veteran – 🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺

Hey Poptropicans! It’s been a minute since we’ve conversed with the Poptropica Creators, and with Poptropica’s recent move to Coolmath Games and focus on the Roblox studio Suit Up Games, we wanted to take a deeper dive into how these shifts happened.

So we reached out to someone who’s been involved with the game since its early days and continues to work on both Pop and its spin-off Roblox studio today—Jonathan Pitcher, Art Director at Poptropica and Suit Up Games—for an interview. Happily, he obliged, and below is our Q&A!

Robot Revolution: These bots have blown a fuse.

PHB: What’s your current role with Poptropica / Suit Up Games?

Jon: I get to wear several hats here. Many others do as well.

Poptropica: My title is Art Director, but my main role is a director for branded games for our clients like Disney, Sony, Paramount, etc. When we create new content for Poptropica like islands, I work as an artist with our amazing team of artists and developers.

Suit Up Games: I’m happily animating. This is what I love best. I help lead the efforts for our animators. I’m responsible, with others on our team, for creating the animations for our Roblox games. I also help build character rigs and work with some of our newer artists as a manager.

PHB: What’s been your history with Poptropica?

Jon: 2009: I was hired to create our branded games. Some remember that as a Poptropica Creator I was known as Master Mime. During these years I also assisted with the art for island creation. I helped lead the animations and created new content for the store.

2011: I became the advertising director. In this role I managed the team of artists and developers that created branded games for Poptropica.

2017: I became an art director. As I continued to direct the branded game projects some of my focus shifted to helping create new islands and managing the Poptropica store.

2022: We started Suit Up Games. My focus moved to character animation for our Roblox Games. During this time, I’ve continued to direct and create branded games for Poptropica.

PHB: Poptropica is now with Coolmath Games and it’s been announced that there are no plans to update it with more content, new or old. Meanwhile, the spin-off Roblox studio Suit Up Games, which you’ve been working with, has been growing. From your perspective, how and why have these shifts occurred, and how do you feel about them?

Jon: We worked very hard for many years to keep Poptropica rolling forward. It was our main passion to keep telling stories through creating games. For many years that was solely through Poptropica. It was an amazing ride. Like all studios there have been bumps along the way, but we continued to learn. Our passion for creating these kinds of games has not stopped. It was time to position Poptropica with Coolmath Games. They have been wonderful partners with us. Their traffic is very strong, and we hope many of our dedicated Poptropica players will join forces with those that play on Coolmath Games. With this transition I hope our Poptropica community of players will grow even more. The more people play and have fun on Poptropica, the greater the possibilities can open for Poptropica’s future.

Holmes Run: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could do it…

As we made these kinds of transitions, we needed our company to keep moving forward. As gaming evolved, we did too, and we created Suit Up Games. We have a strong relationship with our clients who want to keep making games with us. We also have our own ideas for games from the stories we want to tell. The future is bright. There are many cool things to come.

Still Not Constantinople: Why they changed it, I can’t say.

PHB: What does the future hold for Poptropica and Suit Up Games? Will the Poptropica brand develop further beyond the game — for example with Poptropica Junior, potential animated series, and expansion of the graphic novels?

Jon: Regarding Suit Up Games, we have more games in the pipeline, and we’re excited about what will be coming up next. I wish I could share more, but you’ll see! For Poptropica, we’ve just recently moved to Coolmath Games, so we are not ready to make any big moves. Our clients that work with us to create Poptropica games are still engaged in conversations with us, so the door is open to possibilities. We are keeping our perspectives open to what makes the most sense for our studio and our audience.

PHB: What are you most proud of having achieved with Poptropica?

Jon: I’m sincerely grateful to have been part of the team that helped create and supported the growth of Poptropica. During the first couple months I got to illustrate the Underworld scenes for Mythology Island, and I created a Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs mini game experience. It didn’t take me long to realize how cool it is to be a Poptropica Creator. Because my role has been more focused on the branded games that generate revenue for Poptropica, I’ve been in more of a supportive role. While the team has been more like the working parts of the engine, I was like the fuel to help it keep moving. Today I get to be an active part of the character animations in our games so now maybe I’m a piston. Haha.

PHB: Anything else you want to share with Poptropicans everywhere?

Jon: Keep having fun on Poptropica. Six years ago, the phrase “Poptropica Forever” came to my mind and our team kept this focus as we continued to figure out how we’d keep this legacy going. As you keep playing and having fun, who knows what the future will bring for Poptropica? Stick around and we’ll find out.

Not a Nursing Home: It’s a retirement community!

Thanks, Jon, for all that you do for Poptropica, and sharing your insights with us! Though Poptropica isn’t ready for more updates now, we’re hopeful about how the door remains open for future possibilities.

