Animal Jam: Revisiting Childhood

When I was a kid, my parents didn’t let us have any video games. No Xbox, no PlayStation, no GameCube- we didn’t even have smartphones. This meant that the only games I played as a kid were either at a friend’s house or, more commonly, online. Some of these were educational games that taught things like multiplication and keyboarding. Others were completely fun-focused time-wasters that I loved with every bit of my middle school heart. Of these, the nearest and dearest to me was an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) called Animal Jam.

Animal Jam was released in 2010 by National Geographic, and has been going strong and gaining a cult following with children and preteens ever since. It masquerades as being “educational” by containing the occasional fact about animals, but children (such as I) would eagerly skip past these facts to get to its more entertaining aspects.

A relatively simple game, Animal Jam is so-called because the avatar you play with is an animal. It’s set in a world full of animals called “Jamaa,” The original, smaller selection included wolves, tigers, pandas, bunnies, koalas and monkeys, but as it has grown in the years it’s existed, it now includes new animals like eagles and llamas, and variants of existing animals such as “spring bunnies”. The possibilities are endless. You pick an animal, name it, choose from several different colors and outfits, and then… do any of a million activities. You can play mini-games, bigger story-driven games called “adventures,” buy items, go to parties, decorate your “den,” and above all, interact with other players (called “Jammers”). It had a simple charm that would let you waste hours and hours on these activities. Of course, my parents never let me sit in front of the computer for more than an hour, but I loved those hours with a passion.

The real trick to Animal Jam was that it was, technically, free. You could gain access to the fundamental parts of the game without buying anything. However, to get the coolest items, dens, animals and adventures, you had to be a “member.” Memberships cost $6.59 a month, $29.95 for 6 months, or $57.95 for a year. It seems like a deceptively simple amount of money at first, but National Geographic has made a killing with kids begging their parents for money to be a “member” in this game. I know that I was one of them (unfortunately for my poor parents). I got a membership once for Christmas, and then had to spend my own hard-earned money to get them later on.

I stopped playing the game when I was about 14 or 15, from more sporadic visits coming to a full halt, but it was still a big part of my childhood. I introduced my sisters to it, and the youngest ones still play it regularly, so it’s nice to occasionally walk through the house and hear the bouncy soundtrack that brings back happy childhood memories.

Something interesting happened this last week, though- my sisters excitedly told me that Animal Jam was giving out free two-week memberships to all its players, in homage to the fact that so many people are home during the quarantine. All you had to do was enter the code they gave you when logging in. They urged me to log into the game again, just to get the code and mess around for a week or two. I’m nothing if not a people pleaser, and I was also a little intrigued by the premise of revisiting this game that I used to spend so much time in. So yesterday, I logged back in to catch a glimpse of my childhood.

Nostalgia hit me like a ton of pillows. Even hearing the music that played as the game started up and the familiar little click sounds as I spun the “daily spin” wheel for a prize immediately brought back a flood of memories. Looking at all my old animal avatars, their names and clothes, everything I put so much painstaking time into, was really interesting. I hadn’t been expecting the emotional rush. Wandering the places I used to go- my den, the hot chocolate shop, the Crystal Sands beach, the arcade- reminded me of a thousand lost, forgotten hopes and dreams and cares I’d once had, all centering around this game. My inventory stocked with a thousand “rare” and “valuable” items I’d put in so much work to obtain… my outfits, carefully crafted to cultivate a certain feeling or look like another character I loved… my username, “sparklegirl252,” that I’d thought infinitely clever at the time… my dens, my animal names, my favorite games, my friends list, everything. It all flooded over me in a rush as I looked around the world I basically lived in during middle school. What a time.

If any of you are looking for something to do with the massive amount of free time on our hands, if you have little siblings with the same problem, or if you ever spent a crazy amount of time on this game like I did, then I urge you to log in again and just spend a little bit of time in this innocent, animal game filled world. I had a good time, and I’ll probably come back every once in a while if I need cheering up. Revisit something you did in your childhood- it’ll do you a lot of good.