Virtual Pets Blog Your Source for Everything in Virtual Pets

Virtualpetlist interviews Ole, owner of Palawind.com

Please introduce yourself.

I’m Oliver, or Ole as I use as my online alias; I’m co-owner and creator of Ichumon and Palawind, and also own Solar VPS. I’m 19, live in sunny England (haha) and studying Computer Science at University. One day I’d like to be a published author and work on web-games at home.

1. Your statements indicate Palawind will have a scope larger than the standard pet site. What sort of site will Palawind be?

Well it’s going to be something completely different than any other site out there in our small community. The main idea behind it is collecting creatures called Pali, instead of just owning three or four like most other virtual pet sites out there. Everything revolves around posting on the forums; we really wanted to create a game that focused on communicating. By posting on the forums, you have the chance to find Pali and capture them. It was important for us to spread out the Pali you can collect; otherwise it would be very linear in terms of playing. Users have an active SoulStone, which attract certain Pali. You can obtain other SoulStones via posting on the forums and also doing other site events. Also, some Pali only come out at Night and some only come out at day. So if you wanted to collect all the Pali, it’s going to require some effort on your part- which should make it fun!

The other main part of the site is the Story. I think most stories on VPS are an optional read- i.e. you go to an NPC page and you read who they are, what they do etc. On Palawind, each user follows a story which progresses them through the game. Each user starts on Chapter 1, which will give a task to the user to complete (such as completing a quest, bringing back an item, capturing a Pali, battling Pali). Once you complete a task, you go onto the next chapter. Gradually, as you complete the chapters, you will learn more about the features on Palawind and open up more of them. Each user starts on the Beginner Island, and to get to the second Island, you will need to complete your Story chapters. You can work together with your friends, or do it solo.

2. Many sites promise a lot while in development, but fail to deliver on it when they open. What can users expect from Palawind day one?

We hope to deliver a complete game. It’ll be somewhat like World Of Warcraft- in terms of how they deliver content. On December 21st, we plan to push the first season of the game, titled: The Legend Of Eo, where you can collect #201 Pali, travel to three Islands and complete around 30~40 chapters. Once we have released the game, we will make little updates here and there, such as adding new items(wearables, battle abilities, quest items etc), new features that help users play the game better, adding flash games and creating user-contests, improving the site performance and fixing bugs & glitches.

Then, behind the scenes, the staff will be working on the second season. This will introduce a new storyline and add another bunch of Pali for users to collect. They’ll be new Islands to travel to, new features and games to play. It’ll be like an expansion pack for the site- and you won’t have to pay a penny to use it.

3. How has your previous experience running Ichumon influenced development of Palawind?

A massive amount. I don’t think I’d be able to create a site like Palawind without the experience of Ichumon. I’ve learned a tremendous amount of running and creating an online game. I know how to code things better and make them more optimised; I’m very paranoid of queries and caching data. When I first began Ichumon, my main idea was to just push as many features and ideas onto the site as I could. Now I realise this was a mistake; lots of those features are now dead and really need tidying up. A lot of the pages on Ichumon need revamping; every page on Palawind is so neat and tidy and very pretty to look at. On Ichumon I used to put out a page within ten minutes- now I take a lot more time in coding the interface and how things look. And maybe that’s because Palawind isn’t open yet- so there really isn’t any pressure to get new content out, which I was probably guilty of doing for Ichumon. I felt a lot of the time that if we didn’t have an update every single day, then the users would get bored and leave. I think some of them feel like that now- but I’ll leave that for the next question, haha.

4. Do you feel that working on Palawind and Ichumon simultaneously has negatively impacted the development of either?

More so Ichumon. When I started Palawind, it was Summer and I had three months(before University started) to get it going and create a base for it. I could still work on Ichumon too, as I didn’t have a real life job or anything else to eat up my time. When Uni restarted, all that free-time got eaten up and the only spare time I did have was used on doing small things for Palawind. So, a lot of updates for Ichumon got eaten up and a lot of stuff was left to gather dust. But me and ST decided to start hiring some other programmers to help get more content on there and fix some of the current crap that is already on it.

If I didn’t have Uni I would still be spending an equal amount of time on both sites, which will be the case in December as I have 4~5 weeks off again. But I do think Ichumon will benefit from Palawind- both sites will be able to promote each other; especially as Palawind will bring in a different crowd than what Ichumon is currently used to. I still plan on making Ichumon one of the best sites out there, but it is hard and a little boring at times when there are so many similar sites out there.

5. What initially prompted you to develop Palawind?

Well I had been thinking of creating a new site for a while; putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t the best of ideas, especially when something can go completely wrong and then you’ve lost everything. A lot of Ichumon users really didn’t like me changing things up on the site, so instead of incorporating the ideas of Palawind into Ichumon, I decided to just make a brand new site. I think this is really the better option; if users want to play a generic petsite, they’ll have Ichumon. If they want to try something new, they’ll have Palawind.

