced was trying to keep up with the rapid expansion of the website. Both the coding and the art for the site had to get produced quickly as there were always new features and games to implement. As best as I can remember, Webkinz had one art director from the beginning who created the art style, and it was the Creative Director (the boss for the entire art department) who made sure everything remained on brand. Later on I became a sort of liaison between the art department and marketing, making sure product development was using the same style guides as the Interactive Art department.

What was the work environment like at Webkinz? Was it in-person offices or remote?

The art department itself was pretty drab. Gray cubicles upon gray cubicles, located in the same building that housed the main offices, and warehouse. The people I worked with were amazing. Get a bunch of creative people together in a windowless environment and you got a recipe for crazy times. A lot of dress up days; A lot of desk decorating. I made a lot of friendships from that time. 

What are some projects you’re working on now?

After Ganz I took some time off to do my own thing, creating some animated shorts with characters of my own designing. I then went on to work for a company designing educational games that are featured on the PBS Kids website. A year into the pandemic I was laid off and now I'm revisiting my project and developing it as on a mobile game.

Do you have anything you can show me from your time working there?

I've attached some sketches that show the design process of some of my earlier work at Ganz. I've included the initial concept of the Webkinz Stone Lion, isometric sketches of the Stone Lion, and the final vectored design.

Any questions that I didn’t ask that you think I should know?

Yes, Ganz is actually based in Canada. A lot of people don't know that the head offices are just outside of Toronto, Ontario

Since Webkinz was very popular with school children it was a very relevant topic to discuss amongst themselves. Through this playground chatter, some conspiracy theories formed. There were various theories but a majority had the common thread of a “killer.” Something in the game that would murder your pet.

There were theories of a virus boxes appearing in your pet's room. Clicking on a box would create an event that ended with your pet dying or all your money disappearing. If you click on black and red boxes a, "Neopet pops out with a knife, and chops your Webkinz head off." Clicking a yellow box, "you loose all your webkinz possessions and "money." according to a 2008 Snopes article all about the Webkinz killer conspiracies. In this article they collected emails from 2007 from players seeking their opinions on all these conspiracies, one player passionately wrote,

"This webkinz virus thing is TOTALLY true. it happened 2 half my friends on webkinz. there is either some kind of gift on the floor or some kind of bomby thingy. it pops out like you got a gift. then Dr. Quack or Miss Birdie pops up, lights go out, red eyes come, it makes slashing noises on your computer, and then the lights turn on and your webkinz are dead on the floor with blood on them. You probably think that webkinz people would never do that. you are right, but NEOPETS would. Why? because they got angry that everyone went on webkinz and nobody went on neopets anymore, so they hacked into webkinz and put in some kind of virus. It is pretty scary for kids, so be careful with what you do with your webkinz and DONT GO TO YOUR ROOM!!"

One of the most popular theories targets Dr. Quack, the former Doctor of Webkinz World. The theory goes; if you go to the doctor's office to visit Dr. Quack for a check-up and make him mad enough, he murders your pet in front of you. Ways to make him mad were clicking on a poster in the background of the room 32 times, visiting him at midnight, or making him do a house call.  This terrified children all over and schools and parents even got involved. Children were terrified to visit the sinister doctor and Ganz even had to release a statement defending the duck. 

Karl Borst, the long-time creative director, later commented in 2021 on the situation in an interview with Forbes’ Jackson Weimer saying it was  “Really really annoying. I mean I should have seen it coming. As kids age up into their tween/early teen years, scary and gross humor becomes more popular. But we had worked so hard to keep the game kid-friendly and non-violent that hearing about kids honestly being scared that a virtual killer would kill their pets ticked me off. Writing those articles acknowledging the rumor was something I didn’t want to do, but had to.”

Dr. Quack later retired from being the Webkinz world doctor after finding a "cure" with the scientist dog Goober to all Webkinz illnesses. He uploaded many journal entries on the whole process, saying in his last one he has made the decision to retire,

"I'’ve had lots of time to think, now that pets are no longer getting sick and don’t need my medicine at the clinic. A quick snack or a bit of exercise is all that anyone needs to get feeling healthy again. I love the town of Kinzville and all of the citizens living here, but the truth is that they no longer need the services of a doctor.

This is why, after 10 years of loyal service, I have made up my mind to retire and close the clinic."

His clinic closed its doors and it is not able to be visited anymore when clicking on the map a pop-up message appears, “Dr Quack has retired and the Clinic is now closed.”

Doctor Quack's career was not over just yet though. He was elected Mayor of Kinzville in 2016 and again in 2020.

In 2020, during the pandemic players were commenting we need Dr. Quack more than even now. He released a statement rerunning for election with the promise, "That is why, if I am elected, not only will I return back to work as your mayor, I will also open my “Dr. Quack’s Caring Clinic” in the Clubhouse." 

