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Neopets Gambling Controversy 354

Posted by Zonk from the neoaddicts-eh? dept.
Neopoet writes "Players of the online virtual pet game Neopets (claims 70 million pet owners worldwide) have gone nuts against an Australian current affairs show called Today Tonight after the show ran segments railing against the Neopets for introducing children to gambling. Click below to read on.
It started when McDonalds Australia included a Neopets plush toy with every kids' Happy Meal in Australia, directing kids to the Neopets website.

To "feed" their pets, Neopets players have to win points in a variety of mini-games, including versions of poker and blackjack. Australia has a high rate of gambling problems with poker machines ("pokies"), so when a mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker to feed his virtual pet, she approached Today Tonight claiming McDonalds was setting her son up for a life of gambling addiction.

TT aired the story Parents not McHappy over pokie toy and the Neopets message boards went nuts. Meanwhile McDonalds heavied Neopets into banning Australians from the gambling games. Today Tonight must have received a lot of hate mail because the next night came Neopet players fight McDonalds ban, featuring interviews with adult Neopets addicts. But this only increased the outrage on the Neopets boards - they're now trying to squash rumors of McDonalds withdrawing sponsorship altogether, and Neopets shutting down."
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Neopets Gambling Controversy More

Neopets Gambling Controversy

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  • Adult Neopet Addicts?!?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:07PM (#10536885) Homepage Journal
    ... featuring interviews with adult Neopets addicts...

    Umm... if ADULTS are getting addicted to Neopets, I think, most likely, that's the least of their problems....

  • Alternatives.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:08PM (#10536904)
    At least an 8-hour poker and blackjack session is a good way to keep the kids from viewing hardcore pornography or reading slashdot.

  • Dreidel (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 2.7182 ( 819680 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:10PM (#10536920)
    I guess we should take dreidels and dice away from all kids. So much for monopoly....

    • Re:Dreidel (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) * on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:16PM (#10537015) Journal
      Monopoly teaches good money management otherwise you go bankrupt. Neopets is just teaching kids to "PLAY OUR GAMES NOW OR YOUR PET WILL DIE" to help along the addiction.
      • Monopoly teaches good money management otherwise you go bankrupt. Neopets is just teaching kids to "PLAY OUR GAMES NOW OR YOUR PET WILL DIE" to help along the addiction.

        LOL. If anything, poker teaches much better money management than Monopoly.

        Not to mention that the point of games is to entertain, not teach complicated real-life skills...

        • the point of games is to entertain, not teach complicated real-life skills...

          Count on the Great Unwashed to do their dead level best to learn "complicated real-life skills" from entertainment media.

          [Me: Looks around at the random sample of humanity that just happens to be within eyesight right this minute]

          Yep. No doubt about it. None whatsoever.

      • Re:Dreidel (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Your pets NEVER die; they stay hungry.

        They are NEVER taken from you.

        If you don't log in for a year or so, the account and your pets are removed from the system. Neopets is a free-standing society and economy. You, sir, have never played.

      • Re:Dreidel (Score:3, Informative)

        by KeeperS ( 728100 )
        Except that your pets never die. Ever. Even if you don't feed them for a year or more, they'll be starving to death, but not dead, when you come back.

        In a way, that's almost worse. Somebody convinced me to play Neopets, and I did for about two days. But I found most of the games boring, so I stopped. Now I have some Neopet out there who will be suffering starvation for all eternity because I don't remember my username or password.

        I do have to say, though... anybody seriously worrying about gambling p

      • Re:Dreidel (Score:3, Funny)

        by arodland ( 127775 )
        Right, because in the real world we get $200 every time we pass "GO."

      • Creative Financing (Score:5, Funny)

        by infinite9 ( 319274 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @01:13PM (#10537749)
        Monopoly teaches good money management otherwise you go bankrupt.

        My kids are into this in a major way. One of my daughters got creative with the system. She has a derelict account she uses as a holding entity for her neopoints. This allows her to amass huge amounts of points while her real account can be "on welfare". Great! My daughter is learning how to become a welfare queen and milk the system. :-D

    • Re:Dreidel (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jim_Maryland ( 718224 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:21PM (#10537087)
      Actually we should point them to first person shooter games.

