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Nicktropolis is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that is part of Nick.com. Construction of the game began in November 2004, eventually being launched to the public on 30 January 2007. The game has grown in popularity recently, and now has over 8 million users. The game has received positive ratings in terms of appropriateness for children, with mixed critical reviews.
The game is divided into four main parts: TeeNick (containing rooms with TeeNick themes), Downtown (the main part of the game with stores, etc), The Pier (containing boardwalk-style games), and Nicktoons Boulevard (containing rooms with Nicktoons-related themes). The game also features advertising, both in banners above the game and a section within the game. This section is named "The Plaza" and has advertisements for Fruit by the Foot, Gushers, iDog, and others.
The game also uses its own currency, NickPoints. These are obtained by walking to floating "blobs" worth a set amount of NickPoints. NickPoints can be used to buy items (such as clothes and decorations for their rooms) in stores.
History
Construction of Nicktropolis began in November 2004, by Nickelodeon's developers Mark Zadroga, Alex Westerman, Christopher Romero, Deborah Levine, Patrick Dorey, Sean McEvoy, and Jason Root, using the TheoSDK and TheoAvatarSDK engines. The game was launched in early 2006, and it had no advertising.
From 18 August 2006 to 6 January 2007, the game was closed to the general public. Prior to this release, almost 300,000 children had tested the game. In March 2007, the game was remodeled and given a new logo. On 11 May 2007, the home page was remodeled to fit in with Nick.com's new look. On 24 June 2007, the game was featured in The New York Times, with a quote stating, "Pre-teenage viewers have a virtual playground to call their own."
The Nicktropolis Newsletter was launched in September 2007, as an e-mail service to players. Also, advertising was added in November 2007. As of 3 July 2008, Nicktropolis had over 7,000,000 registered users.
Beginning in July 2008, the developers introduced daily events on weekdays. On Mondays, a 10% sale happens in one of the stores. Tuesdays are trivia challenge day. On Wednesdays, a Movie Night Party is held at the Rec Center. A fashion parade is held on Thursdays, and on Fridays, a new treasure hunt begins. Although it appears they are leaving those weekly events now, and beginning new events.
On 5 August 2008, the "Nicktropolis Blog" was introduced. The blog posts are made using the Nick.com message boards.
Nickelodeon has opened a new area to support The Big Green Help, the year long Nickelodeon green campaign.
A Transformers game and area, based on the popular Hasbro toys, is now open. Teams compete for Nickpoints and prizes. Game players have to choose which team to join, evil decepticons or the noble autobots. These two opposing teams will battle for control of the elusive energon cubes.
Release history
An alpha of the game was released in early 2006. Soon, the first beta was released in June 2006. From 18 August 2006 to the second beta's release date on 6 January 2007 the game was closed. Eventually, on 30 January 2007, the game was released to the public.
Zones
A screenshot of the game promotions seen for places in Nicktropolis while it is loading.
TEENick Point
TEENick Point is a group of zones based on TEENick shows on Nickelodeon. It consists of 2 zones, the The Naked Brothers Band, consists of the Fuzzy Room, Apartment, and The Studio. In the "Fuzzy Room", players put up a disco ball and dance. In "Apartment" users can play the guitar, piano, and drums, though this feature is no longer on, plus the jukebox that was used to hear NBB music is shown, as "destroyed". They can also play the Naked Brothers game "In Girl Trouble", and listen to full-length songs, though this can no longer be used, because the jukebox is shown as destroyed. In the "Studio" users can look at the band's instruments and make a mash-up, this feature is also lost.
In November 2008, an iCarly section was added with two parts of the webshow studio and Carly's apartment.
Downtown
The downtown area of Nicktropolis has 6 distinct areas. These are the Rec Center, the new Transformers multi-player game, Market Street, the newly added BigGreen Help Treasure Hunt, Metro Park, and the Trivia Challenge room.
The Pier
The pier area contains only a few sub-sections open zone, the Slime Room,the Bumper Cars, the Midway One, Two, the Fortune Teller, the House of Horrors, the Pier entrance, and the Aquarium.[1] The Midways contain both in game casual game play and also more robust game overlays, though two games have been closed.
The Nicktropolis Space Center opened on 28 June 2007. It lets users go to Launch Site Alpha, the Alien Planet, the Space Station and the Station Air Locks.
During the winter of every year, the Winter Park is opened. The area, when up, consists of the Igloo, Ice Cave, Snow Fort, and Bumper Burgs. The area closed on june 5th, 2007 and the zone came back on june 16th, 2007.
Nicktoons Boulevard
The area is divided into 7 subsections. The first being the SpongeBob SquarePants area (Bikini Bottom) includes 7 rooms, which are: the General Store, the Krusty Krab, The Reef, Conch Street, which is a portal to SpongeBob's house, Patrick's house, and Squidward's house.
- Miracle City ( El Tigre) consists of 4 rooms: Leone, which is Manny's school, the Riveras' living room, the General Store, and Manny's Bedroom.
- Amity Park's zone (Danny Phantom) consists of 3 rooms: Fenton Works, Casper High, and the General Store.
- The Avatar Nations (Avatar: The Last Airbender) zone is rather large, consisting of 6 rooms. Those rooms are the Planetarium, Water Palace, Fire Tent, Air Temple, General Market, and Ba Sing Se.
- Retroville (from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius) consists of 4 rooms: the Candy Bar, General Store, and Jimmy's Lab, outside and inside.
- Pupununu Village's area (from Tak and the Power of Juju) is made up of Juju Bazaar, Jibula's Hut, Juju Temple, and the village itself. This section is also different, as the player picks a character, he does not create one himself. Also, this area does not have a General Store. This section is also the first to utilize the backpack tool, which is used by collecting items in the rooms, placing them in the backpack, mixing the items together to form spells, and then casting them.
- The Barnyard's area (based on Back at the Barnyard) is made up of the Mill, Pig Pen, House of Humans, Back of the Barn, and the Feed Store.
Nicktoons Boulevard was moved to The Pier in August 2008.[2]
Market Street
The Market Street is located in Downtown Nicktropolis, and consists of 5 permanent stores, and occasionally 1 special store. Stores in italics are not available at this time.
- Wild Walls and Floors is a store in which users can buy walls and floor for their Nicktropolis room.
- Gadget Universe is a store in which users can buy gadgets for their nicktropolis rooms, most recently, a few old treasure prizes were added to the list of items
- Decor Nation is a store in which users can buy all types of furniture and furnishings for their Nicktropolis rooms.
- The Toy Store is a fairly new store in which users can buy toys for their Nicktropolis rooms.
- Gamers HQ is a store in which Nicktropolis gaming fans can buy games for their Nicktropolis room.
- The Outfitters is a store in which users can buy outfits for their characters, most recently added, old Newsletter outfits.
Sponsorship
It was known that the game would have advertising by launch:
- “We don’t believe in having one huge portal. We just want there to be linkage among the sites and complementary experiences. That’s why we made sure users can access Nicktropolis through a stand-alone site as well as through Nick.com. In terms of advertising, there are many things that we can’t anticipate when it comes to how kids will use it. We want to see what happens and then take our cues from that, as opposed to imposing a structure on it for advertisers and users that might not make sense.”
- ―Jason Root, vice president of Nick.com[src]
Sponsored zones
There are currently two sponsored "zones": one for the 2009 film Hotel for Dogs, and another for the 2007 film Transformers.
References
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedatlas - ↑ "Nicktoons are on the move!". Retrieved on 2008-08-17.