“I owe every single piece of knowledge I have on HTML coding to Petz,” she said. Meanwhile, Watson cites web design as her “dream job”, and currently crafts Skyrim mods after Petz sparked her interest in the hobby. Sorensen, too, went on to do web design for an online game, and continues to do graphic design professionally. It most likely influenced my decision to study graphic design some years later, and I’m now an interaction designer. It got me to feel more comfortable with tinkering – I mucked around with a hex editor to create different colour variations. I learned HTML by making tons of websites about the game. One woman I spoke to, Rebecca Cottrell, explained why she credits Petz with her current career: Many women thanked Petz for introducing them to HTML, graphic design, and coding. Petz became a hive for internet activity, and women were running the show. Watson said, “we’re doing things we never could have dreamed of fifteen years ago I’ve seen jaw-dropping hexes of creatures such as aliens (from the movie Alien), Toothless the Dragon, and countless fantasy and wild animals, when once upon a time, we were pleased with an original breed cat we’d managed to change the colour of… We’ve come a long way!” Nowadays there’s third party software that allows for easier editing, but the community is still quite prolific. There were so many times that I’d set my alarm at odd times of the night, so I could get up, hide under the covers with my laptop and bid as an auction ended.Įxamples of some of the more creative hexed breeds. It was such a thrill to stalk, snipe and win auctions, especially when they were from well-known hexers, and the sense of pride when your own petz sold was enormous.
Alena Watson, who still runs her Petz adoption site, Moonflower, remembers: One site, Petz Auctions, acted as a means of building friendly competition while allowing people to bid on hexed petz that were hard to find. One fan, Sarah Sorensen, who went on to become a web and graphic designer said, “I really think the program itself encouraged you to expand your play outside of the game - it created so many opportunities for experimentation.” Folks who wanted petz from these people would have to fill out an application to adopt a premium hexed pet. Those who became truly talented in modding breeds became something of a sensation in the community. People would then put their “hexies” up for adoption. They would edit the petz’ hexadecimal codes, altering anything from body shape to coloring to fur textures. In the early days, people meticulously edited breed files in notepad without any visual aid. Perhaps the community’s biggest asset, though, was hacking and modding breeds. A hexed Great Dane litter from Petz’ site “Petz Mirage”, now defunct
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