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy other interviews we’ve done with various Poptropica Creators, such as Jess Brallier, Mitch Krpata (twice), Abhi Arya, and the team collectively. Keep on poppin’ on!

Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Comical Dragon. Enjoy!

Hi all! My name is Comical Dragon. I’m a longtime Poptropica player and PHB reader. I’m not going to say how old I am, but I am old enough to remember the Flash days of Poptropica, when new islands and ideas were abundant, and each one left me feeling satisfied.

To me, the beauty of Poptropica and its islands was their creativity.

Remember when the friends page used to look like this?

I’m the kind of person that likes the simple things in life. Even as I aged out of Poptropica’s target demographic (originally 6–15 years old), I still revisited the website from time to time, and up until their removal, I would replay some of my favorite islands over and over again. All this to say, Poptropica was, and is, a game that I’ve held close to my heart. For that reason, it pains me to say that I’m deeply disappointed in where the game has gone in recent years.

A bit of background, in case you’re unfamiliar with Pop lore: The game was released in 2007, created by Jeff Kinney (more popularly known as the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series). Through 2007-2015, the game grew to have over 75 million registered users. The original publishers were Pearson Education, but the site was sold to Sandbox Networks in 2015. As it often happens with company acquisitions, teams were restructured, with evidence of some longtime Pop Creators leaving against their wishes. This is the point where I begin my criticisms.

Secret Lair: This evil HQ is under construction.

Looking at this list of island releases by year, taken from the Poptropica Fandom Wiki, you can see that starting in 2015, there are fewer islands released per year, dwindling down to just one last year in 2022.

Also see the PHB’s Island Guides for info on all the islands.

In my personal opinion, the islands from 2015 onwards lack the creativity and depth of the islands before them. My playthroughs of the most recent ones, the three contest-winning Dream Islands (Fairy Tale, Goofball, and Jade Scarab) left me deeply disappointed. The concepts of these islands are so rich and have so much potential! Just check out the inside looks with the player designers of Jade Scarab and Goofball Island. But it felt to me as though the team didn’t want to play with the ideas they were offered from players.

It took me no more than 15 minutes to play through each one — granted, I am an older player. Still, there was not much to explore in the environments of these three islands, barely any NPCs to interact with, and the main quests were extremely simple. They essentially held your hand while going through objectives, and there wasn’t much of a story element that I had enjoyed with previous islands.

Because I don’t want to be overly negative, I will mention that some newer features of Poptropica are quite nice, like the Home Island and the player’s clubhouse, allowing players to make their own space in-game.

Of course, I can’t talk about the latest islands without talking about Flash. When Adobe Flash was discontinued in 2020, many of Poptropica’s islands were rendered unplayable. The Creators kept promising that old islands were being brought over to a new format, but the selection of islands has disappointed fans. Poptropica went from a bustling 51+ islands to 17, with some of them being locked behind a paywall, either of membership or the paid Steam bundle.

I will admit that transitioning the amount of content that Poptropica had does take time and hard work. I won’t fault the Creators for that. However, I think that rather than releasing new islands that don’t have the same appeal as old islands, and continually revamping the Home Island, the Creators need to bring back the old islands — as they were originally. They’ve remastered classic islands in the past, and the results haven’t been well received (see the watered-down Mythology, and Zomberry on Roblox).

Moving on from the islands, I’d also like to touch on the membership paywalls. Many original costumes, and even some of the re-released islands, are for members only. I understand the need for revenue since the website doesn’t seem to be getting as much traffic these days, but this has a huge impact for players. The costumes available to all are flat — they’re everyday clothes that you or I might wear. And the Costumizer tool, which allowed players to put together creative looks inspired by the characters they met across the islands, is also gone!

Poptropica doesn’t offer the same freedom to players anymore — we can’t explore islands nor customize our characters to be as fantastical as we want. A huge part of what drew me to the website was the creativity, and the escapism of it all. It just isn’t there anymore.

My suggestions to the Pop Creators:

Spend more time rebuilding, and gradually releasing old islands! While adding to the Home Island and little side quests are great, they’re really not what Poptropica is all about.
Let players make their own choices, and have deeper gameplay! Kids are so much smarter than we give them credit for, especially when they’re engaged — simply look towards the old islands.
Give players more creative control over their characters, and make more whimsical and fun costumes and add-ons available to people who don’t have memberships.

Poptropica in its prime was releasing quality islands and drawing millions of players, old and young alike. What happened? Let’s bring back the old Poptropica that so many people cherished.

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Comical Dragon. If you did, you might also enjoy our various Pop Petition posts.

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. Interested in writing for the PHB? We’d love to hear from you!

Tag: veteran

Q&A with Jonathan Pitcher, Art Director at Poptropica & Suit Up Games 🎤🧑‍🎨

A longtime player’s look at Poptropica 👀