6. Who is working on Palawind?

In terms of programming its just me. But James does all the legal, boring crap; hiring artists, registering the company, trademarks, etc. He does do a few updates on Palawind, like changing the html on certain pages, which I usually end up overwriting anyway (muaha). We have two main Pali artists, Becca(romance) and Anya(misticcookie). Then we have another artist from Deviantart who does our Palitant characters, TenaciousMug. Vintage is our main graphic designer( who is probably the best in our VPS community). We then have a few artists who have just recently joined our team; they do items, icons, a few Pali and other misc things.

7. Your latest preview states that certain Pali will be available via means only possible if one pays actual money. What sort of disadvantage is a user who does not pay money looking at versus one who does?

I think at the start, it’ll be an immediate thing. Users who have money to spend will be able to get some things quicker than others- but as Cash Shop items are tradable, users can save up Rubies(in-game currency) and purchase Cash Shop items from other players.

Most of the Cash Shop items, we hope, won’t affect the game play too much. The main things you can buy in the cash shop are things which make your account stand out. Customising usernames on Ichumon was a big thing, so we went one step further with Palawind and allow users to buy “labels” for their username, which changes the font, colour and give you a nice border around your username. You can also buy items which change day to night, allow you to rename your Pali and other things like that. Users can also buy a User Board, which allows them to create their own forum specifically for a certain group of users. We haven’t quite figure out the details for this, but it should allow users to set their own rules for their own board.

8. Do you feel that your efforts to incorporate various elements rather than just make a pure pet site will alienate some of the typical pet site base who may feel alienated by the differences from a conventional pet site?

I don’t think this will be too much of a big deal. I think the VPS community have been crying for a new unique site- for the last couple of years its been the same clone type sites (Ichumon included), with nothing too unique to set them apart. With Palawind, there are elements of VPS in them (such as inventory, mailing, user-profiles, flash games) but it is really quite different from any other VPS to date. It’ll be a site users will have to get used to; everyone is used to virtual pet sites because every site is practically the same in setup. But I think the features and the way the site works, has really gotten people excited. It’s not too complicated and it looks really good in terms of art quality.

9. Why the name Palawind?

Well this was one thing we spent a good deal of time over. I realllllllly liked the name Paladin, and I was writing a story which had a city called Skywind in it. When the idea for Palawind first came around, it was just me and Becca. I kept on throwing names at her with the word Pala in front, like: Palakins, Palaheroes, Palasin etc. Then I opened up my notepad one day, saw the word Skywind, stuck wind in front of Pala, 1…2…3! Palawind was born. I loved that name, I’m not quite sure Becca liked it as much as I did, but it grew on her and I think we now both love it the same.

10. Finally, on a lighter note, and to pry into your psyche a bit, what do you put on your hot dogs?
Ketchup and onions; very boring I know- but we don’t eat too many hotdogs here in the UK. Well, at least I don’t.

Virtualpetlist interviews Claws, owner of Icepets.com

Please introduce yourself: My name is Joseph Roethig, but most know me as Claws.

1: What is IcePets? What makes it fun?
IcePets is a virtual pet site, what more can I say?

2: How old is Icepets? How long has it been in development?
IcePets has been in development since February 28th, 2009.

3: How do you feel about your competitors, Neopets, Subeta and Marapets?
Now knowing what it takes to development a virtual pet site, even just the most basic of features, I have great respect for their work despite my disappointment in some of their decisions.

4: What has been the vision of Icepets?
Well here’s a quote from myself, that is stickied in temp forums: “To release a pet site so simple that even someone who has never heard of pet sites before would be able to get going with the same ease as everyone else, with many challenges ahead.”

5: What should we expect from IcePets in the upcoming months?
In the coming months you’ll see a new homepage, referral system, hidden avatars, trophies, redesigned spin wheels, two more flash games, and overall a cleaner and more organized IcePets.

6: Who are your staff members? Any developers?
Michael and I are the owners of IcePets. Michael handles the finances, marketing, and most everything on the business side of things. I manage the development of all aspects of IcePets. PokerPhoenix is the programmer. Romance is the pet artist. The three item artists are Chryztal, Xanatha, and Steve. Chryztal is also the flash game artist. Lolly is a graphic artist, for banners and avatars. Tyme does all the NPC art. Sattainon, Gimjee, and Willow are the IcePets writers. Not only do writers write item descriptions and little things around the site, they also write a short story for each book that players can read after reading it to their pet. I think that’s everyone, sorry if I missed anyone!

7: Who designs IcePets pages? Who’s the mastermind?
Karl is the mastermind for all the dynamic coding here on IcePets, while I come down with the specifications on how features should work and decide any changes along the way.

8: What would you like to say to an upcoming pet game owner?
There’s a good chance you’ll lose your sanity….unless you have great patience and exceptional organization skills.

9: Do you think you’ll ever leave IcePets?
Haha, no. IcePets is my baby. I love it too much.

10: How long do you believe IcePets will last?
How long do you think the internet will last?

11: What IcePet is your favorite?
The Sharshel is by far my favorite of the currently released pets. Here’s a pic:

12: What is one thing you like about the virtual pets market?
I know it like the back of my hand, and I know the back of my hand pretty darn well.

