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Games Entertainment

NeoPets Sale Creates Ripples 44

Posted by Zonk from the virtual-pets-real-cash dept.
The sale of Neopets to MTV earlier this week has created an interest in how the "tiny" site could go for so much. Terra Nova has a look at the stickyness of the site and its reality as a virtual space. Alice discusses the reasons behind the price tag, based on the outlook of a venture capitalist. From the Wonderland blog: "Here we have one of the most successful pieces of social software ever, so successful that it is being purchased by a major media company for $160-million, and the story is getting remarkably little play in social software circles. Why is the acquisition interesting? "
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NeoPets Sale Creates Ripples More

NeoPets Sale Creates Ripples

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  • jsut a question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by schnits0r ( 633893 ) <nathannd@saskte l . n et> on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:36AM (#12888617) Homepage Journal
    Other then 13 year old girls, who uses Neopets anymore? It's only fitting MTV bought it.

    • Re:jsut a question (Score:5, Funny)

      by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:57AM (#12888828) Homepage
      Actually, and please understand it pains me greatly to say this, but I know at least three grown adults who play NeoPets.

      One of 'em... is male.

      Now, if you'll excuse me, me and my newly-ascended Pastamancer are off to play a REAL webgame.

    • Re:jsut a question (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Metaphorically ( 841874 ) * on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:59AM (#12888852) Homepage
      My daughter got me into it... They were talking about expanding at E3 this year, too. They had a PS2 game (that seems to have nothing to do with the web site other than the characters) and they have something coming out so you can play on cell phones. To be honest, I actually think they have a chance to break in to the mobile market, depending on how clever they are. I don't know how the MTV acquisition will affect that.

    • Re:jsut a question (Score:4, Informative)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @09:02AM (#12888877)
      From the article:

      membership has grown to over 25 million from 90,000 in 2000. Either there are a lot of 13 year old girls out there or more people are using it than we think. For all I know, my coworker in the next cubicle could be a secret Neopet closet case.

      I've never been to the site before, and now I have even less of a reason to go. Personally, I just don't trust/like a TV channel that calls itself M(usic)TV without playing any actual music. (Yes I'm aware that they have videos at 3 in the morning or some ungodly hour when I'm not awake.) Just my personal opinion though.

      • Calling MTV "Music Television" is like calling AT&T "American Telephone and Telegraph." MTV long ago changed from just playing music videos to airing a lot of lifestyle programming. At some level, they identified NeoPets as something that they could use to continue going after their young demographic (note that MTV Networks also owns Nickelodeon). They don't even use the "Music Television" subtitle any more, having reverted to a KFC-like use of just their letters as a corporate name. When's the last
      • I hav been viewing a web site called cackleberries.com that I think will be 3 times the site neopets is. how can a site like neopets become so successful when they are suppose to be a kids site and they teach kids how to gamble. Australia has tried to band the site already. I don't think kids site should do that.
    • ...who uses Neopets anymore?

      Anymore?

      I just want to know what the hell you're all talking about!!

      Doug

    • It would be nice if /. had gotten it right that it was Viacom that bought Neopets...

      Viacom owns MTV, and VH1, and Nickelodeon and a bunch of other franchises. Hopefully they won't significantly screw the site over.

      Yes, I'm a closet player, yes I'm male, yes i know a lot of people my age (late teens) who play. The majority of those who are committed to the game seem to be male.
    • I know at least 2 girls at my high school who were logged in to neopets every spare second of a computer class. There are more gamers than just the hardcore you see on slashdot. Some people just want the occasional cute flash game, and neopets gives them additional rewards for it, in the form of even cuter video game items.

      My neopets days ended a while ago, but it was a good site with a lot of potential. It goes to show that a couple really talented people can start something really cool and succesful, wit

    • haha, I used to play neopets, my pets were dying but I was constantly making fake money, and eventually through the stock market I got 5 million NP...the highest bank account interest rate :-(

      After that I stopped and gave the NP to a friend
  • I've always been up to date on current events, especially in tech, but I've never heard of this site before in my life. How long has it been around?

    Though I've never understood what the deal is with Pokemon either, and this looks like similar stuff.

  • Feckin Neopets (Score:3, Funny)

    by Scorchio ( 177053 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @09:14AM (#12888990)
    I wonder if this'll mean more or less spam for me.

    Look, I was using the nickname "Scorchio" before them. It came from The Fast Show, and I thought it was an apt name to describe the burnt up heap of bones I regularly became when getting pwned at Quake.

    I don't play neopets, I never have, and I have no intention of starting, despite the regular invites I kept receiving until I blocked neopets.com.

    Grumble, whine, etc.

