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Neopets Gambling Controversy
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."
... 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....
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
At least an 8-hour poker and blackjack session is a good way to keep the kids from viewing hardcore pornography or reading slashdot.
I guess we should take dreidels and dice away from all kids. So much for monopoly....
"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.
Parents not McHappy over pokie toy
Funny...whenever I show children my "pokie" toy, the parents aren't too thrilled either...
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!"
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?
Electric Monkey Pants
Why be the last to know?
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! join the club.
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...
If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, let's all get wasted and have the time of our lives.
...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.
They will stop selling their Pikachu to lonely old men and getting high on Card dust from M:TG booster packs.
If I wrote something witty, you would say I stole it from somewhere.
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.
Blogging because I can...
"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.
Dumbest protest ever...
5 bucks says pokee dies within the week.
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.
It's a freaking plastic toy that beeps when it's "hungry". Holy COW! Talk about an overreaction. When little johnny's shooting craps for real money, that's gambling. If it's not real money, it's just a video game like the countless zillions of other ones that contain "fake" money (should we ban Need for Speed Underground too? It sets kids up for a lifetime of spending money frivolously on cars and street racing! waaah!)
stuff |
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, 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
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.
no
They sent my site, EveryDNS 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
# Hack the planet, it's important.
I don't you can tie terrorists into everything that goes on in our society.
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 ).
UPS Sucks
how many of those pets have died, and people have had to start over again.. thus creating a new account?
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.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
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 study on my own. Nowadays, you need to have an educational game to make kids "learn". Tell me how this doesn't lead to kids getting bored from learning from an instruction book or during class? How will they possibly be able to learn to sit through a lecture without getting bored and not being constantly stimulated?
I'm now back in grad school after being out of school for 15 years, and I was astonished to see a 20-something kid playing his pocket Nintendo in the middle of a lecture. He's paying $2500 for this course, and he's so bored that he has to play a video game in the middle of a lecture? Incredible.
Kids need to learn without having all those flashing lights, adrenaline rush, etc, otherwise they'll grow up to be true ADD adults.
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.
Ave Molech Setting
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with people who say that Neopets is bad for kids. It teaches kids how to play and bet, with virtual maney. Start young...and halp the kids develop into gamblers...
... 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.
Responsibility is the punishment for compentenc
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?
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.
I know nothing
I know it sounds weird... I was addicted to neopets at one time, and I'm 26. I neglected my job, my girlfriend, and even my cat. When I got bored of the neopets games, I wrote perl LWP scripts to cheat.
Here's my old pet... I finally forced myself to adopt my pet, and closed the account permenantly.
posting anon because of the shame of it all...
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 Neopets may be to teach you what happens when you compete on a website you don't control with people you don't know
Just wait until their kids find this 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.
Project Steve
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.
Blogging because I can...
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 the other 96% of the games the player has between 5-10k worth, which is enough to pretty do whatever you want for over a month or two.
So whats to stop the kid from going to yahoo games and playing blackjack there?
...of how irrelevant Australia is. They seem to raise a stink over EVERYTHING. Stop posting Australian news to /.
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 kids and their Neopets. Which isn't as much fun for many parents as ranting about "bad influences", though a lot more risky.
"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" - Oceania motto, George Orwell's _1984_
--
make install -not war
The problem with censorware is that most parents don't use that, either.
The parents that you need to worry about are the ones that allow totally unfettered access to everything.
That's not so bad really.
After they are feeling the joy of being broke, a little extra work just might reinforce the responsibility issues while giving them some hope of that next trip to the movies with their friends...
Blogging because I can...
I need to take lunch. My brain just isn't functioning. :/
How do you teach self-control if there is nothing attractive?
Achille Talon
Hop!
There's a soup faerie in Vegas, right? If I ever lose all my money to gambling, I'll just go there til I get back on my feet. Vegetable soup is my fav! (Sammycheekles)
For more information on this, see http://info.neopets.com/aboutus/pressreleases.phtm l and http://info.neopets.com/aboutus/page06.phtml.
The market research is particularly interesting. 52% of respondents to a survey liked having "Featured Products" on the web site? The written responses to that survey are also rather frightening.
(Slightly off topic but related)
Those places are probably subsidized by the Vegas Tourisim Comission.
If you are not familiar with them, kids play games to win tickets, which they use to buy stuff (read: crap -- spend 5 bucks in quarters to win enough tickets to buy a friggin Sponge Bob pencil). This has been going on for years with skee ball, whak-a-mole type games. A rip off, yes. But harmless fun.
But in the last several years roulette wheel type games have shown up, which actually have progressive jackpots to win x number of tickets. Not to be a prude, but I think we're letting kids get hooked on the excitement of the 'big win' (which is the allure of gambling more so than the actual money [or prize, tickets, etc.] won).
Sweet informative mod.
