PKXD is an online game for kids that is available on cell phones, computers, and tablets. In this game, you can take part in competitions, perform tasks with friends, unlock new items and create environments. Released in 2019, the game developed by the company Afterverse became popular and now totals millions of users worldwide. To find out more about how the game was created, nine year-old Miguel P., a member of the 4th Joca club, interviewed Claudio Tezzin, one of PKXD’s developers. Check out their conversation below:

How did the idea for the game come about?

Before we created PKXD, we belonged to a company called PlayKids. It is a children’s APP that has both videos and games. We noticed that kids spent more time playing some of the games than watching videos. So, we started analyzing what they played the most, what was the coolest. From there, we discovered Crafty Lands, which is a Minecraft-like game from Brazil. We started with this one, took it out of PlayKids and created an area just for games. We looked at the market and realized that other games for older audiences were emerging (PlayKids was for young kids) and thought we would do the same. And then the idea for PKXD came up.

And why the name PKXD?

That’s a good question. Not much thought went into the name PKXD. We created a game and weren’t sure how successful it would be, but we had to test it, right? So how does it work? You have an idea, you create a game, you produce it and then people have to want to play it. And you will only be able to do this if you launch it and see if it is well-accepted. As I said earlier, the old company is called PlayKids and the letters PK came from that. XD was a joke. The former CEO (executive director) said: “Dude, since we’re only going to test and launch in Canada, let’s use PKXD and then change the name”. But we couldn’t change it because it became a success really fast.

What was your inspiration when creating the game?

At the time, we were very inspired by a few of the Roblox games, which was a very strong platform. We were also inspired by Mythical City, Adopt Me!, and after the idea was being developed, a few of the other games also, anything that was really relevant to kids. These were the initial inspirations, together with the analysis of what people liked to play within PlayKids.

Did you expect to have all this success?

No. When we created the games it was just supposed to be a test. We were targeting a million users. That’s a lot of people, right? We planned to invest a little until we reached one million monthly users. We launched in September and by December, we already had a million. By March, we had 10 million monthly users. It’s very difficult to achieve this. Then the pandemic started, which sped up the process, and the entire gaming industry grew very quickly. We went from 10 million to 50 million monthly players.

Is this number continuing to grow?

It dropped a little after the pandemic. Today, we have between 20 to 30 million monthly players. It fluctuates a lot, but there’s always a very significant number (of players). The game is still quite big. [During the pandemic] people were forced to stay home and this made the entire gaming industry grow. Since PKXD is a simulation where you can have your home, your pet, jobs, and everything else, it was well-suited for the time when people weren’t having much contact with the real world.

Do you plan to use PKXD in education some day?

We don’t plan to use it in schools per se, but rather to include minigames connected to education within PKXD. Something closer to entertainment than education, because nowadays schools have a lot of games that are somewhat like PKXD.

Job positions within gaming

Developer: learns coding to program the game.

Game designer: designs how characters and scenarios look, among other things.

Scriptwriter: develops the story that unfolds in the game.

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