aidan strong

Texturetown is an algorithmically remixed MMO created from assets of now-defunct mid-2000's children's MMOs. It uses the fabric of games themselves as media to collage and remix, drawing from a long history of glitch, machinima, and assemblage

In the early 2000s, MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft demonstrated the massive financial potential multiplayer games could have. Hoping to capitalize on this trend, children's entertainment companies like Cartoon Network and Disney began developing their own multiplayer games filled with characters from their IP. This resulted in a massive influx of children's games being released in a short period of time, four of most popular being Toontown (2003-2013), Pirates of the Caribbean Online (2007-2013), Club Penguin (2005-2017), and Fusionfall (2009-2013). Yet, due to poor financial performance, most of these games were shut down less than 10 years after their launch. Despite loving and engaged communities, their worlds were abandoned overnight.

Texturetown creates a world from the shared memory of these once-lively spaces. It repurposes the source code of these games to invoke disjointed nostalgia. Sounds and memories are decontextualized to create a hypothetically playable, but functionally inert game.

Photos are from an installation of Texturetown in the upper gallery of the Experimental Arts Space at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The game can be found on GitHub.