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 shop, challenge other people to Pokemon-style battles, solve puzzles/riddles, collect interest from the bank, engage in their in-game stock market, hold auctions, or simply get it for free at the donation room(Money Tree).
c) Buying food is one way to get food. There are also a half-dozen rooms to find free food that can be used to feed all your pets and the room resets every day.
d) Feeding your pets is entirely optional. I've gone months without feeding them and the only thing that changes is the text indicating how hungry they are--don't feed them for long enough and the text will show they are 'dying' but that's it because pets don't die...ever. - period
e) You never lose your pets to the orphanage. You have a four pet limit and if you want to get a new pet you have to make room which is where the orphanage comes in.
These people need to get a clue!
Monopoly teaches good money management otherwise you go bankrupt.
:-D
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.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
For all their marketing, I just don't see that many Neopets laying around. In fact, around here they are hard to find.
I actually had to look in a few different Clairs stores to find a decent selection of them. They are not as common as the action toys tied to the cartoons and the kids get more education from the site than they would from the toons.
Seems to be a decent tradeoff to me. My kids could be finding far worse things to do. And yes, there are better things to do outside.
Guess I am one of those parents you had better be worrying about. My kids get the same connection I do. The catch: I must remain involved and I log their traffic.
Just knowing the log is there does more to reinforce good behaviour than any lame, easily cracked censorware does.
THE PARENTS THAT DO USE CENSORWARE ARE THE PROBLEM.
You have to surf with your kids plain 'n simple; otherwise, they are going to be adopting some one elses value system, not yours. This makes me believe parents who use censorware have a weak value system composed mostly of fear and ignorance. Baah....
Funny too, when they know there is a log, they will be happy to come and talk about what happened. This is always better than not.
I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but what the hell....
All of my kids are getting near straight A grades in school. No crime, no drugs, well respected in their peer groups.
Our family has no taboo becuase ignorance is weakness and places those that subscribe to it at a clear disadvantage to those that don't. Tough subjects are important to young people. They *will* get the information. Who better to set the primary expectations than you?
The real world is not always a nice place. Thugs, porn, disease, scammers, you name it, it's all there right? Who do these people pray on? The naive, ignorant, and fearful, and sometimes the unlucky. The net is the exact same way.
Being a good citizen means knowing your rights and responsibilities and setting the right expectations for those you interact with. Depending on other entities, to exhibit good behaviour is so totally passive aggressive as to make me sick frankly.
How to cope and make a difference in the world? Vote with your feet. Don't like the value proposition Neopets brings to the table? Don't visit and let others know why. That is your right and responsibility to do so.
However, don't ask Neopets to give up their rights too.
Everybody knows Neopets wants you to buy their toys. Instead of blaring their message in a passive mind-numbing cartoon, they choose to put up a fun, educational and interactive community almost anyone can enjoy.
What's wrong with that? Seems to me they are honoring their obligations as a citizen as well as they can be frankly.
You need to take a more active role in things along with just about everyone else that says what you just did. My family knows their rights and how to set expectations. When those are not met, we move on to where they are and let others know why, just as I did here. Making clear choices is one of the most important skills young people can learn. Empowering them to actually make those choices is the difference between future leaders and everybody else.
Sadly, the only real check on corporations today is your dollars. Vote with your feet early and often and talk about why to your family and friends. It works. More people should be doing it.
I don't mean to flame you with the above. Don't take it personal. This is important stuff. Consider my view and contrast it with your own and get something good from it. Might do you some good, might not...
Blogging because I can...
...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.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...the Neopets message boards went nuts...
This statement implies that the Neopets message boards were not *already* nuts. As a good friend of several Neopets players, I can assure you that this is not the case. While a slight majority of Neopets players are mostly sane, the whole endeavor represents an act of collective insanity, sort of like the Salem Witchcraft Trials, the popular belief that the 9/11 Hijackers were Iraqi, and Britney Spears's fan base, though far less destructive than all 3 of these.
Anyway, poker teaches valuable skills, like quickly estimating probabilities and expectations, economic principles like sunk costs, and discipline. Anything that's fun can be addictive. Given that children don't have much of a concept of their time being worth anything, their valuation of virtual credits on Neopets is likely to be substantially less than adults who do things like purchase Everquest items on eBay. I'm really much more worried about the adults here, but if we as a society don't let people play poker with fake money to feed fake pets; alcohol, premarital sex, and bungie jumping will be the next to go, and that's not a world I want to live in.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Yes.. but eventually society has to come to grips with the role of advertisers and children in general. will children always be prey to predatory corporations? Children have much more exposure to society at large than ever before, and yet play a smaller role it in (eg the separation of work / family). Children are bigger targets and have less responsibility. Less parental interaction with children. Less adult interaction with children in general. More government power over children (eg education and health standards) and families. Not good trends.
must... stay... awake...
...of parents blaming society and multimedia for something they can regulate themselves. Perhaps instead of blasting an organization for creating something that they think is "taboo", perhaps they should take the time to educate their own offspring. Parents should take the time to see what their child is doing from day to day. If it doesn't fit within their "beliefs" then revoke the ability of the child to participate in such activities. We should not as a society allow our children to be raised by a corporation...
Last week my 9-year-old son gave away all his Neopets points. He said he did it because he wasn't going to play with it anymore.
/. did?
Egads! Could it be that my son knew about something before
god, so many addictions, so little time.