Currently, you can still visit Dr. Quack in one of the chatrooms. In the clubhouse, there is a room called, “Dr. Quack’s Caring Clinic” where you can interact with other players. The only interaction you can have with the doctor is by clicking on him to receive a lollypop. He says standing in one place, he doesn’t get any bigger than the standard size you can see below. Here is my Webkinz pug named "puggs" visiting:

The tale of Webkinz, and the reboot nobody asked for by KKclue is a youtube video uploaded on Dec 16, 2020. The video goes through the history of Webkinz and the current progress of the Webkinz team in a humorous and casual tone. I learned some interesting things about Webkinz through this and had an enjoyable time watching it. The video details KKclue’s personal experiences growing up with the game, sharing their nostalgia and experience returning. They overview Webkinz’s current state, products through the company, new adaptations to newer media, and Webkinz Next.

I was interested in hearing about another person’s experiences returning to the game as an adult after playing Webkinz in their childhood. My blog’s main focus is the history of Webkinz and KKclue discussed some interesting points, showing screenshots of official Webkinz posts as evidence. They touched on how plushes are no longer being produced but online avatars are, because of profits. They had an admiration for Webkinz in the team still working on it, saying how impressive it was that they were making such big changes even though the game is so old. They said the points that a large player base is still active. There are multiple devices that Webkinz can be played on and the fact that memberships are mostly free is nice since the original game you had to pay to play through the plushies. They had new experiences playing the game. They made a point to play the game and had the big question: is the game fun? They put in six hours for the video and they said yes it’s fun, and even better there was so much content; they were impressed. I would have to agree with them, as a returning player I would say most of the changes are positive to keep players engaged. KKclue made the point that there had to be so much content for Webkinz to compete with other games at the time like Neopets. Webkinz had the disadvantage of having to be paid to play via the plushies’ codes. I never thought about this aspect and thought it was a pretty good point.

While they were playing the game. They spent a lot of time in the arcade and discovered how since Webkinz is made for multiple devices, you could tell that some of the newer games were made for phones and how a lot of games overall are just clones of other games like Frogger and other older, classic games. I thought this was interesting since it was my first experience with those games so I didn’t realize they were just copies of other games since that was the original to me. 

Though they were very appreciative of the game they listed some flaws. Since the game is no longer flash there are many broken things that the team won’t fix. KKclue had the impression the team wouldn’t fix these bugs because they wanted to focus on just making new content. I know through interviews that the team can’t fix some bugs because flash player is no longer being supported. 

One bug is the TVs being broken in the player’s homes. You can no longer watch TV in the homes, a way around this bug is going to the clubhouse’s TV and they work as intended. 

They touched on how small the graphics are on the screen. Sizing up would cause the images to blur since the original vectors are probably buried. KKclue thought that was very interesting as there is a lot of wasted blank space on the screen, especially in the arcade. 

 For the next half of the video, they discussed Webkinz Next. When the video was filmed, Webkinz Next was brand new, so there were limited features. It is still relatively new but has more features including more avatars. Webkinz Next is a totally different game even though it’s supposed to be the same as Webkinz Classic. It’s a 3-D rendered game so the video pokes fun at some of the designs being creepy and uncanny. They made a comparison to Club Penguin and how when Disney shut down the original Club Penguin site and try to make a 3-D version it failed. Disney then shut down their new attempt leaving players with no game at all. Webkinz learned from that and is currently trying to revamp Webkinz with their newer 3-D game, but keeping the classic still up and running.

In conclusion, the video was well put together, KKclue brought up some good points I haven't thought of and it was interesting to hear their experience replaying their childhood game, just as I have.  The video details KKclue’s personal experiences growing up with the game, sharing their nostalgia and experience returning. They overview Webkinz’s current state, products through the company, new adaptations to newer media, and Webkinz Next. Though I wish they went a little deeper on some topics it was a good general overview of Webkinz and a fun watch.

This week I was tasked to complete a scavenger hunt in the library to find resources on my topic. Though Webkinz is big in my world, it’s not so big in the world of academia. Through the library’s research catalog, I tried to look for just the phrase “Webkinz”. Very little came of this, it was mostly people just listing it as an example alongside club penguin when discussing children’s video games. 

I found an ebook (Challenge 2) titled “High-Tech Tots: Childhood in a Digital World” by Ilene R. Berson and Michael J. Berson. This book got me excited because there's a whole chapter called, “WEBKINZ AS CONSUMERIST DISCOURSE: A Critical Ideological Analysis” written by Charlie Dellinger-Pate and Rosemarie J. Conforti. I hope it discusses how Webkinz utilizes the real-world plushies to push its site.

I broadened my search to “Children’s video games” which was more plentiful. I will try to take the angle of the impacts Webkinz as a videogame might have on children. I found a physical book (Challenge 1) titled “Growing Up Online: Young People and Digital Technologies” by Sandra Weber and Shanly Dixon. This book discusses how kids use online spaces and how that impacts them. 

I found a book titled, “Gamification concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications 1” created by IRMA which focuses on the educational aspect from a more formal handbook point of view. This book could be requested through the interlibrary loan system (Challenge 4) so I filled out a form for it. I was excited to have a book shipped all the way to little ol’ me from the librarians of the world. Unfortunately, I received an email back saying no libraries have this book. Heartbroken, I searched for it again and found it as an ebook. Way less cool but it still works. I still do plan to use the interlibrary loan system in the future, maybe even for a book not related to my research. 

