The Making of Webkinz Challenges, Part 5

Challenges that Tell a Story

Have you ever wondered how Webkinz Challenges are created? We sat down with Michael Webkinz to learn more about his creative process.
 
 
In this 6-part series, we’ll break it all down: How are Webkinz Challenges made?
 
 

Part 5: “Challenges that Tell a Story”

 
 
Q: How do you build narratives for challenges?
 
 
“When we first released challenges, they weren’t really story based. But, more recently we have been able to release story-based challenges.
 
 
For example, the first eight part summer challenge we did last year that involved Goober at a Martial Arts clubhouse room–you would take your pets to the Martial Arts room to collect energy bars, and then eventually work your way towards earning your black belts.
 
 
We’re really limited with the amount of text we can add to challenges because each step only has three tasks, and there’s not a lot of wording we can use.
 
 
You want to make it really straightforward and simple for players to figure out what they need to do to complete each step. So I’ll come up with a theme, in this case Martial Arts prizes and hopefully the players are creating their own storyline that’s based on the tools that we’re giving them to create their own storyline in their head.
 
 
So, maybe they had a particular pet that was earning their black belt or they would go to the dojo in the clubhouse every day to speak to Goober and so he was now seen as this Martial Arts leader in Webkinz.
 
 
It’s really up to the player use their own imagination to create up their own storylines as they play.”

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