Why MiniMonos was More Than Just a Game

As you all know, it is with great sadness that the MiniMonos team has announced the closing of its wondrous game. For some, this may simply be the ridding of a fun pastime, but to most us, I know it is much more.  As more myself, I know I am one of those people. For the past two years (well, a little more than), MiniMonos has been my home away from home, if you will. It’s a place that I could go to when I was bored, having a bad day, or just looking for some fun, and I could basically escape the true world. As time went on, the MiniMonos developers continuously found ways to bring more entertainment to the game through constant features and new updates. Some things about MiniMonos, however, just made it pure amazingness for me.

One thing that always amazed me about MiniMonos was the staff’s involvement in the community. In other virtual worlds, that’s just something you really don’t see. With MiniMonos, it’s an often occurrence to find an ambassador (or party master) online. I think even the fact that they had a party master shows how much they truly care. The involvement of the ambassadors, though, just made this such an astounding world. One great example of this would have to be the Pirates vs. Ninjas party. What started as a simple costume party hosted by a few blogs, turned into a huge island themed party with the help of none other than the amazing Badgerfox. That kind of dedication to the community stood out to me more than anything.

As mentioned before, MiniMonos was like my home away from home. A home though, isn’t one without a family there. Through MiniMonos, I made great friendships with people from truly all around the world. Something that’s always amazed me is how close and kind the entire community of MiniMonos was. Kindness was always predominantly shown from every player, even in times when it would be easier to not be nice. The main reason for this I believe was the amount of pride the ambassadors put upon us players for being good to one another. To make such a positive atmosphere constantly is not an easy feat (trust me), and the fact that they were able to keep it so nice just blows my mind. It truly shows how amazing they all are. Through this kind community they made, friendships blossomed and remained long term. As said though, the thing that truly astounds me is how they united people from all across the world. Together, we all united for one common interest in mind- making the world a better place for our future.

MiniMonos’ pure devotion to helping the world is the other thing in my mind that put this world way over the top. In other virtual worlds, the “saving the planet” theme slowly started to creep in. MiniMonos, however, was based around this. Their goal was to change the planet through making the youth of the world want to change it, something they accomplished very well. I mean, they encouraged 1,500 people to go out and make a true difference in the world. While some things may be considered small contributions, every little bit counts, and none of those changes would have happened without the influence of MiniMonos. I’ve always been one to try and stay relatively eco-friendly, but rarely did I go out and make true changes to the world. MiniMonos opened my eyes and encouraged me to go out and help not only my community now, but the future generations of the world. Through its time, MiniMonos never managed to stray from the path of trying to help the world. They showed true dedication to what they believed in and what was right, and to me that is just simply amazing.

As many of you may know, I was greatly involved in the MiniMonos community for quite a great time. As life caught up and got more busy, I began to fade from the community a bit, but still stopped in for a hello when I could. Despite this, MiniMonos still offered me many great opportunities. In my time here, I was able to accomplish many things. Obviously, I opened the blog MiniMonosExpress. Originally, it was just myself blogging, but as time went on, new authors began to be hired and do a fantastic job. With the help of EcoMom (original), I had the opportunity to help lead the EcoMonkey project as the EcoMonkey Team Leader and be the first EcoMonkey. In another instance, with the help of Badgerfox and Bananatastic, the Pirates vs Ninjas party, which I had originally planned to be a small little get together, bloomed into a huge island wide party with tons of monkeys showing up for the original event (that Bananatastic and I led). Another great opportunity that Bananatastic gave me was to help him with a Thanksgiving video, running around asking monkeys to say what they were thankful for. It was a lot of fun to get to know new monkeys by doing this. Through these experiences, I will say that they made me a better person, not just in this virtual world, but in the true world, and for that I thank you all.

Below are some photos and links that I considered of importance. I hope you will view them the same.

Pirates vs. Ninjas Original Party Thread

MiniMonos’ Impact on the World

My EcoProject

The Original EcoMonkey Blog

The Party Master Blog

The Go Bananas Blog!

 

An old header, one of my favorites.

 

Blog Certification

 

Mogger of the Month Awards

 

EcoMonkey Badges

(I will add in world pictures later, but they are on an old hard drive, so I’ll have to search for them.)

Now, as you can imagine, it’s a bit difficult to blog about a virtual world that’s no longer running. So, I must sadly also announce the closing of this blog. Now, the blog won’t be deleted. I’m going to leave it here as an archive of sorts (and for the nostalgia value). We may also have some occasional postings here still, especially in the following days. I’d like to thank you all for being so amazing and making it possible for us here at MiniMonosExpress to keep doing what we do. You all mean alot to us. Thank you.

 

I know this is a long post, but I think this is a topic that deserves it. However, I’ll try to wrap this up.

To the MiniMonos Staff,

If there’s anything I want to be taken from this, please do not view MiniMonos as a failure. In my eyes, as I hope it is in yours, it was a great success. Speaking for myself, I know MiniMonos greatly changed me for the better. Logging into MiniMonos used to almost always be the highlight of my day. Getting on to talk with the ambassadors and all my friends that I had made was just such an amazing feeling. Being able to come to this virtual world for  just even 15 minutes a day as an escape from the real world really helped me through some rough times. MiniMonos truly helped out. Obviously, I’m not the only one affected by you, though. I know for certain many other members felt the same way as I do about MiniMonos. Being apart of such a great community has truly been one of the greatest experiences of my lifetime. The 35 months I’ve been here have truly been fantastic months. All the joy in this time that MiniMonos has brought me cannot even come close to being expressed in words.

I’d also like to congratulate you on reaching the one main goal you set out to do- changing the world for the better. Think simply of all the monkeys who have joined the game- it’s well over a million. All these people came here with one common interest, saving the planet. You united us all to do something  that is difficult to do by oneself, while also proving that every little contribution by every person helps. With all the players, EcoMonkeys, and more, you have truly helped to change the world for the future generations. Whether a monkey was compelled enough to do an ecoproject or not, you at MiniMonos help changed the way they view what they do and how it hurts the environment. Through their experiences here at MiniMonos, all players have learned to care about the environment, and such a powerful influence from the staff has led to us all making real life changes on the world. That is just astounding. A virtual world, full of people around the globe, coming together to save the planet we love because of your influence. If you ask me, I’d say changing millions of kids’ outlook on the world is in no way a failure. Thank you so much to all the friends I’ve made here on MiniMonos. Thank you so much to all the staff that worked so hard to make all us players enjoy being here. You have truly changed my life and all the other player’s life for the brighter.

Thank you MiniMonos.

Thank you.