How Has WolfQuest Affected Players?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a request on Steam and on the WolfQuest Discord to help me with a magazine article I'm writing. I asked for anecdotes and accounts about how WolfQuest has affected our players. And people delivered – big time!

We've known since the first release of the game in 2007 that a lot of players really connect with the game. We know from the 2009 summative evaluation that the game was achieving its educational outcomes. But now, almost twenty years later, it’s fascinating to read stories from players about how the game has affected their life over the years. The magazine article won’t come out until later this year, and the team is working on some new stuff, not ready to announce, so I thought I’d share some of these stories in a devblog.

Some of them were, of course, about learning about wolves, which is the primary goal of the game:

I've always been someone who adores them, but WolfQuest was the start of discovering more about their *actual* behaviour beyond the old "alpha and omega" myths, alongside their lifecycle.

-Eris

My knowledge of genetics based on what's in the game once saved me from failing a test in biology class Freshman year.

-Simply Supernatural

But another primary goal of the game was to help players make an affective connection with wolves, so I love quotes like this one:

I first discovered this game as a nerdy 10 year old, and spent an exorbitant amount of time running around as a wolf (both in game and in person, let's be honest).

-Lydia

But it’s not just science content – people can use games to help them with real-life skills:

I learned English through WolfQuest…. I remember not understanding the tutorial and just spending ages roaming the Amethyst Mountain map stuck in wolf scent mode but slowly and surely, I began translating the words and actually understanding what was going on.

-Alina

I have dyslexia, but without WolfQuest and roleplaying so so so much for many years in my free time for hours helped improve my writing. I would spend hours after school writing paragraphs, stories, and engaging in so much writing.

-Rachel

One of the ultimate goals of science education is to help inspire someone to go into the field of science. I got quite a few responses from people who were doing this:

I'm about to enter my third year of a zoology degree, and for my dissertation I’m heading to Greece to study a selection of the wolf population in Macedonia. I've been playing WolfQuest since I was 9 years old and I truly think it's changed the trajectory for my life and fostered my passion for wolves in the wild!

-Skyla

Your game helped kickstart my interest in wildlife biology. I am a field technician working with Species-At-Risk in Canada and a hobbyist wildlife photographer. I will be pursuing a masters degree in environmental science later this year with a focus on wildlife conservation.

-Sarah

This game and its community are one of the biggest influences as to why I am studying to get my doctorate of veterinary medicine to become a wildlife veterinarian.

-Oliver

It helped spark my curiosity about wildlife and ecosystems at a young age, and that curiosity has only grown stronger over time. Currently, I’m involved in research at my university studying gopher tortoises, specifically looking at their potential competition with invasive green iguanas.

-Abigail

But inspiration is very personal Maybe the mystery of Lost River gives you a nudge into a different kind of career:

The theories surrounding Lost River interested me quite a lot, especially the theory about Lost River being based off Chernobyl. I started to do roleplays in Lost River based around this theory and researched the event to make it accurate. I ended up developing a strong interest in radiation and nuclear engineering because of this. This year, I am starting college for engineering and hope to start an apprenticeship at a nuclear power plant next year. I truly believe that without the Lost River map, I wouldn't have developed such an interest and my career choice would have been completely different.

-Addison

Or maybe the game inspires you to start a hobby with a very small scale ecosystem:

The focus this game has on ecosystems and the roles within them also got me interested in bioactive reptile enclosures a while back, and now I've got 4 reptiles living their best bioactive lives.

-Kathryn

In the early days of WolfQuest, some environmental educators expressed skepticism about the project – just another computer game, another virtual world that’s going to keep kids inside and away from nature. But I thought that when people learn about something, they often want to see the real thing. So it’s been gratifying to see how many people have been inspired to go to Yellowstone after playing WolfQuest.

I got to go to Yellowstone National Park over the summer of 2022, and saw wild wolves for the first time. I got to hike up to Slough Creek. I recognized it from the game. The feeling was indescribable. I was able to point to the Little Butte and tell my family, "I know exactly where we are!" That made my year, honestly.