Virtualpetlist interviews Zara, owner of Misticpets.com

Hello Misticpets,
Please introduce yourself, who are you?

My name is Zara, and I’m the owner of Misticpets. I’m a married mother of little man that is 7 years old. I live in California, and own 3 cats. I spend what little free time I have reading, and attending/performing at Renaissance Faires.

1: What made you want to buy Misticpets?
I’ve worked on Mistic since before we opened to the public. I started out as a writer, moved to Admin then Site Manager when Impulse Communications purchased the site. I’ve worked so close with the staff and community on the site, I didn’t want to take a chance that new owners might come in that were not as close and involved.

2: How do you feel now that you own Mistic?
I feel incredibly proud that we are continuing to move forward and make progress. I’m so blessed by the staff and community that makes up the heart of Mistic. Every day, so many wow me with their kindness and generosity.

3: What can we expect from Mistic this year? Any new features in the works?
We have a ton of things in the works. Members got a preview this summer of the character system in the works. We plan to expand the world and really flesh out what Mistica is and form a more cohesive and comprehensive mythos and game.

4: What makes Misticpets unique?
Our community is incredibly close, and as always… the artwork. One of our newest features is an Art Gallery, and we are working at expanding this to utilize the many creative people and wonderful artists that make our community so great.

5: Is Misticpets an easy game to play? Are there any help guides?
Mistic is a pretty easy game to get into. We have an entire newbie FAQ that helps many find their way. And as always, the entire community jumps in to help people find their way. Our helpsite is currently undergoing some changes and will be back up soon. It will include some additional guides and extra help.

6: Who are your main competitors? Can you tell us?
I guess most of the other petsites out there are ‘competition’… But I firmly believe that there is room for everyone out there. I know that as a player, before I got involved in behind the scenes work and all, that I was always on more than one site. Diversity is great, and I couldn’t ever just stay with one.

7: How old is Misticpets?
We are about to celebrate our 2nd anniversary on November 28th! However, I have fully owned the site since October.

8: Who are the people responsible for all the new layouts?
Most of our new layouts can be attributed to Zen, our lovely design coder. Artwork has come from many of our staff artists.

9: Where do you see Misticpets heading in the new year? 5 years?
In the new year, we have a lot of fun things lined up already. I see us growing the community and expanding on the world of Mistica. I envision us in 5 years to be much larger, and for us to be a much more comprehensive, immersive world.

10: What is one thing you’d tell an upcoming virtual pet site owner?
Patience is key. Nothing can go right, 100% of the time, it’s just how life is. Be prepared for late nights, stress and frustration beyond belief. Also remember though, that there will be moments that will make up for it all.

Virtualpetlist interviews Keith Kurson, owner of Subeta.net

Please introduce yourself.
I’m Keith Kurson, and I own Agoge Inc., which is the company that owns Subeta. That means that beyond working on Subeta, I also manage and contribute to our other web properties. I’m always happy to answer questions, since it means I get to be connected to the community.

1: What is Subeta?
Subeta is, at it’s core, a virtual pet site. Over the years we’ve added a lot of things that have pulled focus away from the pets, but we’ve still got a good amount of work dedicated to the pet aspect of the site. Beyond the pets, we have (what I believe to be) the most advanced human avatar system, out of any site, including GaiaOnline, which is our most popular feature at the moment.

2:What are your future plans for Subeta?
I’d like it to be more social. We’ve recently released things like the forum pulse, the friend feed, publishing your feed to twitter, forum groups, etc. All of this things bring us full circle on making the site about the community, and people interacting with each other.

I’d like to continue in our last year of amazing events, that are incredibly immersive and have users interacting with each other. We recently had an amazing event that included something that I don’t think most sites (especially neopets) would considering doing. If you’re interested, it happens on page 11 . As you can see from that page, we’re capable of telling an incredible story, as well as having astounding art to go with it.

The most popular event, I’d say, was our huge zombie invasion in February which was dubbed the ‘Love Epidemic’ because it happened right around the time that Valentines would normally take place. Users had to bite each other to get achievements, and that further spread the (multiple strains) of the disease around the site.

Also right now we are in the process of redoing things like our registration, and a tutorial system, because the site is big and confusing to new users. We want them to be part of Subeta the moment they join, and right now it’s just… confusing. Something we’re working on .

3: Why do you think Subeta made it to where it is today?
The number one reason, is the incredible talent of our artists. While I respect other sites, I think that our creative department is the most amazing in the business. The detail that those girls are able to fit into a GIF pet image, is amazing. As things go on (including that plot image above) I continue to be impressed, and amazed at the art that comes out of our art department.

I think another reason is that our staff is friendly, and we’re approachable. I’ve got something like 22,000 posts on the forums, and I’m posting daily. Sometimes I’m snarky (which people get used to, I guess!) but I always try to be helpful, and that goes for the entire time. We answer tickets quickly, and try our best to make sure that users have the best experience possible.

Also we don’t have ugly ads on every page of the site.