      My two kids and my wife play NeoPets, although my wife and son play it more than my daughter. My son has actually become pretty good at buying/finding items and selling them for profit. He's figured out the economics of the game. They all enjoy the game challenges, but if gambling is really that much of a concern, we'd have to ban quite a few sites that offer gambling style games. Guess the kid orientation of the site is causing the problem, but in my opinion, responsible parents should be checking what their kids are doing online. Parents should make the decision on their own to allow/disallow access rather than trying to take the site down. Parents should allow/disallow their children from accessing certain sites based on their own values and the maturity of their kids.
    • I guess we should take dreidels and dice away from all kids. So much for monopoly....

      People can gamble on practically everything, including the toss of a coin. Does it come down heads? Tails?

      I'm 70% certain that we can eliminate this gambling problem once and for all by banning currency in any and all forms. Anyone want to take me up on that bet?

  • Historical precedents (Score:3, Funny)

    by wombatmobile ( 623057 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:11PM (#10536933)

    "The idea is that you play punting games to keep your Neopet fed and healthy. If you don't gamble, or worse, lose on the punt, your Neopet starves or is sent off to an orphanage."

    Karl Marx and Charles Dickens wrote about that before MacDonalds worked it out.

  • Similar (Score:5, Funny)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <stevehenderson@NOspam.gmail.com> on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:12PM (#10536938)

    Parents not McHappy over pokie toy

    Funny...whenever I show children my "pokie" toy, the parents aren't too thrilled either...

  • elementary school teacher agrees (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bcreane ( 667034 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:12PM (#10536940) Homepage
    Neopets is insidious because it provides "challenges" that appear to require students' problem-solving abilities. Its more like video-game crack since it combines elements that fascinate both girls and boys, youngters and adults: community-building chats, personal vendettas (you can slam an opponent by name) as well as the usual eye-candy. My students (grades 4/5, "inner-city" youth) will go to neopets given the smallest opportunity. Fortunately I've just gotten our squid-server going ... say "bye-bye! Neopets!"
    • Neopets is insidious because it provides "challenges" that appear to require students' problem-solving abilities. Its more like video-game crack since it combines elements that fascinate both girls and boys, youngters and adults: community-building chats, personal vendettas (you can slam an opponent by name) as well as the usual eye-candy.

      Seems to me that you are complaining that Neopets is a well-designed, attactive game with cross-gender and cross-age appeal. That is bad?
      • your're right, I am complaining about a well-designed game. i forgot to mention that we're preparing (high-horse alert!) students for life through a process of "education" ... math, literacy, science, etc. Neopets has a different mission: profit. The students' interest is sadly neglected by the makers of neopets. Okay, off the high horse.
        • i forgot to mention that we're preparing (high-horse alert!) students for life through a process of "education" ... math, literacy, science, etc. Neopets has a different mission: profit. The students' interest is sadly neglected by the makers of neopets.

          High horses aside, I am not sure what is the point that you are making. Are you trying to say that all non-educational games are bad? Are you saying that companies with a profit motive should not exist? Or should not be allowed to make good games, only bad

        • I forgot to mention that we're preparing (high-horse alert!) students for life through a process of "education"

          So the problem isn't the game itself, but rather the fact that your students lack the self-discipline to do what they have to do instead of what the want to do.

          I can see how it's all the game's fault that the parents and teachers have failed to develop the kids self-discipline and time management skills. News flash: learning how to deal with distractions and prioritize activities is an essen

  • Adver-gaming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Paladin144 ( 676391 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:12PM (#10536943) Homepage
    I've heard about this site before (I work in PR), but in the context of how advertisers are trying to hook kids on their brands at a very young age. The logic goes that kids develop life-long brand associations, so the advertisers exploit that with these "free" games. Of course, you have to register, and the advertisers get a chance to get their hooks in you. I don't really consider online registration ever to be "free." It costs you something in terms of time, effort and privacy. That's fine for me - and most of us here - we know this stuff. But what about the kids who think they're getting something for nothing?

    • Re:Adver-gaming (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      These are free games. Register using the name Karl Marx and you're set to go. You don't get email, phone calls, snail mail, anything, ever. There is more advertising on slashdot than there is on Neopets. I'd rather play a McDonald's game that gives me Neopoints (karma?) than stare at a HOT JOBS YAHOO banner.

      What is it you suggest they're getting hooked on? There is no ad saturation. all but a few of the hundreds of games and activities are sponsored by McDonald's or a new music single. Almost all of
    • As someone in advertising/marketing I looked at this game from a similar perspective. Then I remembered that there were free branded games out there that I enjoyed playing in highschool such as the ones at Candystand. These don't require any registration, and they still get the branded message across.