-Kennedy

When I was around 13 I convinced my parents to take me to yellowstone and I played the wolfquest soundtrack during most of the trip.

-Max

The Community Forum was part of our vision for the project from the very start. We knew it was important to have a place for players to come together, talk about the game, talk about wolves. That's where a lot of learning takes place. And that happened! But little did we know that the forum would become a phenomenon unto itself – and more important than the game for many, many people:

I was a kid that had very little friends in elementary school, so meeting another girl my age who liked the same things I did was very monumental to me at the time.

-Skree

The community is always so sweet, and everyone is so accepting of all types of players. My life has been changed forever because of my experience with this game. I know I always have a community to count on when I'm feeling alone and have no one to play with.

-Emma

WolfQuest positively impacted me in many ways but the fan spaces were absolutely the most influential to me. The WQ community is full of amazing artists, animators, writers, etc. and was one of the first ways I engaged with a creative internet.

-katt

You've given every weird kid with a wolf obsession the perfect game, and the perfect place to feel seen and special.

-Rudolph

Science learning, affective connections with wolves and nature, and community – those were all part of our original goals for the game. But I also got so many responses about other ways that WolfQuest has affected players. In just a week's time, we got over 300 responses adding up to over 70,000 words! Including some really passionate and some very personal stories. I did read every single response, most of them in one sitting. I will admit that it choked me up.

Any successful creative work, whether it's a novel or a painting or a game or a movie or a TV show, is successful because it connects with people, often in unexpected ways. With WolfQuest, people can connect with the idea of being a wild animal and living that life. But I think another aspect of the game gives it unexpected power is the importance of the wolf pack or family. How many video games put you in a family where you have to live together and work together in order to survive and succeed? Whether single player or multiplayer, the game creates a found family, which offers an emotional context where you can layer in a lot of meaning from yourself onto the gameplay and also take out a lot of meaning from the gameplay and integrate it into your own life. I got a lot of responses about that kind of thing:

Playing this game helped me find peace and balance in life – I learned to understand that I cannot control everything, or save every pup I want. Soon, I found that I was able to keep moving, even when I wanted to flop around and feel sorry for myself. Wolves cannot do that, they cannot dwell on a broken leg or a trampled tail or else they will not survive.

-Sophia

It put the concept of risk and reward in life in a way I could understand better. It became easier to understand backing off when something wasn't worth the risk, and pushing forward when it was, things that I previously struggled with as an emotionally dysregulated, impulsive teenager. WolfQuest in many ways and forms got me through some of the toughest periods of my life, and taught me so much I don't think I'd know otherwise.

-Starcycle

Death, of course, has been part of the game since we added pups in 2010. And for little kids, that can be tough, but the game is a safe place to experience and learn how to handle those feelings.

I started playing WolfQuest when I was 6. I would literally cry if I lost a pup in the game. But the game taught me that it's just how it is in the wild. Of course, the Anniversary Edition took that to the next level, but the 'Legacy' version was perfect for laying down the truth for little me.

-Kitt

It hurts when you falter, and sometimes, your pup gets sick, you try so hard, you sit by them, and they die, and there was nothing to be done. You loved them very much, and their death doesn't change that. It was an experience I needed to have in a safer space, like a video game, because I would have never let it go had it happened in real life. Sometimes it's not in your control.

-fishcatpng

I also got quite a few responses about going through a really tough time as a child, and for some reason, WolfQuest was just the thing to help them get through that:

Growing up, I honestly didn't have the best childhood and I don't remember a lot from my childhood due to some pretty rough situations. But I always remembered one thing. WolfQuest. This game has been my safe haven when I had nowhere else to go. When everything felt scary and unknown, there was always one that was my constant, my home, and that was this game.

-Rowan

So thank you, everybody, who sent in your stories – either in response to this request a few weeks ago, or anytime over the past 19 years, sharing them on the community forum or social media or game reviews or wherever. The myriad of ways that players have bonded with the game is the reason why WolfQuest is still around. We knew when we were considering reviving the game that players would stick around if we stuck around. So, thank you everybody for sticking around.

And we're not done yet! So stay tuned.

-Dave Schaller/loboLoco

WolfQuest Producer