4: What made you decide to integrate so many social networking features into Subeta, and do you consider subeta more of a virtual pet site or an rpg/social networking site?
I think that the more friends people are able to make on the site, the more people will stick around. There are more profile comments and sMails made on the site than any other activity. People are interested in making friends, and staying in contact. Things like the friend feed make it easier to see what your friends are doing, and we have a lot of options to make it less intrusive.

5: What is the core technology that powers Subeta, specifically, the software. Certainly you have optimized both your MySQL and PHP installations, and have several other background software.
Our images are served by a server running Lighttpd.
Our webservers run Apache, and we run SVN on it to keep the files in sync between all the developers. We have a panel that deploys files between all 3 servers (via merge) when we’re ready to update the main site.
We have a dev server that has all of our personal repo’s on it.

We have two database servers, one that is the master and one is the slave. The master does most of the hard work, and the data that is fetched from it is all the important stuff. Items, sP, pets, etc. The slave processes things like the forums, shoutbox, etc. We’re running MySQL 5.4 with InnoDB but soon we plan to move to XtraDB.

We use Memcache for our caching needs, APC for our PHP file caching needs, Cacti for our graphing (server load, users online, etc) needs, everything else is custom coded, or compiled.

6: What makes Subeta unique?
There are a few things. Like I mentioned above, our human avatar is leaps and bounds better than any other I’ve seen. Not only in terms of the art that is used, but in terms of the sheer amount of clothing options, as well as the ability to customize it.

Beyond that, we’re innovators in the space of micro-transactions which isn’t so much a unique feature of Subeta anymore, but it’s something that we did first. A lot of the things that we have on the site are things that we did first, or brought into the “main stream” for other sites to include.

We’ve got a lot of projects currently being worked on that’ll bring us back to the point where we can separate ourselves easily from the other sites, which is why we’re hiring PHP developers to push that along .

Also, I’d like to say that we’re unique in the resources that we have to push the site forward. We’ve been incredibly successful not only with Subeta, but with our projects and that means that we’ve got the resoruces to hire new staff to what is considered a ‘real job’. We take tax information, we issue a paycheck with taxes taken out and offer above minimum-wage pay. That’s something that most sites starting out sites can’t really offer.

7: How old were you when Subeta first launched? What made you keep going?
I’m not sure, it was so long ago! It went through several ‘versions’ before it ended up where it is now. I believe that the first Subeta was started when I was 14, but then at some point there was a terrible site crash, and I had to ‘reset’ the site, which happened when I was in High School, as a sophomore.

The reason I kept going is that I saw that I could be successful doing something that I enjoyed. I like to program, I was alright in PHP, and working on Subeta was (and still is!) something that I enjoyed doing. It was worth it for me to dedicate my time to it, instead of other things.

8: Pinkpt asked “Where do you see Subeta in 2 years time?” and you said it’ll be somewhat similar as it is today. Has anything changed on Subeta in two years of time, or has it remained the same?

I think that we’ve done a LOT in the past two years, and I’m glad that we can still be considered ‘the same site’. We’re not interested in selling out, or changing our entire foucs, or doing something that would upset our entire user base. I’m happy where we are, I just want to keep moving in the direction that we’ve been moving in.

9: How many users does Subeta have?
We clear users who have been inactive for more than a year, so. Right now there are 115,742 activated accounts on Subeta.

10:How much traffic does Subeta receive? How many servers?
We are currently doing roughly 5,260 queries per second (18.9M per hour) and have about 1,200 online at any one time. During off-peak time (2AM-8AM) we have about 500-700 people online.
We’re running on three web servers, with the ability to add another one whenever we need it. We get roughly 38,000 visits a day, and yesterday we had 2.4 million pageviews.

You can see the last day’s user online count in the above image.

11: Who is responible for subeta’s daily updates?
There are a lot of people responsible for different kind of updates. Any item adding is generally for the user Amber to do, as she’s the item administrator. If there is some sort of new feature, I generally announce those (and write them).

Luxe is responsible for updates concerning pets, new pet colors, pet revamps, etc.

Alex is the go-to go for larger picture things, downtime, etc. I make him write the ones that people will usually hate me for .

12: How many staff members do you have?
We currently have 38 people on the staff.

13: How do you feel about Marapets, Neopets and Powerpets?
I think PowerPets resonates the best for me, for the above choices. Their dedication to charity is admirable, and keeping the site the way that they want it, is also admirable. I’m always excited to see owners who aren’t greedy or money hungry, and don’t make the site about how much money they can pull in. I think Powerpets does an excellent job at walking that fine line. Also, I like that they’ve always managed to keep the focus fully on the pets.

As far as Neopets goes, I don’t really have an opinion. They’re still a good destination if you want to play fun flash games, they’ve got everyone beat on that. They’re still decent at putting together a plot (even though they all end the same way) I enjoy signing in (Yes, I have a neopets account!) to do the puzzles and things like that. When they have challenging content, I enjoy it. I admit I’m very jealous of their success and I hope that I find a way to mimic it but not lose my soul along the way.

As far as Marapets goes, I’m not impressed. It’s full of ads, the owner obviously doesn’t care about the users, and it’s just… not good.

14: What are your goals for Subeta?
Like I said above, we’re always looking for ways to make the site more social, and make the users come closer together. I think we’ve got some good ideas to work toward for next year.