      But the question really is about where you draw the line. As an industry professional, I can recognize the value of this, but at the same time would never want to subject children to it. Of course, I'm a pe

  • Why not make it educational? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:13PM (#10536951) Homepage
    Video poker systems that take real live money to play will clean you out. These fake ones that they have to feed your virtua-pet obviously are set up with easier payouts.
    Simply make the neoPets gambling area obey the odds of real gambling!
    Little Sally won't end up with a gambling addiction -- her neoPet will simply die of starvation because she lost all her cash at the poker table. Now THAT's the kind of lesson that sticks with ya!

    --
    free gmail invites! [slashdot.org] join the club.

  • Gambling alternatives (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mikail ( 817047 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:13PM (#10536962)
    Geez, if parents are that pissed off about gambling, it's a good thing Neopets didn't go with players being able to pimp out their pets to make some extra cash...
    • Geez, if parents are that pissed off about gambling, it's a good thing Neopets didn't go with players being able to pimp out their pets to make some extra cash...

      Sounds like Neopets meets Sims Online.

  • Parenting and online games (Score:5, Insightful)

    by beavis88 ( 25983 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:14PM (#10536978)
    ...so when a mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker...

    Perhaps said parent should have been supervising their child's internet usage? You know, there are only about five hundred million worse things an unsupervised child could be doing on the internet. This mother should be happy it was just neopets. Perhaps she'll learn a lesson here, but my [cynical] guess is that she'll just continue to blame other people/companies for her lack of parenting skills.

    • Re:Parenting and online games (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:22PM (#10537098)
      Perhaps she'll learn a lesson here, but my [cynical] guess is that she'll just continue to blame other people/companies for her lack of parenting skills.

      Ever think she did find her child "gambling" online because she was doing her job as a parent?

      I don't agree with regulations due to bad parenting but this one might actually seem like an active parent discovering what their child did because they were paying attenion not because they heard a Dateline (or similiar program down under) story about it and decided to be vocal.
    • Indeed!

      Parents used to take an active role in their childrens lives. I know for me that my mother and father palyed with me, read to me, and involved me in adult conversation on a regular basis, as young a four years old. There was constant involvment in my life and how it would evolve. I learned morals, how to make decisions, right and wrong, and deal with the consiqueces.

      Society today, IMO, has sissified our children and parents are at the root of the problem. Children don't particulary have worries. Th
    • Because she discovered her child playing neopets, it seems to me like she was monitoring the child's internet usage.

  • There is nothing wrong with Neopets. (Score:5, Informative)

    by PotatoHead ( 12771 ) * <doug.opengeek@org> on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:15PM (#10536994) Homepage Journal
    I got hooked on this for a while, playing with my daughters. We had a neopoint contest and it was good fun.

    That site is pretty educational as far as I am concerned. Sure there is gambling, but there are plenty of other things too.

    You can play games of skill to get your points and avoid the gambling ones.

    The educational part for my family came after I won the Neopoint contest. (It was first to get 250,000) My kids lost because they did not understand how the whole Neopia thing worked.

    Things we talked about:

    Investments: How the bank was different from the stock market. What is compound interest and how does it benefit you. Keeping your money liquid vs tied up in investments and how that affects your ability to build wealth.

    Marketing, buying and selling: Setting up a shop. How to make your shop stand out, what are people buying, how to take advantage of trends in the marketplace. Ripping people off and getting ripped off.

    Gambling: Scratch cards, games of chance, how investments are similar to gambling and how they are different.

    As far as I am concerned, Neopets is one of the very best sites on the net for parents to talk to their kids about money matters.

    Highly Recommended, IMHO.

    • Re:There is nothing wrong with Neopets. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by VE3ECM ( 818278 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:24PM (#10537121)
      The real issue here is that you're (from the sounds of it) one of those 1 in 5 parents that actually takes an active roll in educating their children.

      Sadly, too many parents are too busy with their own lives to spend the appropriate amount of time necessary to teach their children. They expect the schools to do it all for them.

      Sadly, because things have come to parents using TV, video games or the internet to babysit their children, this is going to come up more and more.

      Your children are very lucky. Most will never receive the kind of parenting you purport to provide.

      • and a bit too much sacrifice at times. (Right now happens to be one of those times dammit!)

