kami

I don't remember the specifics, and there were quite a few reasons. I think it was a mix of lack of funding (despite the Kickstarter), poor planning, personal drama in the owner's life, and other reasons. There was quite a bit of a backlash around its closing as the owner seemingly disappeared and many people (including myself) donated money that we never got back.

Deviantart, Youtube, Patreon for feeds. The gallery would not be a feed. I shouldn't need anything backend for the gallery, I would think.

The numbers you've listed are meaningless without knowing anything about the site's economy. It'd be more relatable and understandable to advertise the idea of: Easy: you start off with x amount of in game currency (ie normal pet game play) Medium: you start off with no currency Hard: you start off having to pay off a loan and/or negative currency I think the answer heavily depends on what the kind of game is, the general difficulty in earning more currency (some games already make it difficult to earn more currency, which tends to make an "easy" mode already difficult), and what sort of payoffs come with those modes. Is it just the currency that's effected? If so, I'd say that's kind of boring. If you're going to have difficulty modes, why not expand that into more areas of the site? Though you mentioned it's still a wip, so I understand if you're still working out expanding it. I think it has potential though! It just really depends on how it's executed.

Note: This is not immediate work. I'm just looking for quotes for this project right now. This is also not pet site work, but for a personal website. Idea: Very simplistic layout. Ajax with in page loading, mobile friendly/dynamic. Horizontal text navigation at the top (fades with hover). RSS readers for a few pages. (RSS feed would ideally look like a photo gallery-esque style.) These would be resized to fit nicely and neatly on the page. (It would not stretch or squish anything to fit. Perhaps if it's too big, like a cropped thing could work? I guess it would depend on the RSS readers? I've never used them, so complete newb there.) I would also like to have a separate "gallery"-esque page, where if you click on an image, an on-page popup (or some kind of extended information feature) would appear to give more info. I'm rather flexible with how that'd look. Concept: Ideally: links and images would have a sort of clouded appearance until hovered over. (Darkened bits above are kind of to show that, haha.) I also have a preference for comments in the code. If more information is needed, just let me know Basically the idea is simple + clean.

If you ever want to try ads again, perhaps a more controlled route might be better? Having site owners purchase spots or something?

Thank you so much x3

NPCs are are just non-playable characters, that's what it means. As far as what they are, their purpose, what they can do, the extent of their code, etc., it's all up in the air. There isn't really a standard.

Congrats to everyone!

No worries, happens to all of us

Banks are fine, that's not what this thread is about. It's asking about users actually owning and managing their own bank, rather than having an "account" with a bank that the site controls.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it gets complicated really quickly, especially if you involve loans. I think Anoua hit most of the points there. Speaking as a pet site feature, it doesn't really feel /pet/ site-y. I think it could maybe work for other themed typed games, but for pet sites, I don't see it mixing in well. If you're trying to think of new pet site game features, I'd try focusing more on the "pet" aspect of the genre. "Would you be willing to pay 500,000 points to open a bank?" This question is irrelevant. Every site has their own system of currency and structured economy. I can't know how much that's worth since it would be different with every game.

Look up vlogs on YT for other Europeans/Westerners living in the countries you're interested in. Or even natives just vlogging their life there, though I feel it might be more relateable to have someone who was where you're from talking about their experiences. Wherever you end up thinking of going, definitely try picking up some of the language before you go. Like Japan for example, even knowing one word: "sumimasen" (which means various things, like 'thank you', 'excuse me', 'I'm sorry', etc.) can make a big difference. It's not 100% necessary to know a lot, I mean, when I visited Japan, I knew only a couple words, phrases, and kanji, and my brother and his friends knew nothing, and we all got around just fine. It's just that the more you know, obviously the easier things will be for you.

