gio-blog 5: the death of animal jam

and how wildworks is puppeting around its corpse. heads up, this is a super long post compared to the other gio-blogs

firstly: nobody actually Plays animal jam classic anymore
like obviously theres people playing the game. but pretty much all of them in any given world stand around in jamaa township yelling about how THERES A HUGE SALE IN MY DEN or IM TRADING ITEM BETAS or whatever. nobody Plays the game, yknow? everyone just wants to trade or sell items. most of them already have loads of great items already on top of that. i know that the trades are a massive part of animal jam, but all these people are Trading Snobs as i call them. if you cant exactly match what they want from you theyll cancel the trade outright and keep shilling. "i want this stuff gone" my ass, you want more rares to hoard and i know it
meanwhile the actual game parts of the game sit abandoned and gathering dust. i played a game of gem breaker with someone a little bit ago and that was the most player interaction i had gotten in months. i played best dressed a few days ago and some people would hop in, do none of the actual outfit making to farm gems, change their hat once or twice so they didnt get disconnected for idling, and only vote so they wouldnt lose their chance at a nice crisp double-digit gem earning to spend on literally nothing. no parties either, theyre all just the official ones. nobody cares about the game anymore

secondly: so much of ajc is locked behind the membership that it feels claustrophobic
go open animal jam classic -- or download it if you dont have it -- and walk into any store. any of them, take your pick. count how many items there arent membership items. thats the user experience. are you fucking kidding me? "oh but gio 7 bucks a month is like nothing to pay for a subscription nowadays-" yeah if you have a job. were a one income household. we have never been able to buy membership. it is not "nothing to pay" when your pay is nothing. but i digress
only 2 animals, only 1 pet for each area type (sidenote -- how do pets work in jamaa???) and a pittance of accessible content. got a gift from your daily spin? cool, now buy the subscription service to wear this recolored cat hat you cant even wear the base version of. sorry, cant have a new den if you dont buy our microtransaction! for the low low price of almost 58 whole united states dollars a year* you can have a claw machine with exclusively one animal when you could just get that animal type from the claw in the arcade. oh but you can only use it for a year though. then you have to pay again. absolutely sickens me
animal jam play wild is even worse somehow. an entire part of the map is completely locked out of non-member gameplay, basic features as usual are locked behind the paywall, AND the equivalent to diamonds (sapphires) are also microtransactions. you get 15000 for free with a 12-month membership, but ive tried to play AJPW and so many things cost sapphires that those are going to be gone before your membership is even up. i could air my gripes about play wild here but thats not what this post is for. genuine positive note: every membership applies to both classic and play wild, so you dont have to buy the same thing twice

thirdly: play wild is a money vacuum
DISCLAIMER: I AM AWARE I AM NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR ANIMAL JAM PLAY WILD. THESE ARE MY PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
as mentioned with the sapphires, theyre microtransactions. there are also, however, MORE microtransactions! potions, animal packs, gem deals, you name it you can pay for it. meanwhile theres no real heart to play wild. all the edges have been chiseled and polished into corners so soft the metaphorical square has become a hypothetical circle. all the models are made with cost effectiveness in mind, all the locations and games left as side pieces to the profit margin. add to the bottom line or add to the corpse pile. this is an issue with like Everything these days since capitalism is a sisyphean nightmare etc etc but its even more egregious with play wild. wildworks knows that kids will be begging their parents to buy them all the big cats in that microtransaction pack so theyll keep making more and more things you have to pay for. take this personality quiz to get sorted into your warriors clan and want to make your own, but you need the membership to do it, so youd better grab that credit card. wanna know what that gray area of the map is? give us money! fun nametag? money. money. money. money. Money. MONEY. MONEY. MONEY.

i say all of this as an animal jam veteran. i was playing this game in 5th grade, begging to stay inside for recess so me and my friends could play the game together and not be bullied as we usually were. the decline of animal jam is absolutely tragic to see. wildworks is only clinging to it the way they are because thats their most profitable name. nobody remembers tag dash. nobody remembers tunnel town. nobody remembers fer.al. nobody except the people who were there. who made memories. who formed friendships, who played games, who had fun.
im almost upset that i am still there for animal jam. its like visiting a sick grandparent. you know theyll go any day now, and yet you remain to see them as they deteriorate.

except here, you know exactly what the cause is. and you can do nothing about it as those around it hurtle this that youve grown so attached to further and further towards oblivion. which leads me into my concluding point:
classic has developed a culture. in the bacteria sense.

trading snobs, membership being a massive hurdle, general jank, abandonment, the ghost town vibe. all of it is contributing to the death of animal jam. people play exclusively play wild, refuse to touch classic, and meanwhile theyre eating up the microtransactions and inherent "play every day or you lose your streak" predatory business model. classic decays in the back because all the people who actually cared moved on to the new thing because it still gets active updates. its genuinely depressing

i miss when people crowding in jamaa were roleplaying or just chatting or trying to get people to join them in rock-paper-scissors. now theres barely even any warriors roleplayers. even they have abandoned us. my username may even be one of the last relics of that time -- Heartstar21 is the brainchild of a pre-teen with a lesbian crush on her best friend that introduced her to the warriors series, and now Heartstar21 is one of the last engraved stone tablet of a time long gone. "this is my warriors oc", it proclaims. "her name is heartstar shes pink and shes the leader of kawaiiclan!" now these words are echoed as ironic sentiments. "kawaiiclan leader, 7 moons, half angel". nobody truly knows what it means to mean these words.


...but maybe im just being sappy over some silly animal game that used to run in browsers


*animal jam 12-month memberships are $57.95 as one-time payments. 6-month memberships are $29.95 recurring every half year, totalling in $59.90 every year. 1-month memberships are $6.95 recurring every month, totalling $83.40 a year. to my knowledge this is all excluding tax. source