        So, the bigger question is what to do with Neopets?

        Just because parents are lazy and their kids might get into gambling on Neopets, does that mean Neopets should have to do something about it?

        Worried parents could just add the site to their censorware and call it good I suppose.
    • The educational part for my family came after I won the Neopoint contest. (It was first to get 250,000) My kids lost because they did not understand how the whole Neopia thing worked.

      YES! HAHA! How do you like them apples, babies? Faced!

      Hmm, I guess this is why I don't have kids. :)

  • Dragons? (Score:3, Funny)

    by james_orr ( 574634 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:16PM (#10537017) Homepage

    "There's many, many different species and they're all based on real things, like a Lupe is a dog, a Scorchio is a dragon," Jacqui said.

    .... dragons are real????

  • OMG I'm turning my kids into gambling adicts! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 'nother poster ( 700681 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:17PM (#10537026)
    Well, they don't play the Neopets games, but I do play poker, blackjack, gin (and other rummy games), pinnochle, and eucher with my kids. I guess I should expect DFS to show up and haul me away. ;)

    Playing games, even games of chance, does not lead to gambling addiction. Being dumb as a rock, and thinking that you can win when the games are legally stacked aginst you, that can lead to gambling addiction.
    • I'm an only child, but I would visit my extended family fairly often. All my cousins from about 7 on up are able to play poker, 45's, 31 (we call it Scat), Blackjack, Golf, Royal Solitaire, Egyptian, and of course things like Go Fish.

      I remember hearing a story about when my uncles were playing with their job money once (back in the 60's) and one of them lost everything in a poker game. The kid (my uncle) was pretty upset, and grammy wanted to refund the money, but grandpa wouldn't hear it. He let it be

  • They are REAL! (Score:5, Funny)

    by fantomas ( 94850 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:17PM (#10537032)
    Favourite quote from the response article

    "There's many, many different species and they're all based on real things, [...] a Scorchio is a dragon," Jacqui said."

    Hmm, I think they better pull this promotion, some people are having big reality problems here. Or maybe I'm not as familiar with Australian fauna as I thought I was....

  • Great... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:19PM (#10537046) Journal
    , so when a mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker to feed his virtual pet, she approached Today Tonight claiming McDonalds was setting her son up for a life of gambling addiction.

    Great, another parent who can't take responsibility to raise their own kid. How about you don't let the kid play the neopet? How about you watch the kid for signs of gambling addiction? How about you take responsibiliy for raising your own kid instead of blaming someone else

  • Problem with parents. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bludstone ( 103539 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:19PM (#10537047)
    so when a mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker to feed his virtual pet, she approached Today Tonight claiming McDonalds was setting her son up for a life of gambling addiction.

    Those are the wrong steps. If she, as a parent, feels that neopets is not good for her child, then you make this rule known to the child, and then enforce it. I fail to see what McDs or neopets has done wrong. I dont really understand the moral crusade, conceptually. Why do other people care, as long as its not hurting them?

    So you think neopets is bad for your kid, then dont let your kid play neopets. Who are you to parent the rest of the world.

    Meh.
    • I dont really understand the moral crusade, conceptually. Why do other people care, as long as its not hurting them?

      It's a control issue.

      It's also why people run for office. There's personality types out there that just love to fuck with the lives of other people and, sadly, our legal system often allows it.

  • NeoPets is weird... (Score:5, Informative)

    by davidu ( 18 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:19PM (#10537050) Homepage Journal

    They sent my site, EveryDNS [everydns.net] a bunch of threatening letters to take down a site that discussed techniques for winning these point games.

    The weirdest part is that these points have no real monetary value and yet I was being threatened with a lawsuit for providing DNS to another site that had information about their games.

    It's always upsetting when someone tries to pick on the little guys like me but it's even more annoying when they have NO CLAIM!

    I'm not even going to get into the fact that I wasn't the sites ISP or network provider. I was so far removed and acting only as a part of the infrastructure and yet because I wasn't a big company, they picked on me. Can't blame them for being smart I guess...

    -davidu
    • So what did you do in response to their claim? Tell them to shove off or cave in?

      • Re:NeoPets is weird... (Score:4, Informative)

        by davidu ( 18 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:34PM (#10537257) Homepage Journal
        We get these all the time. We treat each case differently. Often times I am able to tell the legal firm who contacts us that we aren't the ISP and that we have no control over the website. Surprisingly, that's often enough.