We’re going to continue focusing on our story, which is something that for the first few years we didn’t really do. We’re working heavily on the lore and plot behind all of our yearly events, and trying to refine everything into one central story that the users can feel like they’re a part of.

This makes it easier to do things like our first ever plot, the War of Atebus. Then it didn’t really feel like you were part of the war. If we did something similar now, I think that users would feel like they were part of the war effort, much like they felt attached to the NPC Amy during the last plot, and a lot of users were actually upset when she died.

15: Where do you see Subeta going in 2 years? 5 years?
I can’t really divulge our biggest secrets, so take a look at the above questions. We’re going to be working on new innovative features that really make users see that we’re site that they want to dedicate their time to.

Thank you for the questions! And remember that I’m always happy to help and try to pass any knowledge that I have on to whoever needs it. If you’re looking for help, feel free to PM me on VPL.

Virtualpetlist interviews Tezeti, owner of Cenopets.com

Please introduce yourself
Hello Tezeti, please introduce yourself as the owner of Cenopets.
I’m tezeti, the owner of a virtual petsite/adventure game called Cenopets. I’m glad to have had this opportunity to be interviewed and hope that I can share some information about my site with the forum community. Any questions from users are welcome as well .

1: What is Cenopets?
Cenopets is a virtual petsite in open beta testing which aspires to provide users with a strong focus on both pets and adventure. Upon opening, we hope to offer over 25 adoptable creatures, which will be able to travel throughout nine different planets containing hundreds of explorable locations.

2: Why is it in beta testing?
We’re in beta testing because the site is extremely incomplete at this point. While I would not suggest it for anyone who simply wishes to play a virtual pet game, it does offer some entertaining features and (more importantly) provides a glimpse of what is to come.

3: What makes cenopets unique?
There are a few ways we try to be different from other sites in the genre. The first is that pets are thrust into the center of the gameplay by owning all in-game items and currency. In addition, our exploration system is slated to be the one of the most extensive and far-reaching in the genre, surpassing even Neopets in the quantity of explorable places. Pets will also have distinct personalities and moods on Cenopets and will be able to reject activities/items/owners accordingly.

Finally, we were the first petsite to announce plans for features such as farming, cooking food, gardening, multiple business types, mining, first-person roleplaying, ancestry charts, guest passwords, user-shop haggling, shop aisles, hierarchal world navigation, and a user-side employee system. While many of these facets of the site have not been developed yet, they are all still planned for eventual release.

4: How do you feel cenopets?
It’s excellent being able to develop an online game, fully experiment with different coding methods, and try to reimagine core petsite values according to my ideas. I’m also very happy that the site I own has been able to provide some enjoyment for our users.

5: What is slowing down development?
While school has been the major factor in slowing down development, a lack of staff members and funds has also presented a fair amount of difficulties. I’ve often been in situations where the project seems rather unmanageable and, as a result, have become rather lost as to what I should work on next.

Since I’m not employed, I’ve mostly funded Cenopets-related expenses either with money I’ve received as holiday gifts or money earned from performing various real-life tasks. Obviously, neither has been able to provide a sustainable or sufficient way to regularly make the art purchases which are necessary for the development of my website.

6. How much traffic does cenopets receive?
While we don’t receive much traffic at all, this is precisely the way I would like to keep Cenopets for the foreseeable future. The game is by no means ready for most users and, while I’m very satisfied with our progress thus far, Cenopets offers very little in terms of continually-compelling activities.

7: How many users does Cenopets have?
At the moment, we have slightly above 5,200 registered users.

8: What do you do as the owner of cenopets?
As the owner, I’ve been responsible for all website decisions, ideas, programming, graphic design, writing, and managing commissions. In addition, I have also taken a moderator role in the forums, created all of the base conceptual drawings for the pets/worlds, drew all pet/item recolors & alternate poses, and have paid for all site-related improvements.

9. Who works for cenopets?
At the moment, I seem to be the only active staff member (other than the artists we occasionally commission).

10. How do you feel about VPL and the virtual pets community?
I fully support all petsites and discussion communities which display their passion towards pet games and show dedication towards their members.

Virtualpetlist interviews Romance, the artist

Please introduce yourself.
I’m Rebecca Emilee. Otherwise known as “Romance”.
I’m a 17 year old female from Canada.

1: What username do you go by on most petsites?
As mentioned earlier, I’m usually called by “Romance”. Recently, I started using the
handle “Owl”. I actually prefer being called by my real name, which is Rebecca.. Ruhbekuh.. Bekka.. any derived named you can get from Rebecca!

2: How many years experience do you have?
I’ve been drawing since I could walk pretty much.
So, I guess since I was about 2.. so 15 years.
About 3 years using a tablet..

3: What/who inspired you to draw?
No one.. really. I just.. did.

My mom was harsh critic when I was younger, though.
For example: I drew a teddy bear.
Mother: What the hell is this?
This isn’t a teddy bear!
What is this!?
Me: … cry, cry etc.
And then I’d go and fix it and make it a teddy bear.
As emotionally disturbing as that may sound, it didn’t do too much damage on me!
I guess it helped me!

