Y2K virtual collectible animal trading (no, it's not just pokemon)

[malymin]

I've suspected that the modern "adoptable" is a several-generations removed descendant of 90's and early 2000's "cyberpets," but as a kid I mostly only ever interacted with free-to-adopt pets that could be adopted by an infinite number of people; I was aware limited-quantity pets via application submissions and "breeding" were available, but I have fewer memories of them because I didn't really have a website to participate in them with. (I just saved the free pets on my hard drive, lmao.) It's very similar to how limited adoptions have existed in the Petz Community since at least 1998, but I mostly just downloaded free petfiles or breedfiles that didn't require talking to people.

(kalium has talked about similar levels of rarity and scarcity existing with roleplay characters in fantasy animal forum RP of the era, which is 100% a related phenomenon... just one I've been exposed to less on my own end.)

The problem with researching cyberpets? It's hard to find evidence via search engine that they ever existed. I keep getting results for some very recent take on the "robot toy dog" concept being sold under that name, as well as unrelated garbage articles and images that happen to have good SEO. Robot dogs (and other robot pets like Furbies, and virtual pets like Tamagotchi, etc) were part of a general Y2K fascination with virtual animals, but they are not even a little bit the same thing as a cyberpet. A cyberpet is a funny little image file that lives on the internet, got it? Some are just static pngs, some have "mechanics" that are roleplayed by the creator and adopter, some of the later forms of cyberpet whole website backends like Dragon Cave or Neopets. Bunnyhero Labs even had interactive Flash-based cyberpets. But a cyberpet is, at its core, an picture of an animal on a website, with some kind of certificate or verification showing that you've "adopted" it and that it's yours. (Even if it's one of the ones can be adopted by infinite people, you often get a little adoption certificate to put on your page next to it.)

But... I think I just found some evidence that backs up my theory of adoptables being an evolution of cyberpets?

There was a cyberpet marketplace. They used fake currency, not real money, but still. You have the concept of character designs as a good that can be bought, sold, and traded! Right here at the dawn of the 21st century!

The Market

Welcome to the Market, a unique place where one may buy, sell, and trade various creatures.

How it works
If you wish to participate in the market you must send in a form requesting registration. After becomming a member, you will recieve a certain number of credits. Credits can be used to purchase goods and livestock of many varities. As a member, you will recieve 100 credits(c.) on the first of each month. That means everyone gets 100 credits every month just for being a member! Yes, I did change it back from three to prevent inflation. Credits can be obtained in many ways:

Wyvern Breeding- Breeding wyverns is an interesting and profitable buisness. You start by purchasing a pair(or more) of the creatures from the market. Females may lay eggs once every month, after paying a small fee. They may lay up to 10 eggs and the owners have the option of selling the eggs or hatchlings to other members of the Market. Wyverns, if they are available, can be found in the Roost.
Selling Livestock- Selling a creature that YOU MADE. Adds for creatures may be placed on the board below. The livestock auction is now open! If you wish to sell an item, please do so on the Livestockboard.Also, auctions are to be posted ONLY on the auction board.
Doing a Favor for Yours Truly- If you wish to do a trade with me dirrectly or if I ask you for help with something, you can earn some credits. Just dont bombard me with a hundred trade requests please ~.~

I, DragonSpyrit, must be notified of ALL transactions via the form that will soon be posted below or Email. You must tell me how many credits a person spent, who they were, and who you are. The 5c. selling fee has been deactivated. I will also be keeping running lists of your credit totals.

Also, please keep in mind that the Livestock board is the main part of The Market, not the Roost.The roost is down again due to the fact that DS is overwhelmed with stuff to do. Id appreciate it if no one complained, concidering that I get no money fro wyvern sales and it takes 20 minutes to draw, scan, color, upload, and put each wyuvern up on the page.

(I've left all of the misspellings on the original page as is...)

Here's an example of a "market stall" for boutique cyberpets. You can definately see how the concepts at play here have evolved into new forms later down the line, right? And here's another market stall, and yet another.

BTW: That last site, Clearwater? Also has a bunch of free-to-take cyberpets, which is the main thing I remember it for. If you have a website, consider adopting one! I always liked the Glerit on the "canyon" page of the site. There's also two secret pages with secret pets...

If you're into smallweb/oldweb stuff, consider adopting and making free cyberpets! They're such an iconic part of early web culture for me, as irremovable from my nostalgic conception of my childhood as dubbed anime and Nintendo games are to a lot of my age-peers. And you know what? I never see them acknowledged on the intentionally nostalgic throwback sites people make at all. Never! They're literally collectible gifs, don't people love those? Cmonnnn you wanna make a web page for magic animals so baaaaad

Comments

[sewagelag00n]

(Sorry for what I'm about to say...) Wow that web page was captured before I was even born...

So clearly this was before my time. I knew of Neopets, but I had no idea that cyberpets had a more established history than that. FWIW I've never been into adoptables and personally find them a bit dumb (I can't even get my own character designs on-model, how am I supposed to draw someone else's??).

Although, if I understand correctly, cyberpets are more of a... collectible? A thing that you put in a list or on your website to show off that it's yours. While adoptables are more linked to Internet OC/Fandom culture, and are used as a character design in a work of art or maybe writing. (I could go on and on about Internet art subculture being unique and unlike anything you'll find in offline art communities...)

[malymin]

Heh, no worryies.

I think it's a bit muddier, is the thing? Cyberpets are primarily "graphics you put on a webpage" (though there was an informal convention of assigning them lore and personalities, and some people just adopted a handful total instead of accumulating large numbers), but you saw a lot of the same norms regarding creation and distribution of cyberpets in... well, there's no formal name for the genre, but kalium calls them "creature roleplays." They were forum-based roleplays, kind of similar in basic format to DW fandom RP, but featuring colorful, magic, animal-like original characters in an original fantasy setting. Despite being "OCs you roleplay as" and not "pets you adopt", colorful animal characters could be "adopted out" to players through limited distribution methods, such as sending in applications over e-mail.