I could say the same with movies and basically any media. I could also say the same about sex. Just look at how that's portrayed in our media. Subject any human to anything and you can bring out just about any behavior you want. That's kind of why I find this argument pointless. We're malleable. Are video games, or any sole material, to blame? Of course not. It's a combination of factors. Just as someone can grow up playing and watching the most violent things ever and be a total sweet heart, someone growing up with little to no media interaction could be a murderer. (Timely that I just watched a doc on Jeffery Dahmer who, from what was shown/explained in the documentary, basically was never known to seek out violent entertainment, but murdered 17 people.) There's an infinite number of variables, it's just silly to me to point at just one thing. Speaking from my own perspective, I grew up surrounded by violent video games (Mortal Kombat, other fighter games), violent movies (Matrix, Gladiator, etc), and to my own knowledge and self understanding, do not find myself to have any physical or mental violent tendancies. (To be fair, I am a woman, so there is also gender bias in that, as society doesn't view women to be violent.) I know those are just two specific cases (Dahmer and myself), but I honestly think it just goes back to "there are too many factors to narrow down the cause of one mental behavior to be able to blame it all on one thing." Entertainment and media are just one facet of our society (and even then, it can be broken down to hundreds of sub-sections). It's illogical to say, "the media is making our children violent!" Does that mean they do nothing? Of course not. Look at how sex and women are portrayed to young boys in video games, going back to that example. We're actively promoting sexism and objectification to children, and many boys (and girls) can end up thinking that that's okay. That can effect some people, but that's not the sole source, and we shouldn't treat it as such. /Can/ it be bad? Yes. I honestly think it would be more of an okay thing if we pushed more for higher education and understanding of ourselves and society as a whole. (Sorry I kind of bounced around a bit, kind of have a headache atm xD)

Heeeyyyyy gurl ;D

As much as there is a correlation with violent books and behavior problems. It's an age old argument that just changes the noun with each passing generation. I just recently read an article which mentioned a Japanese serial killer from the 80s. Police found manga (comics) in his place and the news outlets said that let to his murderous behavior. As a friendly science reminder, correlation does not mean causation

Turning off my adblock ;) I really appreciate how much time and effort you're putting into this forum, and the level of transparancy, as others have echoed, is fantastic! I'm hopeful that this forum will grow and I'm eager to see the marketplace flourish

This is a cute idea! Best of luck to everyone who enters

No worries, haha. I think I found it helpful to send it out to friends or family for outside crits. Some parts I had a problem with, people actually liked, which gave me a new perspective on it. (Also goes the other way around, unfortunately, haha! Things I liked didn't go over well with others x'D) Could also give you a nice break from editing it yourself, since that can make a difference too. Working on something for too long can make you miss things. Second book is going slow, but still going! I just have so many other projects taking priority, I'm sure you know what that's like That one sounds interesting though! Always neat to see modern retellings of the classics ;D

It actually wasn't overbooked. It was just full. They had four staff on standby (who, from what I heard, missed their own flights), but since it was fully booked, they tried to get people off the plane for their employees. Definitely loads of other ways to have approached this problem before it got so out of hand.

Mine is a mix of personal/me stuff, my art, and my YouTube channel: https://twitter.com/sambeawesome

It sounds good so far! Very interesting Best of luck getting through it! Rewriting can be tough xo But once you're through it, you have yourself a book!

If it's free for one person, I'll take it I think it could've easily sold if we had more buyers. Perhaps as this forum grows, we can hopefully see a change in the market?

Super old, but still might be helpful to someone??

Beautiful stuff!

I wouldn't think so? I mean, I haven't really seen any sort of negative impact, despite most games I've seen not really caring much for the "pet" aspect of their game. I mean, before Neopets added in the clothing feature, their pets were even more in the background. People got them just to use the pet pages, but it was still successful and the idea of pet sites still resonated with a lot of people, resulting in the continuation of the genre today. I think the main thing to keep in mind for those wanting to build their own pet sites is for them to ask themselves, is it a pet site they want to build? If there are pets, how necessary is it really for them to be there? Is there any purpose to them? If it's not the focal point, like Subeta, calling it an "avatar" site would seem to be more appropriate and advertises much more what the game is about. It's kind of like having genres for books or movies, I suppose? Helps people identify what your game is about. If you call it a "pet" site, people are going to expect the pets to be more than eye candy you can leave starving and bored. Though then again, /because/ so many sites have used the term "pet" site, despite the pets being an almost nothing feature, we've built up this understanding and expectation of what pet sites are. Nowadays, we expect a site called "pet" to be where you can just completely ignore the pet features, and the main attractions are everything else. Even with people trying to think of new and innovative features for pet sites, whenever I see these discussions come up, almost entirely they're talking about features /other/ than for the pets. Like crazy explore systems, certain integrations with mini games, etc. It's a bit comical, really. People are coming up with great feature ideas for a pet game that don't at all involve the pets (To be fair, occasionally there are mentions of battling, and once I did see someone have a fantastic renovation for the standard feeding system, but nevertheless, it seems like building crazy awesome new features that involve the pets are basically not even considered to begin with.) And just to be clear: I don't find this all to necessarily be negative nor am I necessarily in disagreement with how sites are run/developed.