4: What art program do you use frequently?
Painttool SAI.

5: How did you learn? Did you use tutorials? Watch animation?
On my own, really. I know a lot of tricks some artists may not, and this is
part of why I work so fast.

6: Why did you become an artist?
I love giving life to ideas.

7: Do you work for a petsite? If so, which one?
Palawind is the MAIN one I work for.
It’s amazing. Join it when it opens! Haha, shameless plug!

I also work for IcePets! Join it too!

8: Why do you work for that site? Experience, money?
For Palawind, I work for the experience. Palawind is extremely promising, and I’ve been there since day one. For IcePets, I work there because I guess I have also worked there since day one!
It seems pretty promising too.

9: What are your favorite things to draw on petsites? Items? Characters? Pets? Maps?
Pets. Items are ugh!

10: Besides drawing, what else do you like to do?
Singing, guitar, doing designs for bands, fashion design, baking.. cake decorating..
pretty much everything.

11: Do you have a long-term goal/lifelong dream?
To open my own venue, or work for really big time bands.

12: What advice do you have for aspiring artists?
I used to be barely noticeable here at VPL. It seems like overnight that suddenly people
started noticing me. It was weird. I don’t exactly enjoy it because I know I obviously have people who talk rudely about me. My advice is to just do something different, try a new style that a new site will just be like “Woah!” about. Make a statement, I guess. Don’t undersell yourself. Also, don’t care what other people think. No matter where you go or what you do, you’ll have someone judging you whether it be good or bad. People will have their opinions.

13: What’s your favorite candy?
Reese cups and gummy bears. Together. Yeah.

14: Do you have anything that you cherish?
The ability to draw, my friends, my family, and anyone that supports me.
I cherish a lot of things.

Virtualpetlist interviews Slash, the owner of Aywas

Aywas is a new pet site that’s being developed as we speak.

Please introduce yourself.
Hullo, world! -waves- I go by Slash or Slashmaster on many sites like Wajas, Digis, Tygras, and Aramii =)

1: What will make Aywas unique?
We have a different kind of pet system =) The standard pet “species” is actually a genus, and “colors” are species. For example, our dog-cat creature, the Melo, comes in colors like Wolf, Fox, Leopard, etc; our fish creature, the Gael, comes in Goldfish, Koi, Neon Tetra, etc. You can see all the combinations on Aywapedia. Also, we have exploring that allows users to find these various species based on their habitats in the real world. It’s all about catching them all! ;D

2: When can we expect beta testing?
It’ll be a while. Alpha is still a bit of a ways off — maybe a month or so. Unfortunately, it keeps getting pushed back because of the programmer’s
work load, but that’s okay! We’re still rolling along, albeit slowly!

3: How is development coming along?
Great! We’re two large features away from completion – explore (current project) and battling. Then it’s just downhill from there with all the small features!

4: What do you think users will think about Aywas?
The general consensus, based on the alpha applications
, seems to be that they like the idea of genus/species pet combinations. They’re also fond of the fact that users can submit pet colors to the website (they also get a copy of that pet for their own purposes!). Hopefully catching them all will be a fun and entertaining task!

/5: Any time dates for beta or alpha testing? If so, when?
We’re still aiming a month for alpha testing. Beta testing hasn’t been considered yet.

6: Who are the masterminds behind Aywas?
Myself and Kaelin, the programmer.

7: How many staff members do you have?
I do… random odd jobs like crap!coding, art, feature ideas. Aside from that, we have 2-3 pet artists (I say that because I think the third has retired…), one item artist, and one programmer.

8: What do you think about your competitors, Ichumon and Rescreatu?
I love Ichumon! I do item art for them =) And Rescreatu amused me back when I played. I’m more into breeding sites now, though, like Wajas and Tygras. That doesn’t Ichu and Res are any less cool, though!

9: Will you allow the discussion of other pet games on Aywas?
Yup! More power to them! The site’s rules are very lax. Swearing is allowed, mature discussions like sexuality and politics are allowed, etc.

10: What is one thing you like about the virtual pets market?
It’s so much FUN!! And I love the art. =D

Virtualpetlist interviews Joy, writer for Lurapets.com

1: What is Lurapets? What makes it unique?
Lurapets is another fun filled pet site owned by Ken. Since sometime around July 2008, he and several past and current staff members have been working extremely hard to get this site up and running. I’ve felt so proud to be a part of this brilliant, dedicated and successful team. We’ve done so much in so little time, even after the incident with Zack, we were able to get right back up and do more to rebuild the site. (We had lost a ton of data and were forced to work over time to regain it.) Lesson learned we from that moment on saved every bit of date submitted.

After long and stressful months we were finally able to open the site’s doors to our awaiting and eager members. It was a little bumpy for all of us at first, including the users. But I have faith now that we’re on our way to an achieving site. What with our current updates you can’t possibly say we’ve not done our best!

I’d say Lurapets uniqueness comes from the astounding idea’s we present to the users. Such as Realistic Pets, The Agency (Competition for our Characters) to the wonderful items. Our “uniqueness” will soon shine once we can get some more innovation to the site.

