Webkinz Newz is happy to announce that the winning questions for the Ask the Creative Director have finally been selected. Congratulations to all 10 winners — each has been sent a Feature Code that unlocks a Director’s Chair and a Colossal Movie Screen. We wanted to make sure that the questions were answered before we posted the winners — keep reading to see the winning questions, their answers and a personal message from the Creative Director!
First I’d like to thank everyone who entered. We received more than double the number of questions that of our last “Ask the Creative Director” contest. We received lots of great questions and it was difficult to reduce the questions to just ten. The number one question by far was “What is the park?” which you now already have the answer to. I’ll be giving some insight into the future of the park at the end of my answers.
We hope the winners enjoy their Director’s Chairs. This is one of the rarest items in all of Webkinz World. Until today, there were a total of 2 in existence (and I don’t even have one).
When will there be more contests to enter at the Webkinz Stadium?
We have two more events ready to go for the Stadium. We have both of these events on the plan for 2010. The first of these will be a Running event, so keep working on your pet’s speed at the Kinzville Academy.
We also have some exciting updates planned for the Stadium itself. There have definitely been aspects of the Stadium that I’ve wanted to improve since it was launched. There aren’t enough events going on, so it’s not something you can do at anytime. To make the Stadium a place you can enjoy all day long, we’ll be adding small events that will run as soon as they are filled. The scheduled events will continue to be place where you get the best prizes, but you’ll never be without an event to enter.
On the topic of the big events, the prize structure is too flat. While there are amazing prizes for coming in first or second, far too many people get nothing at all, and we intend to fix that. We also plan to make the Beauty Pageant work the way it really should – we’re going to show you what every contestant is actually wearing, and if you win, your outfit will be shown to everyone in Webkinz World!
We hope that these changes will revitalize this great feature of Webkinz World.
Dear Creative Director, Sometimes I get a message that says, we are on the high score list. I have searched under my beds, in the toy boxes, in cupboards, I even checked in the refrigerators. I don’t even know where to look anymore. Could you please tell me where to find the high score list?
Great question. Here, I’ll say it: the high score lists have been gone for far too long. They used to be in the Newspaper, in the Scores and Achievements section. Unfortunately, a few members figured out how to put impossibly high scores onto the list ruining the fun to those who actually wanted to try and get on the list. It got out of control and we decided to take the high scores down.
We know how to get them back up, and have them protected from those who would try to put fake scores in. We’re aiming to get this feature on the site for early 2010. We’ll also be putting back the “Great Plays” and “Recent High Scores” features, fixed to work the way that they were originally intended.
What kind of hobbies do you do outside of your job that are fun and exciting and that help you with your creativity on the job?
I have a bunch of hobbies. I love playing games. My two favorite games are Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game (like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon), and Ticket to Ride, a great board game I’ve probably played over 100 times. Playing these games (and others) makes me think about how they were designed, how they were balanced, and what makes them fun. I even read the rules to games I don’t play! I use this knowledge when I’m looking at our own games and activities, to make sure we’re making them both fun and challenging.
I also love music. I spend a lot of time making electronic dance music on my home computer. When I was growing up, I played the piano, the trumpet and took singing lessons. There have been lots of studies done on the positive effects that music has on your creativity, and I strongly recommend learning how to read and play music. It’s a ton of fun. While I don’t make any of the music for Webkinz anymore, I am proud to say I wrote the Monkey and Monkey theme song, and the music for Atomicolicious (among others).
Finally, I am a collector. I have, in the past, collected action figures, comics, toys, and trading cards. Collecting is a huge part of Webkinz, and being a collector myself has definitely helped me with this aspect of the site. Yep, I’m just as proud of my Holiday Tubby Tummies Bear as you are.
How do you come up with the Pet of the Month videos and songs? The tunes are so catchy and I love how little hints about upcoming pets or activities are included.
Believe it or not, the songs are actually written by our president, Mr. Ganz himself. Mr. Ganz writes the lyrics and an initial tune for each song. Then our talented sound engineers take the tune, arrange it into instruments and transform it into a complete song. Even the vocals are done by our team. We’ve had artists, writers and even the sound engineer himself sing Pet of the Month songs. We’ve got some very talented people working here!
The hints came about naturally. We needed another pet for the Leopard to “have a lot of soft spots” for. We had already planned the Strawberry Cloud Leopard and thought it was a perfect fit for the song. Since then we’ve dropped new pets – and yes, they are all plush pets – into all of our songs. We won’t do this all of the time, but it’s a lot of fun, so we’ll do it when we can.
What will the Webkinz company do if they run out of animals?
