Community Building on Poptropica
During elementary and school, I religiously played Poptropica. My goal was to complete all the islands: Spy Island, 24 Carrot Island, Reality TV Island, Early Poptropica. I never completed that goal, but I was always fascinated by the different modes of community building. And so, I returned to my online home: Poptropica, the virtual world created around 2007 for 6-15 year olds. Except this time, I focused less on completing the islands and more on socialness. Through various interactions with 6 characters, I discovered that community building on Poptropica takes the form of conversations and games inside common rooms.
As soon I landed on Poptropica’s website, I chose my character. Though I had multiple characters to choose from, I immediately gravitated toward the character that best matched my identity as a Black non-binary being (pictured to the right). Although I could have customized my character on the Home Island, I was perfectly fine with my character. No longer was I Gabby; I was now Sticky Noodle.
So off I went to my first site: 24 Carrot Island. After talking to the mayor, who revealed that the island was missing carrots and people, I walked into the diner looking for clues. While in the diner, I tried the ice cold drinks that color hair. After mixing all the colors together, I ended up with a purple drink. My hair turned purple, and I continued to explore the island looking for the lost carrots and the lost people. It actually helped a lot that Poptropica has a newer feature that shows the quests that need to be done in order to complete the island; the quest became my guide through the island, showing me what to do and where to go. After about 40 minutes, I finished the island quest. The mayor awarded me a medallion, which honestly has been the highlight of my day.
After the first hour, I got bored of being solo. I hopped over to Timmy Failure Island and was immediately overwhelmed with the literal garbage on the street and the consequent plot development. From what I gathered Timmy Failure thinks he’s the best detective ever, but unbeknownst to young Timmy, he is not the best detective. I wasn’t too concerned about completing this island’s quest so I didn’t look any further into Timmy Failure. Instead, I went to the common room to find other characters to interact with.
I have always been a sucker for Poptropica’s games so I started playing star link with the first person I met. (Star link is Poptropica’s version of dot and boxes). Unfortunately for me, I suck at star link so I lost all three games: not my greatest moment.
However, it was after playing star link that I realized the power of Poptropica: the ability to engage in a virtual world filled with adventure, games, and however much social interaction I wanted. And being that I’m more on the introverted side, I found ways to make conversations more comfortable for myself. For instance, I used the prompts that Poptropica listed to start conversations; my opening line was usually “Your custom is cool.”
I enjoyed interacting with participants so much that my final site was Home Island’s Starcade. At Starcade, I interacted with all types of characters: friendly characters, annoyed characters who kept jumping away from me, and characters who used “Sorry, I’m busy” to avoid me. And honestly, being rejected in a virtual world hurts a lot less than being rejected in real time so I can understand why Poptropica’s arcade feature and common rooms are so appealing. But anyway, my conversations were brief and mostly focused on how much time characters were online for and what islands they completed. I stayed away from personal questions, choosing instead to observe my interlocutors as they formed groups in Starcade, which was an interesting process.
Overall, I had a lot of fun re-exploring Poptropica. I think this experience was refreshing for me because I was in a stress-free space where I wasn’t concerned about being an adult; my only concern was exploring. And I think a beauty of my experience on Poptropica was that it wasn’t really tainted by my identity; my race, sexual orientation, age, and gender identity didn’t affect what spaces I had access to. I was essentially an anonymous being that was able to build a community around myself through the use of arcade games, prompted chats, and emoticons. Sigh, if only existence was somewhat like this in real time.
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