        In this case, after talking with their lawyer on the phone and knowing him to be serious about making my life suck we contacted the site owner and gave them enough time to move their site without having downtime.

        In other cases we've talked with the EFF, this however, was not the sort of case that would be worth the EFFs efforts. When we got the Diebold Cease and Desist, it was a matter the EFF decided to pursue (and recently 'won').

        -david

    • Re:NeoPets is weird... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @01:03PM (#10537631) Homepage
      No surprise there. Neopets is a member of WISE [wise.org], the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises. Naturally they're going to follow L. Ron Hubbard's game plan which is to be obnoxious fsckheads making baseless threats using lawyers. (They're also marketing survey spammers as the Dohring group.)
    • My gmail account is very generic, and is already attracting lots of attention, but the biggest shock to date has been emails from the neopets lawyer bloke mixing me up with some hacker.

      Nothing really odd about that you might say, apart from the fact, the lawyer in question happens to be one of the biggest Internet law specialists.

      Was strange to see him make the same mistake not just once, but twice (both times I mailed back informing him of his error).

      You would think that somebody who handles such matter
  • I mean with Neopets, its neopoints not money.

    It is set so that you can only "win" so many points per per day per game. Granted, you could lose a ton ( perhaps they should implement a Max Loss per day that matches the Win so that if you can't win more than 5K Neopoints a day, you can't lose more than that either.)

    But I mean, Neopets has a bunch of great games to kill time with and unwind ( for adults ) and some actually help kids with memory ( a concentration type game ).

  • 5th and 7th grade. We use real money.

    I figure it is the best way for them to learn the dangers of gambling. When you lose your allowance, well it hurts, but not as bad (I'm guessing here...) as when you lose your rent money.

    We play Texas Hold 'Em, 2 cent / 4 cent, 3 limit raise per betting round.

    You can easily loose a $0.50 or a $1 at the table, which is a good chuck of their allowance.

    I figure it teaches them responsibility.

  • Jacqui Adams, 22, and Anita Esposito, 19, are just two of the thousands of adults hooked on the Neopet games.

    That's a good stretch to call those two 'Adults', even though yes they're over 18 and considered adults in the legal sense in most places.
    • so.. neopets is the limit of being adult then?

      you never known anyone who was an adult and 'hooked' on something? most smokers are adults for example, so are most people who "just have to see the match every week".

  • Sounds right. wouldn't want my kids learning that (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sorry, but having an addictive game for kids to play poker and blackjack for more chips doesn't seem very educational to me. It's not like the 1970s where things were less stimulating but you actually learned stuff. Everything today especially dealing is so heavily stimulating and exploitive, it will just lead to problems in the future.

    For example, when I learned math, I had exercises that I had to do with a textbook, pencil and pad of paper. It was boring, but I learned, and eventually learned how to

  • is it just me or... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by greymond ( 539980 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:21PM (#10537092) Homepage Journal
    is there some kind of super insane overly conservative group of people breeding rapidly? It seems everwhere I look there is someone or some group complaining about things that are so trivial in comparison to things like guns and drugs in schools...

    It's like "they" want to find evil in everything.

  • Typical of Today Tonight (Score:5, Informative)

    by ttys00 ( 235472 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:23PM (#10537104)
    That "current affairs" show is utter crap. They sensationalise all sorts of mundane things just to get viewers to watch. Anything for ratings. There are better alternatives on SBS (another channel), but hey, no one watches anything other than channels 7,9, and 10.

    Disclaimer: I'm an Aussie and disgusted with the crappy tv we have to put up with.
    • Please mod this up, as an Australian living in Canada, I remember good laughs from watching A Current Affair and Today Tonight.

      It is a sensationalist, reactionary, show that appeals to the conservative masses. They frequently run stories scapegoating immigrants (Lebanese is a popular one), dole bludgers (what the show calls people on welfare), video games (absolute zealots on this issue, you can be guaranteed an anti-videogame story at least once or twice a month) and in general, promoting ignorance and

  • Don't make me laugh so loud at work! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:24PM (#10537123) Journal
    From the Today Tonight article:

    Jacqui Adams, 22, and Anita Esposito, 19, are just two of the thousands of adults hooked on the Neopet games. They're now fearful the site could be shut down altogether.

    "There's many, many different species and they're all based on real things, like a Lupe is a dog, a Scorchio is a dragon," Jacqui said.