This is a good question. Since we launched Webkinz almost five years ago, we’ve made a lot of pets. We’ve done almost every commonly known animal and lots of breeds of dogs, horses and cats (not to mention a lot of pets that we’ve totally made up). Still, there are a lot of animals and breeds that we still have yet to do – like the Shar Pei, recently revealed in the Hug a Pug video. We also have released new versions of our older pets (American Golden, Mud Hippo, American Cocker Spaniel) and will continue to do this in the future.
It may not be as easy to come up with new pets as it was at first, but we aren’t concerned about running out of ideas any time soon.
I was just wondering, how long does it take from when you come up with an idea for say a new food or an article of clothing before it shows up in Webkinz World?
It can be as fast as a single day, but generally it takes a few weeks. We have a very talented bunch of artists on our team and some items take just a few hours to produce in our 3D program. Other items take days to produce and go through a number of revisions. All of our clothing is drawn by hand so that takes a little longer as well.
We also work very far in advance with our items to ensure that they are released on time. We are now working on the Pet Specific Items for pets that won’t be released until June of 2010 or later! What may be even more surprising is that we have over 500 items that we’ve created and are just waiting to be released (including four complete room themes)! There will be lots of fun new items to collect in 2010!
Why is there not a trophy for every arcade game in webkinz world?
There isn’t an easy answer to this one. Some of our earliest games don’t have trophies because we hadn’t come up with the idea of trophies yet. Other games don’t have trophies because there wasn’t a clear point in the game where a trophy could be given out. In games like Operation Gumball and Go Go Googles we made trophies that have a small chance of being awarded when something specific happens. While I personally like how this rewards players for playing lots of times, many of our fans felt it was far too difficult to get these trophies.
Recently we changed our policy towards trophies and have made them much easier to get, but have made it so that you can only receive one trophy from the game ever. This has worked out well in games like Webkinz Rally, and we will continue to have our trophies work this way in the future.
This is a good time to mention that our next arcade game (and its trophy) will be released on December 16.
Who chooses what activities are on Today’s Activities board?
There are two people on my creative team who plan out the hourly and daily Activities in Webkinz World including the Game of the Day, the prizes on the Wheel of Wow and all of the sales in the W Shop.
It may seem random, but we actually do a lot of planning so that we have a good variety of items on sale all the time, and keep the variety of activities constantly changing. While we do have some activities that happen at regular intervals (like the Wheel of the Month), we try to keep you guessing as to what we’ll have in store each day.
What’s Plumpy’s most valuable item to her?
I asked Plumpy this question personally and she said “Sir Charles Rhineholt” with a coy smile. When I told her that didn’t really answer the question, she told me she’d have to say her glasses, because without them she can’t see well at all. After that it would have to be her writing desk, as that is where she gets almost all of her work done. There are very few things in life that Plumpy loves more than writing.
For those who don’t know, Plumpy’s Glasses were sold in the W Shop for a while, but were retired some time ago. Pumpy’s Writing Desk was a feature code prize that could be found in Series 3 Trading Card packs.
Dear Creative Director, How did you come up with the name Blufadoodle for your new Webkinz?
For the most part I don’t come up with the names for our plush pets. This is done by our talented plush design team. Yet for the Blufadoodle (pronounced blue-fa-doodle), the head of the plush department came into my office, put the plush prototype on my desk and said “Here. Name this.” As it sort of looks like a cross between a peacock and a flamingo, I tried some combinations like “peamingo” and other such ideas but didn’t find anything that I liked. I stared at the plush for a while and to be honest it just came to me. Blufadoodle. When the head of plush returned, I told her the name and she liked it! Sometimes creativity just happens that way. Personally, I really like how the Blufadoodle turned out, and I think we gave it a great Pet Specific Item.
Those were ten great questions. I hope you’ve enjoyed the answers.
As for the Kinzville Park that so many of you asked about, we have big plans for this new area. Unfortunately when we first launched the park, its performance was not good enough. As the park got more full, issues would occur, and we felt strongly that we needed to take it down to fix. Since then we have made a number of really great improvements, but it still has a way to go. The park is actually the largest addition we’ve done to Webkinz World in some time and will give us a lot more ability to allow members to interact with many of the great characters we’ve created for Webkinz World. You’ve all seen Doug the Dog and our Halloween Ghost in the Clubhouse, and you’ll soon see another familiar face there. We plan to take this idea even further in the park. We’ve already announced that you’ll be able to meet Mr. Moo (of the candy bar fame) in the park and we have some new characters that you’ll be able to meet as well, with new challenges that you’ll be able to do right in the park itself (no Gem Hunting required). We’re working hard on getting the park back open so you can see it for yourself. Continue to watch webkinznewz.com for the latest park information.
Have fun in Webkinz World.
Creative Director.