Mom Gamers

Playing games with friends is always so much fun, whether it's kick-the-can, online games or MMORPGs. Even single player games have their connections with other folks via forums.

So why do some games and game types succeed when others fail? Example: recent GoPets closure. GoPets was the best pet game. A very social, very cute, very customizable game. Just the best. But I could never get any of my friends to play it. I tried and tried - no interest whatsoever. You'd even think they hated games by the looks they gave me. So ok, gaming is not for some people.

Then GoPets gets bought by Zynga. What comes out shortly after? Petville. Who makes pets and plays Petville? Some of those folks who wouldn't play GoPets before! Why is that?

• Facebook games are very lazy games - it's possible the simple do-nothingness of the games draws folks in. Yes I'm saying most folks are lazy by nature. :) At least we like to take the easy road lots of times. 
• People are on Facebook daily - add some games and you increase the chance that people will play them. It's kind of like that people will do the crossword puzzle in the paper, but most won't go out and buy a crossword puzzle book and do them regularly in there. (why, I don't know, because I do buy game books and magazines. Maybe I'm odd!)
• The social connection is there. Your best friend plays Farmville? "Oh maybe I'll try it too!" could likely be someone's thinking.

Here at MomGamers, we are on the search for our ultimate great games that Moms love to play. However, as moms, we also supervise what our children play. We want to find games that are fun and educational for our children as well.

That's where the Jumpstart series of games come into play. My children enjoyed the Jumpstart games on their computers years ago. Today your children can play Jumpstart games on the Wii, making it easier for you to watch while they learn.

The Jumpstart folks have asked me to review for you their latest release, Escape from Adventure Island.  I'd not played one of these educational games for quite some time and expected a simplistic set of learning tools.  However, I was in for a surprise!

You start out by creating your own avatar - hair, face, eyes, clothes. You have a restricted amount of items you can use and you learn immediately that if you want a particular hairstyle you need to earn sand dollars to obtain the changes you want.

You start out on a beach and are introduced to a local, who tells you about your treehouse that you can decorate and other things you can do. I didn't find my house right off, but went straight to exploring. Along the beach are entrances or portals to different types of games. Enter one and you'll find that there are series of games that you can play in this portal. There are lessons, with curriculum levels set at Easy. Medium and Hard. I found that the Hard level is the same lesson type, just with more in-game obstacles.

For example, your child's goal may be to target the written word "eleven" from the vocal clue "Find the word that spells eleven." Your child moves the avatar through the field of obstacles (sometimes having the capability to shoot the obstacle) and through the card that reads "eleven". If "Hard" is the chosen level, there would be more obstacles to shoot to get to the word "eleven".

Other fun things included riding a mantra and shooting shapes or colored targets, or squasing punk punks to get to the target. As you complete lessons you earn those sand dollars to buy more items for your avatar.

This style of game makes learning fun for children. They get to practice their skills, while enjoying fun game play along the way!

There are a lot of areas to explore. There's a DDR-type of dance game that's cute. You can ride the slide and go underwater and be part of the fashion clothes show beneath the surface. There are plenty of learning games both underwater and on the beach.

Don't forget your house! When you find your treehouse you can decorate it as you like. I liked having a house, but tired of it quickly, because it was only exterior decorations. I didn't find that you could actually go inside and arrange furniture or the inside of the house. Too bad - that would have expanded on the game nicely.

Some things I would have like to have seen done differently:
* You have to earn more sand dollars but it never says how many more you need to get particular items. You just have to play and keep checking back as you get more.
* The treehouse customizing is only external - would have loved to decorate inside as well
* In one game I had to shoot colors and their yellow looked like olive-green so much so that I couldn't actually find the yellow colored cards. It's not like yellow wasn't displayed properly elsewhere on that same screen.

Things I really liked:
* The RPG-ish-ness of the game (avatars, quests, squashing beasts, shooting obstacles, riding mounts)
* Wii remote technology - good use of the remote+nunchuk
* The fashion show - you can try on a bunch of different clothing styles on your character, even though you can't afford them yet
* That there are worlds both above and under water
* That there was a LOT to do. There were lots of areas to explore, and each was full of lessons of different difficulty.

