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Games Entertainment

The Cult of the NeoPet 40

Posted by Zonk from the universally-creepy dept.
Wired is running an article examining the ups and downs of the Neopet Addiction. The overly cute online 'game' mostly consists of teaching kids to look at ads, but somehow has developed a large following online. From the article: "A generation agrees. Neopets has a staggering 25 million members worldwide. It has been translated into 10 languages and gets more than 2.2 billion pageviews per month. These dedicated Neopians spend an average of 6 hours and 15 minutes per month on the site. That makes Neopets the second-stickiest site on the Internet - ahead of Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and eBay, according to Media Metrix. What's more, its demographics are the stuff of marketers' dreams: Four out of five Neopians are under age 18, and two out of five are under 13." Relatedly, Kotaku has a quick blurb about the Scientology backdrop against which this cuteness is projected. Update: 12/09 19:14 GMT by Z : Fixed broken link. There's a bug there, methinks.
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The Cult of the NeoPet More

The Cult of the NeoPet

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  • At least Neopets don't poop on your furniture and scratch the carpet.
  • This is your brain: :)

    This is your brain on neopets: :(

  • correct link (Score:3, Informative)

    by EddieBurkett ( 614927 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:24PM (#14221474)
    The link in the story is wrong. Go to http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/neopets.h tml [wired.com]
  • What's more, its demographics are the stuff of marketers' dreams: Four out of five Neopians are under age 18, and two out of five are under 13.

    That is not exactly a marketer's dream. Mid-20s with high income is a marketer's dream. They're happy to settle for middle-class under-30. Under 18 and there is usually a limit to how much you can milk kids for, in terms of their weekly disposable income (above which there is the parental filter) vs. the disposable income of post-college people.

    • True, but with the average age of parents increasing year after year -- translating into more disposable income on average -- Kids have more and more spending power available on average each year.

      -l

  • Neopets Founders? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by daviddennis ( 10926 ) <david@amazing.com> on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:30PM (#14221552) Homepage
    Anyone know what happened to the founders? They were strangely silent in the Wired article, even though they apparently still work for the company.

    The Scientology angle's pretty interesting, and the echos of Scientology-speak with their management were positively eerie. I've come close to crossing swords with that group in the past, and I must say I'm not keen on doing so in the future.

    I have to say, it's a very clever concept. It's worth visiting just to look at the bizarre creatures they've created. You don't need to sign up and sacrifice your body thetans to them in order to take a look.

    Fortunately.

    D

    (I ran an anti-Scientology site until I found that dealing with the anti-cult was almost as life absorbing as actually being in Scientology :-( ).

    • Re:Neopets Founders? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      I've come close to crossing swords with that group in the past, and I must say I'm not keen on doing so in the future.

      Given that there's nothing Scientology-related about the NeoPets game, that the internal work practices there seem to be at worst weird and that the Scientology angle only came up from someone looking to (mildly) badmouth the company -- I don't see any need to "cross swords" with people who are minding their own business and certainly not harming you.

  • Is it really that surprising? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Iriel ( 810009 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:31PM (#14221562) Homepage
    Neopets combines a lot of the known elements that can make a website 'sticky'. As a web designer, I'm pretty aware of why. Just look at how successful things like Pokemon and Tamogachi pets were. However, these don't require you to take your save card or deck everywhere, you don't need to have some stupidly large object dangling from your keychain, and you can access them almost anywhere. This is just to start (concerning the convenience of them) off.

    Not only that, but in schools, I read a lot of school studies about kids getting in trouble for playing Yahoo games or AOL games in classes with computers in front of them. With Neopets, you get all those games with a new skin and it appears to give you rewards for them as well. Even if kids end up buying the merchandise later, a big reason that Neopets does so well is because they have so many things that appear to reward you for using their web services with no fees up front. And their so damn cute!

    I should know, I've seen people kicked out of computer labs in college for playing on Neopets when people were trying to finish their finals. Its rather creepy.
    • I should know, I've seen people kicked out of computer labs in college for playing on Neopets when people were trying to finish their finals. Its rather creepy. I never got kicked out, put yes I played a lot on school comp. And being in computer science tech, we had admin rights on our account, so it was hard to block us any site or game.
  • I can finally buy that Xenu Space Plane [wikipedia.org] I've had my eye on.

