I opened up my Webkinz account for the first time in years this week. Maybe it was to try and stave off the impending doom of finals week, or just to see my old pets, or whatever. I think I was really looking for a game. There were some on there that were fun, and I could get through a bunch of them in the time it took me to move my mage in Skyrim to the town I currently have to go through, so it seemed like a better use of my time.

Yes, yes, I know. I was one of those kids. I had Webkinz. I never really got into Neopets, at least not in the ways that some people did. I didn't have an account there; I was mostly just on the website to play the arcade games. Webkinz, though. Webkinz was different. You bought a stuffed animal and got to play with it online and design them a house and play games and trade with other people online and cook and a myriad of different things. Webkinz was well laid out, had a lot of fun and creative games, and I was always excited to get on.

And I got a stuffed animal out of it. That was probably the best part.

Anyways, I decided to go on to see what the website had done with the place. Your toys are all still saved, even if you don't have a membership. There was always a lot of free things to do on the website even without a deluxe membership. Unlike some websites, Webkinz gave their free members a lot of freedom anyways. Each time you bought a new Webkinz, you were given certain privileges for another year.

I have seven Webkinz. Some I have the toys for, some my friends gave me the code for because they just wanted the stuffed animal, and one I got as a promotional thing for the website's 10th anniversary. I thought the website was fun, and the company that ran it was really good at keeping the game from getting too commercial. They didn't have a separate currency for special deluxe members that cost more. They allowed a lot of freedom, and nothing was really locked off. Towards the end of my Webkinz run, they were just starting to get into giving the members a little more privilege, but I never really cared that much. I could still play the games. My account still worked.

I was disappointed going back on the website now. It's no surprise that Webkinz has been declining since 2008, when it really hit its peak, but I guess I never realized just how far from grace it had fallen.

I mean, really Ganz? Really? You cut off all but five games from non-members? You made non-members unable to buy just about everything in the shops? You even cut off tournaments?

Really?

Okay, they can do what they want, but I feel like this is how you lose people, not gain people.

Webkinz, like a lot of other sites I was really into as a child, just fell into the trap of only giving paying members access to everything. A good example of a game that does this fairly well is Wizard101. I was also a fan of that as a kid, and as an adult, I still pop on sometimes, because the spellcasting and monster fighting gets addictive, and the fairly open world is still very well populated by users. Now, you can always tell the members on Wizard 101, because they're the ones riding the fancy mounts and who have the biggest houses. Now, other people can get those things too, they just have to work really hard for them. You have to make a lot of money to buy the nice things that the kids who obviously have their parents pay for already have. But it doesn't cut off its non-paying users for not paying the $10 a year for membership, or whatever the rate is now. It lets the players work at their own rate. The only places really cut off are some of the roads and parts of the open world that they keep for members only, but there are plenty of places to keep the free users entertained.

Webkinz doesn't have that. Everywhere I turned, I was met with the same thing: In order to enter here, you must either adopt a new pet or become a deluxe member. Now, at this point, adopting a new Webkinz is hardly a problem. They sell for ridiculously cheap. In 2008 at the peak of Webkinz's popularity, these babies went for $20. Now you can pick one up for between $3 and $10, at the max. If you're finding one more expensive, you're being ripped off. But unlike Wizard101, which makes me want to get a membership so I can explore, Webkinz's new site just annoys me. All of the things that used to be free are all now accessible for a fee. If you can't pay, you can't play, no exceptions.

It just feels like a shame at this point. Maybe it's the rose-colored glasses of childhood, but when everything turns into pay-to-play, it makes me a little sad. What happened that caused the company to go in this "new direction"? Webkinz really was a phase. Everyone who used to play it knows it, but the fact that I can go back to Neopets or Wizard101 without any trouble at all and still play games (even if Neopets hasn't created any new content in years, and Wizard101's new story lines really are for paying members, and don't even get me started on GAIA online's inflation problems) makes me at least want to spend a little time there.

I can describe Webkinz, and the experience of my traveling to many websites that I played on as a child in an image: I used to walk to school and back every day in high school, and on our path for the longest time, before we started taking a new route, was a house that always confused me. It was run down, and old, and the yard was a combination of bare patches of brown grass, overgrown weeds, and old animal cages. A dump, if I ever saw one. But along the gutters was strung a single strand of LED blue Christmas lights. They were always on, always shining in the middle of the day, like they were trying to make up for the fact that the house was a dump.

That's what happened to Webkinz. People left, Ganz got desperate, and strung up a lot of lights, hiding the dump. New toys were created. New games came out. But they were losing money and started pulling all of their content back unless you could pay them. And in turn, they lost even more people.

So good job, guys. You crashed, you burned, and then you exploded too. I'll be back in another year. Maybe you'll have died out completely by that point. Or maybe you'll be just as mediocre as you are right now. I'll be waiting curiously.