Webkinz World Studio Story

After being on Webkinz World for quite a while, maybe six months, I finally discovered he Studio Movie Maker. Oh, that sounded like a lot of fun! I love writing stories and it would be so cute to have the little actors you could buy in the W Shop acting out my story.

I purchased the Webkinz Studio for 1,000 Kinzcash and bought a few actors and sets, including a Pirate, Princess, Knight, Ship background and Castle Background, along with a few other things. It cost quite a few pretty Kinzcash pennies.

I was more than a little upset when I went to make my first Webkinz Studio video. It turns out you cannot give your characters names. Even simple names that even Word Processor recognizes, such as Bob, Sally, Robert, etc. are not recognized and when the Studio does not recognize a word it will not allow that word to be used. Well, fine, they don't want names. You can work around that by never naming anyone. Though this is sad for children, since they (and I) love naming the things we create.

Of course, curse words are not allowed to be used, and this makes complete sense. No one wants a child making stories with bad words in it.

BUT! words such as ridiculous, superfluous, beautiful, specifically, especially, harmonious, etc. are not allowed either. These are obviously not curse words, and yet they are underlined in red just as curse words are. You can see examples of this in the story below. In no world would I type "She is pretty" when "She is beautiful" is far more appropriate for the emotion (not to mention when adults are speaking they don't usually use pretty). It seems, to me, that a child is punished for having a large vocabulary. The Webkinz Studio only wants very basic vocab. words. Oh, vocabulary isn't an allowed word either, so maybe they don't want vocabulary at all (har har, get it?).

Slang is also not allowed. Gonna, wanna, etc. My Word Processor recognizes these words, but Webkinz Studio doesn't.

Only two actors are allowed in each scene. This is understandable, as it is complicated enough to have two characters for a young child.

You can only store two videos at a time. This was almost heart breaking even for me. And I'm a big girl who knows how to save her work in an offline format.

I had big ideas for a long story that involved multiple characters and could be broken into various 'movies' or chapters as I would use them. That I could only have two of them at any given time on the Studio makes me sad. How must a child feel when they have a third idea and must make the choice between deletion or just losing that idea?

Below is the chaptered story I had in mind. I'll title the whole thing when I finish it and think up a title. I have fixed it up in comic panel format because it entertained me to do it that way, but the single frame panels are also available so you can see what each looked like on Webkinz Studio.