2: How old is Lurapets? How’s the traffic?
We opened July 6th. So we’re a little over a month old. We already have 2303 members signed onto the site. I’d say we’re doing pretty darn well with gaining members. But we need more. Thanks to quite a few ideas and contests some of the staff have brought to the table, we should be receiving more.

I’m not at all worried about losing members or not gaining any. Once we update a few things (Quests ect.) and add more features to the site we’ll be going on strong.

3: How old were you when development began on Lurapets?
I was 17 years old when it all started. It’s definitly been one wild ride, but there’s nothing in the world that I would ever trade it for.

4: How do you feel about your competitors, neopets, subeta and Marapets?
Well, I enjoy these sites just as much as any other person who plays. Especially Subeta. I dislike the way some sites claim we’re stealing idea’s or simply attack us for any reason. Aside from some old mistakes a certain staff member created, we’re just like any other site. A place where we want the users to enjoy themselves, therefor we wouldn’t dare “steal” ideas or anything else from any other site.

I suppose I don’t feel much of anything about them. Only that they too are here so people can enjoy themselves, and isn’t that what matters?

5: What has been the journey of Lurapets?[meaning vision]
My vision of Lurapets is this…
20,000+ members in less then a year, updated with awesome/unique games, items and more… Basically what most of us imagine Lurapets to become. One day however, I’m most certain that we’ll reach this goal.

6: What should we expect from Lurapets in the upcoming months?
Loads of stuff are ready to be uploaded. But I’m sorry to say that you will all have to wait to see what we have in store.

7: Who are your staff members? Any developers?
At the moment we do not have a complete list of Staff Members. However the user, Chris, was kind enough to build us a help site and will be posting a list of our Team soon.

Here’s the link to his site.
Lura help

8: Who designs Lurapet’s pages? Who’s the mastermind?
Angel, our beloved Assistant Admin, has been creating the layouts for us. Gand coded them and Ken(Truckerman) supervised.

9: What would you like to say to an upcoming pet game owner?
Be kind and caring to ALL of your staff members and users. Everyone, including the users, build a site and if you disrespect any of them you’ll never gain much from owning the site.

10: Do you think you’ll ever leave Lurapets?
Unless if I’m demoted for whatever reason I’ll always stick it through with the site. Lurapets is my home away from the world and thanks to those who work along side me I’ve been able to get through the roughest moments in my life.

Lets just say I’m far to loyal of a Staff Member to ever abandon my team mates.

11: Joy, you were once a User Administrator & Lead of Moderation. Why are you now a Writer?
Well, the reason why I was removed from the UA team is to stay within the Staff. I admit I saw it unfair but I’m not going to hang onto that little issue. I left the Moderation team knowing that this year will be extremely hard to keep up with both that and school. As it is my Senior Year.

Thanks to Nekosaru, Head Writer & Assistant Admin, I’m now a Writer. I handle a variety of things from Descriptions to Plot. And I must say that it’ll be so much easier for me to handle then being UA or Moderator. With such a flexible schedule Ill be able to focus on my classes more.

12: How long do you believe Lurapets will last?
Well I hope forever!
We should go on for some time… Unless Ken has other plans.

13: Which Lurapet is your favorite?
The Archangel Vergoit & Oasis Squal. I can’t choose between the two…

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, Joy!

Virtualpetlist interviews Powerpets

Powerpets is one of the leading pet sites on the market. We interviewed them, read below.

1: What is Powerpets? What makes it unique?

Powerpets is a virtual pet game that has grown to quite a huge size over the past years.
The unique parts about Powerpets compared to other sites in it’s category start with the realistic animals, great storyline which is now being transferred to PPTV and the educational content that backs it up.
On top of that, Powerpets is dedicated to support animal shelters and rescues across the world, both financially and marketing wise.
There are many players on the site who help out new players and assist us with keeping the forums clean. It’s taken years to build this group and we’re proud to have each of them aboard.
Our economy is very stable and we always work to ensure everything on the site is usable and has some functionality within the game, so players don’t end up with a bunch of expensive useless junk in their accounts.

2: How old is Powerpets? How’s the traffic?

Powerpets was opened up in June 2002. We’ve experience a slight slowdown in traffic after 2005 but we’ve kept on working hard and traffic is picking up again significantly. We’re gearing up to make 2010 our best year ever.

3: How old were you when development began on PP?

Seven years younger than we are now

4: How do you feel about your competitors, neopets, subeta and Marapets?

We’ve noticed a significant increase in complaints about Neopets, and the massive amount of advertising on the site isn’t helping. If it wasn’t for their huge marketing budget, Neopets would be a thing of the past now.
Marapets, very little content development over the last year and the site is drowning in ads. The actual game seems to be dying fast.
Subeta, by their own admittance, is moving towards becoming an avatar based forum.
So as far as competition in the Virtual Pet World goes, there’s other sites we would consider much more worthy competitors. We always like to see people who take pride in what they do and continue to develop better pet games, but too many get lost along the way unfortunately.