    AAAAAHAHAAHHA! What kind of a response is that? Sounds like a 5 year old describing their Duplo construction.

    Lupe is a dog, and Scorchio is a dragon! They're based on real things! We have a winner for today's "You're Not Helping Yourself Any" Award.

  • Neopets is evil... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eurleif ( 613257 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:24PM (#10537130)
    But that's not why. Their stated mission isn't to provide a fun game for kids to play, it's to maximize advertising revenue. They have marketing studies talking about children as though they're consumers waiting to be advertised to and nothing else. Their "immersive advertising" technique is horrible; most children can't even tell the difference between the ads and the game. In a nutshell, they're a marketing company with a game attached.
    • Eurleif, I understand why you might feel this way, but you need to put yourself in their shoes for a second.

      You have a client, and the client wants more customers. You don't go pitching that client on how you have a nice and fluffy site for kids, because you're not pitching the site to kids. You want to put it in terms the clients marketers can understand, so you refer to the children as potential consumers. Its business language because those studies are for business use.

      I'm in advertising/marketing, an

  • Moderation is the key (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scruffy ( 29773 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:27PM (#10537171)
    Some fat is good, but fat is bad if you eat too much of it.

    Some alcohol is good, but alcohol is bad if you drink too much of it.

    Some gambling is good (I fondly remember many nights of penny ante poker with college friends), but gambling is bad if you do too much of it (e.g., interfering with studies or making you poor).

    Drugs are good, but drugs are bad if you do too much of them.

    Pretty much any behavior (excluding criminal acts, libel, etc.) is good or ok in moderation, but bad if you do too much of it. If you simply prohibit potentially bad behaviors, then how do you learn to act with moderation? Too many people have a "don't do it" attitude to most everything, which I think in the end is counterproductive.

  • ...instead of blackjack. Then maybe the kids could've improved their math skills while getting to feed their virtual pet.

    Besides, math skills will them in their future career as a compulsive gambler.

  • As a parent... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by neomac ( 97478 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:31PM (#10537221) Homepage
    ... of a child who has a "neopet," it's like anything else on the Internet that's aimed at kids: you, the responsible parent, have to know what your child visits on the Internet, make rules, set boundaries and impose limitations.

    Any game of "chance" is gambling. The difference is the stakes. In Monopoly, it's fake money. Neopets is a point system. In Vegas, it's cash. With Microsoft, it's your data. At least with neopets, they're not telling the kids to take the "little green pieces of paper" out of mommy's purse. It's more like those damn tamaguchis...

    BTW, I ROCK at Bilge Dice.

  • You have to love double standards... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FozzieCDN ( 798889 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:33PM (#10537238)
    These parents and their BS groups crack me up. Really they do. They are so rife with double standards and hipocracy that I am certain if you ever put a mirror in front of them they would attack it for morally corrupting society and the groups demands to have a say in how they raise your children. Its never the individual parents fault for not paying attention to what their kids are doing, its always societies fault.

    It's apparently okay with them to give out Barbie toys to little girls and enforce the stereo type that you should be a little prissy California princess with size DDD breasts and a 6 inch waist to be beautiful, but its wrong to give out some nice plush Neopet toys (they are really nice quality) as a part of the McDonals Happy Meal cross-promotion gimmick? Or better yet, its okay with these groups to allow kids to see and play voilent video games... just as long as it's cartoon voilence?

    So I guess the solution for NeoPets is to sell this off as cartoon gambling? That way its okay because it works for voilence doesn't it?

  • Heh (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ikn ( 712788 ) <rsmith29.alumni@nd@edu> on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:36PM (#10537288) Homepage
    Think what you will, but despite the very, very kiddy-ish graphics, the game has some very interesting and entertaining systems, most notably the Battledome combat system. I played it for about a solid year, and it can be very fun, getting different weapons and battling. Some of the expensive paint themes you can get for different pets are very cool, even to adults. So unless you've played it, don't knock it as just for kids. I guaruntee the majority of people playing are over 14-15.
  • This is offtopic, but I hope no one is gambling real money on Neopets. The thing is, my little brother hacked it a couple of years ago, back when he was 13 years old and had that kind of free time. He set up a little web form that would let him submit any score he wanted for any of their games.

