PurrFect Planet Diary

The diary of a $77,000,000.00 idea. August 11, 2007

I met Pegi Goff at the first Tampabay area Meetup of people who wanted to share The Secret ie The Law of Attraction. I walked up to her after the meeting and said, “I know I am supposed to meet you, but don’t know why.” She seemed ready for that opening line and launched into how she was ready to get involved in something that really mattered. Her first donation to Big Cat Rescue was with the White Tiger brochure and T-shirts.

Within days she presented me with a Webkinz plush toy that had a corresponding online game element and a $77,000,000.00 idea was born. I had set that figure as my intention, but at the time had no idea how to achieve it. I think this is it.

Webkinz launched in 2005 and as of this date claims 2 million units sold to retailers and 1 million registered users of the Webkinz World website. NPD Group reports that the product brought in more than $1 million (USD) in United States retail sales in 2006.

Last year, after Howie showed me an article about it in Business Week, I signed up for Second Life. From time to time I have logged in to try and figure out how to do good with this otherwise materialistic phenomena. Yesterday, August 11, 2007, Second Life had more than 800,000 players online who had spent $1,400,000.00 in the last 24 hours.

8.9 million user accounts have been created since its inception in 2003 and most of those since 2006.

At this writing, Pegi and I are calling our venture PurrFect Planet and she called me Friday to tell me that she had gotten a commitment for a $10,000.00 grant and possibly that much per year if this could be developed as an educational tool.

We are set to brainstorm this soon but here is what is coming to me from the Universe:

It starts with the most adorable plushy cat toys you can imagine. The toy is small, but has such charm and detail that adults will keep it on their desks. Teenagers will proudly carry it, because it will represent an icon that is a constant reminder of who they perceive themselves to be. The toy will be marketed to remind the owner of what it takes to succeed. This is why it should be a top- of- the- food- chain- predator. A cat because of the big cat charity supported by the income and that shelters the income, in turn.

Buying the toy gets you into the online community. You create and personalize your character and you have a home that you share with the plushy type that you bought. Your home is sort of the MySpace equivalent where you show off who you are and invite friends to see it. Players can post photos, videos and music to share with friends. You can pay for enhancements or earn them.

You pay for enhancements by making donations to a charity through the game so that it can be tracked. To be a vendor you have to be a charity or donate a substantial portion of each sale to a charity within the PurrFect Planet. Green enhancements are encouraged by price breaks, bonuses and status. This would encourage players to seek out wind powered home improvements over petroleum and such so as to get people thinking about what it takes to keep a planet healthy. Status is a rating system that becomes a badge of honor with benefits.

You can earn money to spend in the game through the educational component. You can travel to wildlife preserves and spend time transformed into a forest creature, native to the area of the preserve. This will require a huge data base of information for each type of preserve. There could be oceanic preserves, polar preserves where the ice caps are melting based upon the number of players in the game who are using products that contribute to the destruction of the ozone. There would be the typical rain forest preserves, prairie preserves and savannahs. Each with its own eco system to keep in balance by knowing about it, understanding it and really becoming a part of the whole process by being a creature in it.

Based upon your status you are transformed. A new or poor player would enter as a bug or slug. They would get an instant info sheet that tells them where they can find refuge, who eats them, how they reproduce and who or what they have to find to eat. They are then competing in the preserve to stay alive, find a mate, reproduce, etc. They are playing against other players and perhaps against the machine in the absence of others. More advanced or higher status players are doing the same but also have to find and eat appropriate prey, who are the poorer, less advanced players.

Predators have to eat a minimum to stay alive. This encourages frequent play to keep your predator healthy. If you are eaten you can’t play again unless you buy another online creature at that level (Howie’s idea) or you can opt to start over as a bug. You get points for your proficiency that can be converted to status (a higher up the food chain animal) or game dollars to spend inside the game.

Your character could be taken by poacher and jailed in a zoo, circus or sold as a pet. If so, you would have to buy a new character or work your way back up again. There would be a built in incentive to hire more game wardens with your discretionary dollars (think Monopoly’s Get Out Of Jail Free card). To enhance your chances for reproducing you have to buy gestures, such as the mating dance of a bird in order to attract a mate. Somehow those signals could then be visible to other players of the same type of animal, to help them find each other to work together cooperatively to build and guard nests and feed young. If your parent character is eaten, then there could be some way that you can assume the role of one of your offspring, just like nature handles the situation.

If you are a group animal you have to offer some trade off to be a valuable member of the group, such as picking fleas off other group members. Fleas would seek out mammals to sustain themselves and perhaps could only be picked off by others in your same group type. The message here is that to benefit yourself, you have to help others. The game would teach lessons in economics. If you spend money on material things it doesn’t help you reach the higher potential you could if you were reinvesting in your future, such as buying green to save the polar caps, or paying the salary of a game warden to help protect your character when it is in the reserve.

Characters could speak via typed chat or via headset and microphone. Second Life currently provides this to users. I am wondering if all of this could be done with scripting within Second Life? Since it already has most of the groundwork, perhaps we could buy an island, or suggest that SL sell planets, where our own scripts may over ride some of theirs in order to create this game format. Perhaps some sort of fee split on the annual $79.00 price they charge could be arranged if they saw the potential here. I don’t know how we would pitch the idea without giving it away. I am sure someone knows the answer to that and is just around the corner.

To make this work we need people who can create such a game. We need people who can create the huge data base of information sheets on each animal that we use in the game so that it is educational. We need to make it available to schools as a way to teach science and biology in such a way that kids want to learn. We will need a way to determine eligibility of charities, such as only those accredited by Give.org, or those who meet certain standards. This game would then be promoted by the charities to their members as a way of generating funds for their programs. For the cats, Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/

I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.

You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile!

Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile

You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org

Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue

Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.