  • It's the character designs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Doctor Cat ( 676482 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @11:45AM (#12890948) Homepage
    I suspect the majority of Neopets' revenue has probably come from the very successful licensing deals they've done. Along with stuffed animals and little electronic virtual pet toys, they've also got a very successful collectible trading card game from Wizards of the Coast, right alongside Magic the Gathering & Pokemon. The animal characters and the art style of them are what made it such a hot, fast growing property. A lot of the initial games were kinda slow, all HTML affairs, followed up by a bunch of simple flash & shockwave games, mostly single player. Their game economy loosely ties together all the activities & gives players some minimal interaction with each other. It's not as fast paced an interaction as World of Warcraft - but perhaps it's more mainstream in appeal, and it is an architecture that scales to support 25 million users a lot easier than games like WoW or Everquest.

    I know on Furcadia, the most frequent thing players trade with each other for our virtual items is Neopoints (the "money" of Neopets). Maybe someday we'll be "hip" enough that a big corporation will try to buy us, and we can say no. I have to confess though, I've often considered contacting them about making a more interactive Neopets game based on our engine technology, which they could add to their site. We run a free game too, and average $10-$20 per regular user per year in sales of optional addon items, which is mostly profit (cost of goods on virtual items being what it is).

    If Viacom can find a way to bring in that much revenue per user, through advertising sales or any other way, then the $160 million price tag to acquire 25 million customers starts to look pretty cheap. Certainly less dollars per customer acquired ($6.40) than AOL was burning through at it's fast-spending peak of its growth some years back.

  • Bodes Well For Gaiaonline (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @12:07PM (#12891282) Homepage Journal
    I suppose the purchase of NeoPets bodes well for the future of Gaiaonline as well. My 12yo daughter used to be a big NeoPets fan, but she's moved on to Gaiaonline because NeoPets isn't considered to be cool anymore. At least it's not cool to her crowd. So if MTV and others are on the hunt for her demographic, I suppose they'll be knocking on Gaiaonline's door next. I find these sites very interesting in that they do a pretty good job of incentifying people to stay on the site and be social without using a lot of fancy tech. These are not hard core gamer sites, no 3D accelerators required! But honestly, I don't really see how they can make money given the cost of maintaining the sites and the difficulty of converting free internet content into paid services. NeoPets has a number of product licensing deals, but I'd never heard that they were making a big profit. So being bought out as a marketing tool by MTV is actually a pretty happy ending for them.
  • I don't let my son watch MTV because of all the losers that are on it. He gets enough of that at school so now I need to worry what MTV is going to do with this site.

    He has been on Neopets early on and now at 13, he is very proficient at the site. It has addictive qualities to it and I must say that it is one of the most successful sites I know of and that includes the ebays of the world. It does not have that Slashdot effect because it does not influence other site, but it does have a major influence
    • If I had a kid, I'd block MTV too and see if I could import that Candian music channel for him or maybe EuroMTV would be ok since from what I've heard they still play music. Maybe I could get him/her re-runs of Liquid Television or Amped.

      I mean... My parents disaproved of me watching MTV videos back in the early 90's with those "provocative" NIN songs and various other music videos, but the shallow ass reality crap they have now just justifies people in to being whiney attention jackasses.

      Seriously, there
  • "NeoPets Sale Creates Ripples..." In the space-time continuum! Quick, follow them into the temporal flux before they assimilate Earth!
  • Alice discusses the reasons behind the price tag, based on the outlook of a venture capitalist.

    Do the editors actually follow the links that they blurb about? The only "discussion" on Alice's site is "Expect more games-meets-social-software soon, I expect, and it's about time too." - the rest of the posting is simply an "I found this interesting" copy/paste from the original Infectious Greed blog entry.

    From the Wonderland blog: "Here we have one of the most successful..."

    No, that would be from the Inf

  • This should get amusing when MTV starts charging for some (or all) content, and the population starts dwindling. I know a lot of Neopets addicts, so seeing how this plays out should prove humorous.
    • I think revenue through advertising will be more profitable than charging. Current users expect it to be free, and I imagine MOST are young people who can't pay and don't have parents that are willing to.
    • Acutally, there has been a Premium Neopets available in beta for 6-8 months now. (Can't be more specific without going back and looking at their news page though)

  • Is it just me, or is anyone else bothered that the Slashdot post was written to give the impression that the wonderful Alice wrote the words quoted? Because if you visit the Wonderland blog you quickly see that Alice is quoting from someone else's blog - Paul Kedrosky in this case.

    The insight of commenting on other's work makes blogs a rich and interesting resource, but isn't it this type of laziness that brings them into disrepute?

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