What is Sensipets and where did it come from?
Sensipets is a website that I (@Howey) created a loooong time ago, June 2004 to be exact. At the time, Neopets was big, and I wanted to make something like it but better. I had joined other pet sites at the time, such as Nutrinopets, Subeta, and more - but they were not giving me what I expected from pet sites. So at the age of 14, I rolled up my sleeves and began the treacherous journey to learn coding. It was not pretty; lots of bugs, security issues, and problematic coding practices, but it started me on my journey to become a software engineer, connect with others, and gave me perspective into running a website.
It did not last long though, once school started back up, I eventually handed the reins over to other staff members to develop and run. Unfortunately, their real life got to them too, and it was eventually shut down.
After a few years, I was able to get the domain back, and over a decade, I attempted to revive it with varying degrees of success. I saw Sensipets as an opportunity to make a company, but every time, all it was doing was recreating existing pet sites, nothing new. After the latest revival in 2014, I told myself that I needed to move on to other opportunities and put pet sites behind me. That was until 2020.
In 2020, I realized that I wanted to begin building a gaming company that had a foundation of improving education. After discussing it with others, I found that @Heffrad had a similar interest, and we decided to explore opportunities. After looking at games and our skill set, we realized that virtual pet sites are perfect for our first exploration. We believe that virtual pet sites are engaging and can create feedback loops to encourage our users to improve their pets, while also improving themselves. So we took the Sensipets from 2014 and began working on modernizing it.
If there are items that are not working, strange text, or bugs; I am going to blame the 2014 code 😉
That’s where we are today. Since Mid-2020 we have been hard at work, understanding where virtual pet sites are today, looking at ways to incorporate education into them, working on approachability to new and existing virtual pet site players, and figuring out how to make this an established company that will make a difference.
Stay tuned for tomorrow where we talk about the future of Sensipets