mytopia is no utopia

Going through techcrunch.com today I stumbled across their post on mytopia.com, an online social gaming community which works across the major social networks. It doesn't matter if your friend is on Bebo and you're only on Facebook, the two of you can play. It looked interesting, I like the screenshots that they showed, and techcrunch boasted about it. Plus, it had sudoku. Score!

So I went to the site to create an account. I even got my sister to try it out too since she happened to be home for the weekend, in the same room as me, and on a 'puter. Now, during account creation you can create your own avatar. Ok, so I know that this is day 1 of beta testing, but honestly, if the experience of creating an avatar was any indication of how the rest of my user experience was going to be (and it was), I should have stopped right then. You get to choose 7 different aspects of the avatar. I had issues with mytopia's avatars because well, they all looked like guys! The 7 different aspects were lined up across the top from left to right. So logically (most) people will select their background first (because it's the most left), and then they'll choose they're body (because that's what is next). So even though the next characteristics had more feminine options, I was stuck trying to pick a masculine body. There were like 2 girl looking options versus 36+ guy looking options. And just when I reluctantly selected a black tshirt as the body I hear "Heeeey! They all look like dudes! I don't want to be a dude!" My sister was disappointed too. Good to know I wasn't alone.

Once my account was created (my avatar ended up with a black shirt, mickey mouse ears, and an emo haircut. sweet!), I logged in. Then music, reminiscent of the old school mario games, started. It was fun listening to it for a few seconds, then I had to hit my mute button on my laptop because I couldn't find a mute button on mytopia to click on. Lame. (Update: I found the mute button. So that was my bad and I take back that "Lame") So I'm in mytopia, the layout looks cool. It looks like map of a town, where I can click on places like Casino, Card Room, and Bar. But what the heck do I do? Where do I go? What, no welcome? I mean, I know I can figure things out on my own, but what about people who need some hand holding? Some direction? "Uhhhh, what am I supposed to do now?? Where did you go?!?" My sister was lost too.

So, I thought I'd first vist the Town Hall. There's a "Who's Online" option? Cool, I wanted to take a look at everyone else. I take a look and see some cool avatars. One has a cowboy hat, cool shades, and a beard. It looked pretty creative so I looked at that avatar's screenname. It was mine. What?!? Mytopia had overwritten the avatar settings I chose! I yell over to my sister to see if she can find herself in this section. She exclaims in an upsetting voice "Heeeey! That's not me. I thought I could make my own person!" Uber lame. Avatar identification (I think) is kind of a big thing. To give users the option of creating one and then "taking it away" by assigning them something different is so not cool.

Then to top it all off, both of us go to Settings to correct our avatars, hit "Save" and then... "code: unknownerror". Alright, this is starting to get really annoying. At this point my sister just quits. I want to as well, but I feel like if I could just play one game of sudoku this wouldn't have been such a waste. So I click on the "Sudoku" link. It asks me to login... again. Annoying. Are you kidding me? I type in my credentials and then it takes me to the mytopia homepage. I can't even play sudoku. This is beyond lame.

I click back to techcrunch and start reading the comments. There's a mix, but it looks like I wasn't the only one experiencing problems. I don't know if I'll ever go back. I really liked the graphics and the concept, but NOTHING worked for me. As for my sister, she is the college student who spends countless hours on the 'puter every week. She's not highly technical (not a "geek") but she's open to new things and loves spending time chatting and doing crossword puzzles online. And she's an active member in Facebook. I don't know who mytopia's target group is, but I'm thinking that she fits into it. I asked her if she would ever go back to that site. And among her MANY reason's for "no" I can sum them all up in her first one - "it's not fun."

Oh, mytopia. Techcrunch had some faith in you and this is a beta version. But still, I mean... I expected a bit more. I think if you work out your bugs, maybe take a few lessons from Kim's Community Building on the Web (which will greatly improve your user experience) you might be ok. And perhaps, I might just go back (I really did dig the graphics and concept). But probably not anytime soon.