The origin of our stream pets
The pet contests
In this post we'll explain how most of our pets were decided by the community.
How our stream pets were decided
Since the day we started, we've received a lot of pet suggestions. Some weird, others are still lingering in my head, wishing that someday we'll have those pets available. We'll share how most of our pets were selected by the community.
The first pet contest
The first pet contest ran through Twitter and Discord. We thought it would grow our social presence, it didn't, but it did give us insights on how to run proper contests. I believe we had around 4 to 5 genuine suggestions, and we let Joris and his wife decide. And that's how a Xenomorph became a pet in Pando.
The art contest
Our art submission contest was back in 2022, before the AI hype, which means AI-generated work would not have qualified as a valid submission. We wanted everyone to start drawing and to appreciate how difficult it is to do it extremely well, like our pixel art pets.
Seeing the enthusiasm, and looking at the entries was great fun. In the end, the Ghost stood out.
Start voting
To focus more on engaging a larger number of creators, we were increasingly looking for sustainable decision-making and ways to increase the number of people participating in the contests. This would lead to pet designs driven by popular interest.
First, we do a collective measurement of interest by asking everyone to share their suggestions and build a shortlist, which becomes the top 5 candidates.
In the second round, the winner is the pet with the most votes. In the last round, we added an artist's choice for those who want to be surprised and want to let the artist's imagination run wild.
This time the Fox emoji got used the most and won 🦊.
Dragon won in the round after 5️⃣.
..and Axolotl!
What's going to happen in the future?
As you may have noticed, frogs, ducks, wolves, and pandas/bears have made a regular appearance. And we are overdue for another contest. So who knows. If you are in our Discord, you will be the first to receive the announcements. So if you have a pet in mind, drop your suggestion, and you might just see it on stream one day.