Kalium's talked about the genre on their public Snowflake Challenge entries on their blog and in the comments of their entries, as well as on (this web page)[https://worldofryll.neocities.org/creature], but you can also browse The Draekard Page and The Color Spyral, which are examples of the genre they pointed out to me. Draekard page is more broken, with many images gone, but Kalium says it was the trope-maker for many subsequent creature RPs, including The Color Spyral.

The collectible aspect of these "market" type cybepets, I think, mainly finds its descendants in Closed Species adoptables. There are people in those communities who treat their characters as Original Characters in the traditional sense, and create personalities and stories for their characters, but the exclusive nature of closed species also means there are users who just collect cool designs (and usually commission other people to draw those designs, rather than drawing them themselves), or who primarily view OCs as a kind of tradable monetary asset. I've gotten the impression that there's tension between the two ways of viewing OCs in closed species communities - the latter group tends to assume everyone who has an OC is willing to give away any character they own if offered a high-value trade or a big enough sum of cash, which obviously isn't going to go over well if the owner is actually emotionally invested in the character their peers are coveting as a collectible and/or bartering chip.

Toyhouse contains both "adoptable" style OCs, and more "traditional" OCs (fandom ocs, characters invented for personal writing/art projects, etc), so it's partially fufilling the same role as a "my cyberpets" page on a Y2K personal website, but also doing other things. Makes it kind of an odd animal of a website, IMO.

Connecting adoptables to fandom culture does kind of surprise me a little... the only fandoms I really strong overlap with are Furry fandom, and the set of specific media fandoms that center around quadrupedal sapient-animal characters like TLK and MLP and WOF and the like. When most people talk about "fandom" generically, they're talking about specifically media fandoms with human and humanoid protagonists, where I can't recall seeing this kind of thing. (Sometimes I've chuckled at the notion of an MLP-style "shipping grid fankids" type adopt for YGO fankids, though. What pairing with Yugi will make the most ridiculous hair, do you think?)

[sewagelag00n]

Re: “Internet fandom/OC culture”, I was moreso referring to the specific brand of Character Obsession (usually with human characters from media) that really only happens online—I, personally, interact with my OCs pretty much as if I was fandomizing them. Like, I have “headcanons”—that doesn’t even make sense, they’re MINE, I control what’s canon!

Sometimes I feel guilty about my own hexcessive fandomization, but that’s internalized elitism about “highbrow art” talking…

But like, all the memes about traumatizing your OCs, wanting to crush them in blenders and pour milk on them and throw them at the walls… that’s Internet fandom terminology. (I find a lot of these memers annoying, but that’s besides the point.)

My hexperience with adoptables, to be honest, is users who are in “chronically online artist” type servers with me posting “OMG GUYS LOOK AT MY NEW ADOPTABLE I GOT FROM TOYHOUSE!! Isn’t she cute? I’m going to use her design for this OC/self-insert idea I have!” Meanwhile I’m standing there like, “Dude, I think you have a problem, this is the 5th adoptable you’ve bought this week and you’ve drawn all the other ones, like, once…”

Ough if someone asked to pay money for my OC I would scream. I am very attached to my character designs since they are developed parallel to all the plot/lore.

I am kind of a furry but don’t know much about closed species culture, I just play Animal Jam and reblog furry art on tumblr…

[malymin]

Yea, I feel like that "pour milk on blorbo and slap against the wall" attitude is something I see with adoptables whose owners treat them like proper OCs, but that I don't recall ever seeing with cyberpets. Many sites loosely encouraged you to roleplay the pet being a character instead of just a graphic, but in a register borrowed more from fantasy novels, D&D, and JRPGs than like anything from that era's version of fandom-culture cuteness-aggression towards favorite characters. (I wouldn't know how creature RP players engaged with their own animal characters, but from what I've gathered from kallium they took themselves very "seriously" in the twilight years of the genre... a little too seriously, compared to the earlier periods of the RP.)

Here's a bit from the Cypris.org FAQ:

What do you look for in a potential owner's webpage? To be approved to adopt, the page must have the egg of the species you filled out the form for and a link to Cypris.org. There must be some sort of storyline to go with the egg. You know, make up a story about how you found the egg and of your hopes for it. Tell me why you wanted to adopt the egg. I also really enjoy tasteful music on a page, that's always a plus but it's not required. A nice background with readible text is always good also. Don't crowd the page with tons of other pets. A few other cyberpets are okay, but don't go overboard with them. Just be creative!

This is a pretty traditional way to display one's cyberpets, for example.

My hexperience with adoptables, to be honest, is users who are in “chronically online artist” type servers with me posting “OMG GUYS LOOK AT MY NEW ADOPTABLE I GOT FROM TOYHOUSE!! Isn’t she cute? I’m going to use her design for this OC/self-insert idea I have!” Meanwhile I’m standing there like, “Dude, I think you have a problem, this is the 5th adoptable you’ve bought this week and you’ve drawn all the other ones, like, once…”

I've heard about this type of person. U_U; Or ones who insist they're going to love and cherish a new adoptable they get, that it's their One True Fursona and they'll never let it go, and then sell or trade it to get something else like, a month later... and then regret it. And never seem to learn from it. Rinse and Repeat.

TBH, I only know secondhand information about closed species, so I'm not the best person to ask about it... main interesting thing I've learned is that a bunch of them have decided to get into website development. I like seeing the internet decentralize away from a handful of big socmed, so these groups creating a bunch of rough neopets clones is interesting to me.