5: What has been the journey of PP?[meaning vision]

Our journey at this time is to complete our first storyline, which we are now very close to. For those who have been following, due to events in the past, Powerpets lost their skills and intelligence when the flow of Vitara juice stopped. Now players are on a quest to make their pets regain this.
Outside of the storyline, our goals are to become a major force in the support of Animal shelters and rescues across the globe.

6: What should we expect from PP in the upcoming months?

We have many projects ongoing. Kitchens will be completed, allowing player’s pets to cook up new dishes. Houses in general will be expanded.
There are some new areas that we will be introducing.
The Powerpets translation project is plugging ahead and we hope to have Powerpets available in at least three additional languages by the end of the year. With the completion of the storyline, we also hope to shift the focus greatly back onto pets.
We’ve now also reached a point where we will turn our focus more towards making many areas more appealing and expand on the content rather than functionality.

7: Who are your staff members? Any developers?

TheMetal is the only developer, there are a variety of artists and administrators on many levels who contribute significantly to growing the site.
You can check out our current staff page at staff page

8: Who designs PP’s pages? Who’s the mastermind?

TheMetal, though we have gone through many changes to find a layout that works with containing the massive amount of places one can visit in Powerpets.

9: Why is PP coded in ASP and not php/mysql?

ASP is faster and through our ISP we have much better technical support than we could find for any linux based solution. Through proper hardware and coding solutions, we have the ability to run on 10 to 20% of the hardware cost that other sites of our size require.
On top of that, there are very few *hackers* in our business who are knowledgeable about ASP.
Overall, ASP was just a much better solution for us.

10: What would you like to say to an upcoming pet game owner?

Unless you find a good group of people who are dedicated, and you can afford 8+ hours a day, 7 days a week, to develop your game, you might be better off joining an existing site. While the start of a petsite is always encouraging because everything develops fast, you’ll never get away from that schedule if you want to keep up with other sites and are likely required to invest more time after a year due to the increased requirements of implementing more interesting features.

Thank you, Powerpets! Virtual pet list.com

VPL interviews Balet, the artist

Please introduce yourself
1: Hello. I’m Balet on Deviantart and I’m passionate about drawing rabbits. I’m a digital artist and I’ve worked for a few pet sites.

What username do you go by on most petsites?
2: My username is usually either Balet or Dib.

How many years experience do you have? (You can also ask their age too)
3: I started doing digital art when I was about 12 years old. I was born in 1990. I’ve never taken art classes, but I have taken a photo restoration class to learn how to use tools in Adobe Photoshop.

What/who inspired you to draw?
4: There’s a few things that inspired me to draw.
I’ve always had a visual way of thinking. I see everything in my mind as colors and designs, like numbers and letters and songs – everything. I’ve been legally blind almost my whole life, so maybe that has something to do with it too.
I used to have bad dreams when I was little. I made up a character that was indestructible.
I thought about that character every night for a long time and eventually I started to dream I was that character. I haven’t had but a few bad dreams since. I decided I wanted to draw my character, but first I had to learn how to draw.
The thing that inspires me most now are rabbits and hares. I feel like they need someone to draw them as they really are rather than as fluffy bunnies.

What art program do you use frequently?
5: I use Adobe Illustrator. It’s not as complicated as Photoshop, but the perfectly smooth lineart it produces is worth the lack of fun tools. I have Adobe Photoshop CS2 as well, but I don’t use it much.

How did you learn? Did you use tutorials? Watch animation?
6: I learned how to draw rabbits by spending time with real rabbits. For other things I look at tutorials and other people’s drawing on Deviantart.

Why did you become an artist?
7: I became an artist for the same reasons that inspired me.

Do you work for a petsite? If so, which one?
8: I work for Rescreatu, Misticpets, and Sorepets.

Why do you work for that site? Experience, money?
9: I work for petsites in my free time mainly for experience, since I don’t get paid cash regularly. I particularly love working for Rescreatu because I’ve grown attached to the staff, community, and the site itself. It’s different from other pet sites I’ve been on.

What are your favorite things to draw on petsites? Items? Characters? Pets? Maps?
10: I don’t care what it is or does, as long as it’s a rabbit. @_@

Besides drawing, what else do you like to do?
11: On the internet, I love one on one Invader Zim role playing. I like debating and ranting anywhere and everywhere. Offline I enjoy being with rabbits and especially taking pictures of them.

Do you have a long-term goal/lifelong dream?
12: I don’t have much in the way of a lifelong goal, but I’ve always wanted to meet a tame Jackrabbit in person, and maybe take pictures of it. There are thinks I don’t want to do though. I never want to have kids, and I’d be okay never having a partner. I simply want to be happy and do my own thing, living alone with some Flemish Giant rabbits.

What advice do you have for aspiring artists?
13: My advice to an aspiring artist would be: Don’t throw away your art work. Save everything you can so you can compare it to the things you draw in the future

What’s your favorite candy?
14: Maple Sugar is my favorite candy. Everyone should get to try it at once in their lifetime. It’s amazing.

Do you have anything that you cherish?
15: I cherish everything in life that matters to me, especially my mentality.