Mar

29

Journeys into N-Town

March 29, 2007 | 3 Comments

It was early on a Thursday morning and I wasn’t quite ready for bed yet. I was Jonesing for a game to play, so I looked over at my library of PC entertainment software. Vanguard? WoW? Guild Wars? Europa Universalis 3? Supreme Commander? A pox on them all! It seemed as if there was nothing that would scratch my gaming itch, but then I happened upon an MSN article about marketing in virtual worlds. Mentioned in the article was a new cyberscape for kids produced by Nickelodeon called Nicktropolis (www.nicktropolis.com) and for some reason, I felt compelled to sign up.

So this is a little story about my first adventure in Nicktropolis.

Nicktropolis is a flash game that is played in a web browser. It’s loads up fast and has fairly simplistic style graphics. The initial screen you are presented with after logging in is the character customization menu. Each time you log in, you will come to this screen to have the opportunity to change the look of your avatar. Character customization is pretty simplistic with a gender choice and just color choices for skin, hair, shirt, pants and shoes. When you are done, you are presented with a map screen to go where you want in the game.

The first place I went was called the “Lounge” in the Downtown area. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting to find in the lounge exactly, but as you can see by the picture, it wasn’t a very happening place (That’s me with the blue hair).

The lounge is pretty dead.

So, I tried to leave, but I couldn’t figure out how. Clicking the floor, moves you around and sometimes you can click on an object to interact with it. I managed to turn the lounge TV on, and even switch the channel a few times, but nothing I clicked on seemed to be an exit. I clicked and clicked all the corners of the room to no avail and just when I was about to try to find the “help,” I finally noticed navigation tabs above the play area with handy labels like “Map” and “My room.”

Ooh, I have a room? Let’s see what it looks like…

my room in Nicktropolis

Hmm… not so snazzy. It could definitely use something, like at least a few dust bunnies in the corners or a last can of Who hash. I decided that my next priority would be to figure out how to get some swag for my dreary digs.

As it turns out, finding those tabs was the real trick to opening up the game, after that I was able to easily navigate myself around (Not bad. I managed to master a basic element of a kids game in under an hour). I jump over to a place called “Wild Walls and Floors” on Market Street in the Downtown area because those plain walls and wood floor have got to go. Upon entering the store I was immediately greeted by simulated elevator music for my listening pleasure. Do kids enjoy elevator music? Or more to the point, does anyone? I found it an odd choice.

As I am preparing to browse for a new room look, I notice that I only had 2100 points, so I figured that there wasn’t much I could buy. I was wrong! I couldn’t, for example get imported Italian marble floors and Tuscan style walls, but I did manage to score a Rare space wallpaper and a simulated beach floor.

Look! A rare spawn wallpaper!

With a new floor and wallpaper in hand, I still needed some additional accessories for my extreme-simulated-room makeover, so I scooped up some other doo-dads and thingamajigs – jumping all over rares when I saw them. In the end, I had quite a haul including a butterfly (rare), a robot(rare), a slimy gyroscope (rare), a trunk (rare) and a mini-tv. Nearly all rare gear, I wonder if I can sell my Nicktropolis account on e-bay?

Now my room is seriously spruced up.

Soon to be featured on Nick's Celebrity Cribs

Besides sprucing up rooms, what else is there to do you may wonder. It seems like quite a bit, from treasure hunts to voting in the kids choice awards to hanging out with or making new friends online.

On the topic of making friends, conversation in Nicktropolis is handled in an interesting way. To speak, you select what you want to say from an extensive menu of choices. Each choice is “kid friendly,” aka non-offensive, non-abusive, non-what-you-get-in-every-other-game-ive. There are general conversation choices and also some specific to Nickelodeon TV shows. But navigating the conversation menu is tricky (at best) and by the time you have selected “Now it’s time to feel the wrath of our mustaches!” the person you may have been trying to say it to could be long gone. Still, the implementation should make parents of Nicktropolis-goers rest a little easier knowing that there simply are no options for disclosing personal information built into the game.

Overall I found the game, interesting. It probably won’t be something I play more than this once, but then again, I am not really in the targeted demographic and I doubt Nickelodeon is worried if I ever finish pimping out my room. According to the article I read, Nicktropolis has somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.4 million registered users (the game is free), so they’ve got plenty of takers for this brave new world.


 

 

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3 Comments so far

  1. Rui on April 3, 2007 1:55 am

    Hey!!! :)

  2. noob on June 12, 2007 12:52 am

    Hey!

    You should e-mail me, you silly person :)

  3. chris on November 29, 2008 7:35 pm

    how do i chage color on nicktropolis? nnicktropolis name 1iverson01

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