Karl Borst is the long-time creative director of Webkinz. He has been with the company for all of Webkinz's time online, 17 years now! He had 10 years of interactive design experience before Webkinz and had spent time studying Neopets for another company a year earlier. He was interested and experienced in children’s online virtual games. Borst helped get the game going and guided it through all its peaks and lows with encouragement for Ganz’s owner, Howard Ganz. 

Borst’s first designs on Webkinz were the Curio Shack and Art E Fact. He even did the voice along with Wacky Zingoz, Sheldon Turtle, and Fred Rover! Borst designed the collectible Gem Hunt game’s algorithm still used today. The Gem Hunt is an activity in the Curio Shop where players can mine one gem a day, aiming to collect them all to achieve the Legendary Crown of Wonder. The algorithm Borst designed determines which Gem the players mine.

Karl Borst is one of Webkinz's most influential minds and has been responsible for designing such a celebrated game. Webkinz has a big team working on it, but it is so interesting to research the head of that team and learn more about him.

Borst's personal Twitter is here, though he doesn't tweet anymore he has tweeted some interesting first-hand fun facts.

Since Webkinz has been around since 2005, some changes have been made to the game. Some additions and sadly, some cuts. One deleted area of Webkinz that was close to my heart was Mazin’ Hamsters. 

Mazin' Hamsters was a region where players could play with their smaller hamster pets, established in October 2010. Mazin' Hamsters was accessed through Webkinz world but felt like an entirely other game. Players would have to download another application to play since it was built in Unity Web Player,¹ no other sections in Webkinz world had a feature like this.  Mazin' Hamster plushies could only be registered to play with in Mazin' World for the first couple of months of its release.

The look of Mazin' Hamsters was unlike the rest of Webkinz Classic. Webkinz classic stuck to a 2D art style but Mazin' Hamsters was 3D. There was a different currency system used also, Webkinz utilizes “Kinzcash” mostly while Mazin' Hamsters used “Moolah”. 

Mazin' Hamsters had two areas of play, the hamster hamlet and the mazes area. In Hamster hamlet players could do daily activities like Moolah mountain, Key Craze, and Gift Grab.¹ There were also Challenge Zones, which were different explorable maps with timers and parkour. The maps had various themes like forest, mountain, and lagoon zone. Here is a link from the Webkinz youtube channel of some gameplay. I can still vividly remember wandering around the lagoon zone.

The maze section had customizable plastic hamster tube mazes. Which were very fun to play around with and run through other players’ mazes. Here is another link to some gameplay. My brother and I could spend hours building mazes. Some days we would log on to just play with that and ignore the rest of Webkinz World.

Mazin' Hamster eventually shut down in 2015 because of the Unity Web Player. Having to download another application complicated the game, especially when most browsers stopped supporting the plugin.¹ This led to the game being shut down. The Mazin' Hamsters area was so immersive and well made it was a shock to many players, myself included.

On the Kinzville map, you can still see the maze icon where you would be able to access the game, but when you click it a pop-up comes up:

When you go to AmazingWorld.Com all that comes up is a white screen with the text "403 Forbidden | nginx/1.14.2."

Such a sad and confusing end to such a thoughtfully crafted virtual world inside another virtual world.

Have you ever spun The Wheel of Wow? Gone gem mining in hopes of achieving The Crown of Wonder? If you have, then continue on to reminisce with me. If you've never heard of a The Wheel of Wow or The Crown of Wonder, log in with me to learn about my favorite childhood game Webkinz. 

Webkinz is an online children's game that has real-life counterparts. Players would access the game by purchasing a stuffed animal that has a code on the tag. The child would then go to Webkinz.com and start their journey of being a virtual pet owner.

Players would open Webkinz and meet Ms. Birdy at the adoption center, a motherly penguin who has her hair in a bun. Players would either redeem their code or select a free pet. Free starter pets are a newer addition to the game, originally you would have to pay about $25 for the real-world plush. With the free starter pets, there is less access to different areas of the world. Once the player’s pet is on screen an adoption certificate would pop up and players could fill out the name and pick the gender of the pet. 

After the pet is ready the screen would change to the player’s customizable pets room. There they would be guided through the controls and how to care for the pet’s hunger, sleep, and happiness levels. After the tutorial, they would be given a gift box and a list of challenges. Dragging the box to the room would open it, revealing some food, a piece of decor based on their pet, a welcome balloon, and 2,000 Kinzcash (Webkinz currency). The list of challenges is simple tasks meant to show the new player around Webkinz world. From there they start actually playing the game and seeing around the wonderful Webkinz world which we will discuss in later posts.

I joined in 2008 so some of the procedures and gifts have changed, but for the most part they are similar. When I joined I was six days into being five years old, so my memory of the first tutorials is basically nonexistent, but my joy is not. I made a new account for the purposes of this blog and it was interesting to see how a new beginner would see the world. New players now are given a trial deluxe account for three days, unlocking most of the world. (I was a little bitter when I saw that since it cost me seven dollars when I had it, but c'est la vie)