The kids can really get a lot of playtime from Escape from Adventure Island, and lots of practice on their basic skills as they progress. Learning really is fun!

Learn more about Escape from Adventure Island at Jumpstart

Supposedly, today and tomorrow is the Holiday Day of the Dead.  I heard it's an EU holiday but I was also told we can do it too in the US. Going to check it out later.

You can get a "pet" - make some bread from the recipe you can get, then give it to the Cheerful Spirit:

"Your reward is a Macabre Marionette, a small pet that looks like a skeleton wearing a sombrero and holding a pair of maracas. This pet can only be used during the Day of the Dead event - it cannot be learned and kept like other small pets."

Too bad. :( But still fun to look into.

GoPets is the cutest pet game ever so far. They had some financial issues last year and had to lay everyone off; keeping a no-staff of the president and his wife. It was only a matter of time before the company totally shut down. I wish this game could have gone on forever - I obtained many great friends and a real-life job through this game. I hope to forever continue to reap rewards from my relationships from this game, and to help these friends in the same ways.

I've not seen my pets in a year and was just thinking of them last night. I was so tempted to try to login but didn't want to feel the pain of seeing my pets, and the pets on accounts that my kids created, knowing that i.) our accounts would probably be messed up (lost land if not logged in in a long time) and ii.) the game could close at any time and I didn't want to get freshly attached again, even to a broken account. It really was the best pet game out there, and I hope we can see the likes of it again one day - even better.

It's really sad to see the game totally go. It was special to be able to login to my kids' accounts and play with pets they created, with desktops they layed out. Even though they no longer played, it was special to me, as I'm sure it was to other parents. Many parents with very young children created accounts for their kids, so they'd have the good items when they grew up. The good, rare items traded for a HUGE amount of shells! Also I remember a story of a girl whose dad created an account and she wanted access to it because he had died.  It was wonderful to be able to care for these virtual pets and it will be so sad to see the company totally shut down this wonderful virtual world.

Here is the forum post from Erik:

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 5:18 am Dear all GoPets Players, It is with profound regret and sadness that I compelled to report that we will have to shut the GoPets and GoDance service down. It has been a privilege to work closely together with you the fan base over the past 5 years - over a million pets, 150,000 custom items, robust trades and countless adventures – all wonderful. At the core of the issue is that despite heroic work by staff and volunteers the fundamental structure of GoPets including being a client vs. a web application and numerous others challenges, we could not grow GoPets large enough to be self-sustaining. The staff members have moved on to good jobs, and GoPets itself will be carefully archived – for now there are no plans – but there can be hope. The target for end of service is November 7th, 2009. We suspended payments earlier this week and we will be using our remaining savings to best refund remaining subscription time to the best of our ability. Other details of the shutdown process will follow. I would like to thank the special volunteer players who have made extra ordinary contributions of creativity and sweat over the past year – all amazing. Also, I must thank Mike, Ken, Nancy, Houston and Tony for keeping GoPets running for the past year as well as creating GoDance with such a small staff and huge time pressure. It was always a tough situation but I think you can be proud of what you created. Finally, I must thank my wife Kaiwen – Lotus. GoPets could never have been created without her adventuresome spirit to move to Korea in 2003, and since then she has grown into our community leader, our localization leader and most recently a prolific designer. Beyond all that she has been my partner through all of these ups and downs and has endured and helped solve all of chaos to our family and personal lives. Deep sadness, -Erik

I love looking at lists of peoples' favorite games, and hearing about the best games they've ever played.  I like to see if my faves are on the list, as well as maybe discovering a new game!

Here's what Taichi Inuzuka from Square Enix has to say about Dragon Quest:

What is your favorite game you have every played on any console and why?

"This is not promotion or anything, and it comes from the bottom of my heart, but I think DRAGON QUEST IX is the best and favorite game I've ever played. I've played around 500 hours so far. Reasons are because I could play such a long time and haven't felt almost any stress while I play."

No stress - hmmm...sounds like a game I'd love to try!