| Commercial: | Yes |
| Type: | Children's digital collectible card game |
| Language: | English |
| Owner: | Turner Broadcasting System (Time Warner) |
| Author: | Sam Register |
| Current Status: | Closed, |
| Headquarters: | Atlanta, Georgia, United States |
Cartoon Orbit was an online gaming network created by Turner Online for CartoonNetwork.com that launched in November 2000 to promote its shows and partners. Its main attraction was a system of virtual trading cards called "cToons", which generally featured animation cells from programs broadcast on the network, though advertisement-based cToons were also common. Added in October 2002 was the popular head-to-head strategy game gToons.
The site began to suffer from lack of maintenance beginning in 2005. On October 16, 2006, Cartoon Network shut down Cartoon Orbit and left users with a "Thank You" certificate as a token of their appreciation.
Cartoon Orbit was the brainchild of Sam Register, who was also behind the development of CartoonNetwork.com in 1998. He went on to become the creative director of the site as well as Cartoon Orbit from 2000 to 2001 before leaving to pursue television development with Cartoon Network in its Los Angeles studios. He came up with the idea for Cartoon Orbit after seeing Sesame Workshop's Sticker World website. After Register left Cartoon Orbit, Art Roche became the creative director of CartoonNetwork.com. Justin Williams was the project lead at Turner and Director of Community for Cartoon Orbit until 2003 when he began working on other Cartoon Network interactive projects. Lisa Furlong Jones, Sharon Karleskint Sharp, and Robert Cass created content and wrote copy for Cartoon Orbit while Noel Saabye and Brian Hilling provided the art and animation.[1]
The site was first registered in May 2000. Beta testing continued into at least November of that year, and a "toononomist" was hired to decide the prices of some 250 character cToons according to senior producer Justin Williams.[2] The original name was to be "Cartooniverse", but it was changed because that name was already copyrighted. Cartoon Orbit was first built using parts of Communities.com's "Passport" software (not to be confused with the current Communities.com, which is unrelated). This software was a 2D avatar-based chat server where members could decorate their own spaces, and its assets were used in Orbit for displaying and editing .
Chat functionality in the finished product was limited to drop-down menus to safeguard children's privacy. To comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, Cartoon Orbit instead had a list of pre-written words and phrases that players could send in a chat box.[3] Because children's safety online was one of Register's top priorities in developing Cartoon Orbit, parents would receive emails informing them of their children's registration if the child was under the age of 13. According to Jim Samples, content from advertisers was clearly labeled as such so that Cartoon Orbit could predominantly be entertaining "without ruining the experience with too much commercialization."
Until the complete conversion to Adobe Flash in 2002, references could still be found in the HTML source code to passport "room servers" and links to technical documentation on Communities.com's website.[4] Also before the Flash transition were "Worlds" on Cartoon Orbit based on fictional cartoon locations, which came complete with a quote or quip from that world's characters, a poll, and links to "Spotlight", which Orbit players could vote on.[5]
Viant worked on the site as well, offering project and business management for the development and beta and back-end software development for the user and content management. Scott Gutterman served as the lead at Viant, and Stacie Spychalski, David Gynn, Chris Griswold, Chip Plesnarski, Wan Agus, and others managed plans, requirements and developed the code. Before being acquired and ultimately closing, Viant went on to work at several Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner projects from 2000 to 2002.
Cartoon Orbit launched in November 2000[6] as an online community with required registration, though an earlier press release noted a planned October 2000 debut.[7] The launch came by way of a partnership between Time Warner and AOL.[8] Its membership grew over 150,000 members strong by mid-December, and that figure increased to over 300,000 by February 2001.[9] [10] Members exceeded 850,000 by October 2001. Following a site redesign in June 2002, the site's registration exceeded 1 million active users by August.[11] Shortly after its release, Register expressed a desire to convert Orbit's point-based currency to a cash-based setup, but this never came to fruition.[12]
During Cartoon Orbit's lifetime, the site featured promotions and tie-ins that were carried out through its sponsors. As part of a larger campaign with Cartoon Network, a promotion for the fund-raising program Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, which entailed exclusive Halloween-themed, was held from October 1 to November 5, 2002.[13] As part of a licensing agreement, Nestlé featured characters from Cartoon Network's Ed, Edd n Eddy in a 2004 Wonder Ball promotion that offered exclusive Cartoon Network-themed Wonder Balls as a top prize. Among other rewards was access to a special cToon showroom that contained a mystery Wonder Ball cToon.[14]
For the first few years, the site was updated weekly. Beginning in mid-2005, it became apparent that Turner Online stopped maintaining Cartoon Orbit. Updates were ceased in February 2006 and many reported bugs went unfixed. On August 17, 2006, Cartoon Network removed the navigation for Cartoon Orbit from its main header, causing many users to speculate that Cartoon Network had given up completely on Cartoon Orbit while some anticipated its closure. The same users also pointed to the recent AP press release from Cartoon Network about developing a then-unnamed cartoon-based MMORPG as proof that Cartoon Orbit would soon be a thing of the past.[15] Starting on September 29, 2006, users were no longer able to sign up for and create new Cartoon Orbit accounts. When clicking on the "Join Now" button, the user was instead presented with a "Registration is Closed" page.
Cartoon Orbit officially closed on the early morning of its closing date, October 16, 2006. The link that was placed at the bottom of the home page was redirected to Cartoon Network ¡Ya!, Cartoon Network's Spanish site; however, directly linking to their web address showed that Cartoon Orbit was still online. The following day, the login was removed from the homepage and anyone who tried logging in on another site page was disallowed. Today, all links to Cartoon Orbit now redirect to the CartoonNetwork.com homepage.
Players were given points to purchase stickers, called, from the in-game store called the . Players could also receive, and (the game's assets) by entering special redemption codes, during special events, bartering with other players (trading), or in an auction format.
came with a wide range of functionalities. Most were static, but some were animated and/or had sound. Other, when clicked, played mini-games or had special functionality (such as a Dexter's Laboratory-themed that automatically counted down to Albert Einstein's birthday).
Players were given their own gallery spaces, called, to decorate with cards of their choice. One could further customize their by changing their 's background.
Three main collectibles were available in the Cartoon Orbit game: .
was Cartoon Orbit's own digital collectible card game extension. Launched on October 14, 2002, over 250,000 users had joined after the first month and over 400,000 users were playing after the first two months.[17] [18] was discontinued alongside Cartoon Orbit on October 16, 2006, although it has been stated that it might return "as a stand-alone game sometime in the future with new sets of game pieces to collect".[19]
In December 2007, was revived as "Action Packs" for ,[20] followed by a version becoming available in April 2008.[21] Though the revival is now only available in a single-player mode, the rules and design are virtually identical to the original.
Players assembled decks composed of 12 cards each. Cards represented characters, places and props from shows broadcast on Cartoon Network, and each card had a color, value and occasionally a special effect that could modify the of other . A game of, which typically lasted about three minutes, involved two players strategically using seven at a time to gain the most points by the game's end. Two colors (determined by the "bottom" card of each player's deck) were goal colors: if the two colors were both "neutral" colors (black or silver), the higher total point value won. If there was exactly one non-neutral color (blue, red, yellow, green, purple, etc.) between the goal colors, a player with more cards of the non-neutral color would receive a 15-point bonus to their total before determining victory. If neither color were neutral, a player could win by having more of each color in play than the opponent; otherwise, the higher total value won. Five separate expansion packs containing different were released between 2003 and 2006.