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.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The show is utter drivel. What frightens me is that everything else is moving down to its level (not that most TV content had far to fall). TV "news" is worse every year, we get "reality" TV now, etc.
Given how bad even the sections of the media that at least pretend to have some form of integrity are, such as the papers, are, I decided several years back that I had better things to do than watch that drek. (Of course, this argument is somewhat undermined by being in the process of reading SlashDot, but anyway...).
Even the ABC (different to USA; ABC is the gov't funded TV channel) news is pretty terrible these days.
It seems that any form of depth, coverage of both sides of an issue, or even *gasp* admitting that there's no "right" answer is just forbidden by the TV media. Yay.
One small point: If you're "disgusted with the crappy tv we have to put up with" it may be worth recognising that you do not, in fact, have to put up with it. You're perfectly free not to watch it.
Peter: I should give ya some beer, it'll go right through you.
Stewie: Oh good, then later we can roll a dubie and watch porn.
Peter: Yeah?
Man, you have no idea...
Live freely while you can. Get experiences to talk about because you are going to need every last one of them!
Blogging because I can...
You sure have the site down pat. So it's your girl friend who's playing and not you right?
HERE
You were beaten to this question by about a minute. Anyway, if you think komodo dragons aren't real, it appears you need to sit on the commode-o and think about it for a while.
They are connected to and run by Scientologists. A quick Google turned up this link and there's much more where that came from.
I'm shocked that this connection isn't being shouted from the rooftops around here instead of the current crop of "What's the big deal?" comments that make up the bulk of the high rated comments.
What we *should* do is voice our concerns to Neopets. Or, I should say, parents should voice their concerns. If enough people object to the gambling aspect Neopets may remove it. Content providers who do not listen to the concerns of parents run the risk of going out of business.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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?
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Do a Google search on "neopets scientology". Read some of the search results and decide for yourself.
Another anonymous neopettin' nerd. Funny thing is, I keep playing because it's not life-consuming like EverCrack. I can actually get somewhere in Neopets by playing only a few minutes a day, and get on with real life. Therefore, I haven't lost interest in it like I do most games.
./ article months ago about how there needs to be more games suitable for busy adults who don't have much time to spend on them. Ironic that a kid's site works for me. Maybe makers of MMORPGs can learn something, I'd pay for a game like this without the kiddy stuff and advertising.
I recall a
Way back when they tried to sue Neomail for the rights to the name Neomail, which they were using to brand their webmail service. The basis of their claim was that since they had 'thousands and thousands' of users, they had rights to the name.
My life is dedicated hosting
"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 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.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Did anybody ask to see this? Karma whore
From my post in alt.games.neopets:
"Whoever is doing the reporting/interviewing/editing for that lameass website should be fired for gross incompetence. How the heck does one make a bunch of BS assertions about Neopets and follow it up with snippets from adults supposedly countering the points made above with out-of-context comments that are as significant to the story as "I like yams" would be?"
Shame on McDonald's for bowing to pressure generated by the ignorant and shoved upon the masses by those who should know better.
The first thing to note is that the show is Today Tonight.
Every night they show absolutely stupid stories which dont matter to anyone such as neighbours squabbling over a fence which they both claim to have lost 1 millimeter sq is yard space.
Or whole neighbourhoods arguing over someones dog who smells.
Parents fail to see that this gambling on Neopets might actually be beneficial to children. By exposing them to a tiny bit of gambling, they'll see there's nothing special to it, and won't become addicted to it later in life.
Besides, if churches can hold "bingo" games (and other gambling games approved by God), why shouldn't Neopets?
lets enact MORE laws to protect idiots from themselves. I personally, am fine with large groups of imbicilles with no money going to casinos and paying the 'stupid tax' so I don't have to. Evolution will eventually take over
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
*snip*
Nowadays, you need to have an educational game to make kids "learn". Tell me how this doesn't lead to kids getting bored from learning from an instruction book or during class?
In "the good old days" (whenever you were young), learning bored you, but it was good. Nowadays these young whipper snappers get bored with learning and it's because of the Evil Games of Learning?
I remember that the best teachers that I had actually taught me things, not had me just regurgitate what he or she was saying. They had fun and creative ways to challenge the class. The worst teachers I had just read out of a textbook. What exactly is wrong with making learning fun?
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
I have my view today because my parents, well my father anyway, didn't have them. My introduction to the world was pretty ugly. Got through it ok, but almost didn't.
Figured my kids ought to have better.
Looks all blue sky right now. The older ones are now teenagers. I think they have it pretty rough these days. The next 10 years is going to be very interesting...
Best of luck with your own.
Blogging because I can...
These are bad trends because people are not making the right choices.
New car, or sports fees? Fast food or cook at home. Premium television or broadband? Time off to do what you want or meet with the school people to discuss things. (This one is a biggie and will make a world of difference to your kids education.)
I am having to make one of those choices right now in fact. Riding the IT wave of the 90's was a lot of fun. Now I need to figure out how to live cheaper, or give up some ability to keep the kids involved along with myself. Already did the used car and modest house thing. