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.

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