  • SCIENTOLOGY (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 )

    From the kotaku [kotaku.com] link:
    "Adam and Donna are nice people, in and of themselves.
    The negative aspects of NeoPets, all came from the side
    of Scientology-Oriented business structure/psyche. From
    the very get-go, any employee who applies for a job,
    will be faced with a couple of personality screening
    tests. I shit you not, I had a more comfortable time
    with my SAT's in high school! A lot of people make fun
    of Scientologists in an ignorant sort of way; they don't
    really know what goes on behind the curtains, but
  • I have to admit, I assumed that virtual pets were a fad that would vanish. But Neopets, Nintendogs, etc. seem to be going strong. I guess the genre must have an appeal of its own beyond novelty.

  • No time (Score:1)

    by spx ( 855431 )
    I dont have time for pets on my computer, I have a dog that needs train', an adult male cat thats bugging me right now to go outside running around the house meowing like hes bored, and another cat that just gave us early gifts (kittens) for Xmas, anyone want some kittens?
    • anyone want some kittens?

      Sure. Can you mail one to Maine?

      • hehe I told people I would poke holes in the boxes, but I dont think the postal service would like that this time of year. :) Their way cute though, and just need a home for the last one. The two dark ones are staying with us, and one gray is going to a cousin of the family, so if you were closer, or will be in the area in afew months, stop by and get em. http://pengi.org/pb/ [pengi.org] They are 10 days old today, and before she was pregy the momma cat would allow our older male to beat her up, but now shes not taking
    • Perhaps you should buy yourself a nice spay for Christmas.
      • Thats already being planned out. Cats can become pregnant within months of giving birth (so she is now an inside cat). Although a cat can be spayed at any point, it is best to wait until the litter of kittens is weaned. The mammary glands and uterus will be much small then, making the spay easier and safer. Specifically, six to ten weeks after giving birth your cat can be spayed. This is her first and only litter, when we got her, she was not properly weaned from her mother, so we took into her being the 'b

  • Freaking Scientologists... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Schezar ( 249629 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:59PM (#14221843) Homepage Journal
    If there's one organization on this Earth that I can't stand, it's the Cult of Scientology. I make a point of harrassing them every chance I get.

    We actually did a bit [frontrowcrew.com] about this story last night on GeekNights [frontrowcrew.com].

    They typically have their people sitting at little tables in the subways of NYC offering "free stress tests" and copies of Dianetics, hoping to get new converts. Every time I pass them, I take the time to stop and explain to the people they've ensnared that it's a cult. It's scary how many people don't know.

    Typical example:

    Me: Scientology is a cult. "You know that, right? They believe in an ancient alien named Xenu who exploded the souls of other murdered aliens with H-Bombs billions of years ago. They take your money."

    Prospective Scientologist: "What? Wow... Thanks for the warning." -leaves-

    Scientologst Asshole: "Hey! You can't say things like that! I'll call the fucking police! Leave NOW or I'll call the police! We're not a cult! It's slander to say we're a cult!"

    Me: "The police, eh? Yes, why don't you call them? I'll stick around and wait."

    They never actually call the police, but I wish they would sometime. I'd love to see these geniuses attempt to explain to a cop just what illegal act I was committing. "He was telling people about us!" "He says Scientology is a cult!"

    So do a good deed. Spread [scientology-kills.org] the word [wikipedia.org] about scientology [xenu.net].
  • "The overly cute online 'game' mostly consists of teaching kids to look at ads"

    I don't remember there being any ads when i first signed up, but then that was a while back.
  • I wouldn't trust a Scientologist as far as I could throw him, let alone trust him with my child's entertainment.
  • You know, I was one of the first people on Neopets, way back before anyone in the world seemed to know about them. There weren't really any ads at that point, there were far fewer pets, and the pets they had were often a lot stranger. The one thing that had me interested was an early plan to explore and interact with some sort of real-time map, sort of like an MMO. Your pet would be able to move around on this map, learn skills... The concept, even at that point, was vague.

    They never did get that feature up

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