    Of course, not wanting to spoil anyone's fun, he only used it once to get #11 on some ranking or other, and they may have switched to a non-laughably trivial encryption scheme since then. Still, the best use of Neope
  • Just wait until their kids find this [simslots.com] website. It is completely pointless to anyone that knows anything. However the fact that the virtual slots pay out at a much higher rate than real ones may fool some naive folks.

    • Re:SimSlots (Score:3, Funny)

      by Animats ( 122034 )
      It's not pointless. Put in your E-mail address and you'll receive lots of interesting messages about how you can enhance your sex life and obtain home mortgages.
  • So my girlfriend is addicted to neopets and over the last 3 years I've had a pretty good view of the site. This story is pretty much uninformed. The gambling games make up about 4% of the total games on the site. Your pet only goes to the adoption agency if you do not play with it and it gets unhappy with you, actually sitting there ignoring your pet playing gambling games will hasten this, but not cause it. NeoPoints (the in-game currency) are very easy to come by, and 15-20 minutes of playing any of t
  • Gambling is a vice that many people cannot resist - it destroys lives. It's also an essential habit, risk taking, for anyone hoping for success. Gambling is everywhere for everyone. So shielding children from it is sure only to deprive them of the chance to learn how to gamble wisely, and recognize its seductive allure as a risk in itself. Educating children in the ways of gambling makes them better people, and better able to exercise self control. Of course, that might require parents to play with their ki

  • Teach self-control! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AchilleTalon ( 540925 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @12:56PM (#10537547) Homepage
    Pretty much amazing how to mother turns against McDo (court gambling?) rather than take her responsabilities and teach her values to her kid rather than trying to cut him out from the reality. Is it to say this kid when no longer surprotected will start gambling because it's not completely forbidden?

    How do you teach self-control if there is nothing attractive?

  • Christ this is so uninformed! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obviously nobody speaking out against Neopets has ever played the damn game!

    So you have to "gamble" to win money to buy food to feed your pets or they'll be sent to orphanage? That's news to me:

    a) Gambling is a loaded term. The selection of games are no different than what you'd see on any other gaming website.
    b) Playing games earns you points, trophies, and in-game currency--if that were the only way to earn money then I'd say it might be a problem but it isn't. You can trade items, sell items in your sh

  • If this is gambling... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @01:16PM (#10537793) Homepage Journal
    ...Then the 1up machine in Super Mario Bros 2 was too, and a blatent one at that. I played that game constantly in the day and I dont have any urge whatsover to play a slot machine.

  • Forgot about Pokemon already? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @01:50PM (#10538200) Journal
    First, it was the Pokemon trading card game.

    This game supposedly damaged our children in the following ways.

    1. It taught them gambling.
    2. It taught the theory of evolution.
    3. It introduced kids to evil occultism and Eastern Religions.
    4. It was a gateway game used by WOTC to lure kids into playing MTG and D&D.
    5. It opened our kids up to be mind controlled by the Japanese, who would use our kids as drones to bomb Pearl Harbor again.

  • Hmmm, Better Gamblers! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Friday October 15, 2004 @02:35PM (#10538781) Homepage Journal

    I've been reading Paul Graham's book, "Hackers and Painters", so let's take a different take on this. Here's an unthinkable thought, if indeed Neopets is introducing kids to gambling at an early age, then maybe they'll be better gamblers when they grow up! Afterall, the practical problem with gambling is being bad at it! My daughter loves Neopets, but since her computer is in my office, it's pretty easy to keep things under control. That's what parents are supposed to do, right? Still, if Neopets is making her a gambling genius, that could be pretty useful... ;-)

    Of more concern for our Aussie friends are the extremely paternalistic proposals and legislation coming from down under lately. It seems that every other story here on /. lately is about something being banned in Australia. What's going on down there?

  • Required gambling? No, not really (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zaren ( 204877 ) <fishrocket@gmail.com> on Friday October 15, 2004 @03:10PM (#10539173) Journal
    "To "feed" their pets, Neopets players have to win points in a variety of mini-games, including versions of poker and blackjack."

    My 7 year old introduced me to neopets, and I quickly learned two things:

    1) Food that you have to pay for is really scarce, no matter how much money you have, and
    2) You don't need to BUY food.

    There's a section of the site where you can find "donations", and maybe someone dropped some food there. There's also a spot where you can get a free omelette [neopets.com] once a day. After I discovered that, I don't have to spend an hour a day just trying to find food. I play a few games (btw, they have some really entertaining and addictive games there), make sure my critter's not dying of starvation, and I'm done.

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