Webkinz Next

Webkinz Next is a 3D, multiplayer, free-to-play video game by Ganz. It is available on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. The mobile and desktop versions of the game have the same features, unlike Webkinz Classic.

Webkinz Next is written in Unity, and was released on October 23, 2020. There was a period of Beta testing prior to the official launch, led by Creative Director Karl Borst.

Background

Webkinz Next is built using the same Unity engine that Amazing World (a now-defunct 3D Ganz game) was written in. Development started in 2018; a year after the shutdown of Adobe Flash Player for web browsers was announced. The discontinuation of Flash was bad news for the Webkinz brand, as Webkinz Classic was (and still is) written in Flash, specifically all three versions of ActionScript (1, 2, and 3).

Karl Borst did not know if Webkinz Classic could be saved from the shutdown of Flash, scheduled for December 31, 2020. Rather than let the Webkinz brand die out, Karl and his team began developing Webkinz Next, in order to continue the legacy of Webkinz.

However, Webkinz Classic did not die when Flash did. It still exists to this day, thanks to the Webkinz Classic Desktop App, which runs through an official, legal emulator called Adobe Air.

Unfortunately, the process of conversion to this emulator, when combined with the age of the Webkinz Classic codebase, the mixture of ActionScript versions, and the expensive cost of full-time Flash developers in modern times, has led to Classic's code becoming extremely difficult to change, to the point where messing with sensitive areas of the codebase could potentially corrupt the whole game.

New items, pets, and events are still added to Classic, but changing anything which already exists is currently unlikely. However, Ganz has emphasized that there are currently no foreseeable plans to shut down or stop updating Webkinz Classic.

As such, Webkinz Next provides many concepts and features that could not safely be added to Classic's code, such as moving/removing/adding room doors, expanded cooking and crafting recipes, Sparking baby pets, a more multiplayer-focused world, the Farmer's Market, riding vehicles in the Kinzville Park, the ability to easily change the name your pets refer to you as, and more. It also has some features which were removed from Classic during the Webkinz X update, such as visiting other players' houses.

While Webkinz Next is more advanced than Classic in some aspects, such as the flexibility of room design, it is still quite far behind Classic in terms of available content, from the number of room themes, to the number of "base" pets. The Kinzville Town Hall is not open to players yet. It should be noted that Webkinz Next has only been around for two years, whereas Classic has existed for almost 18.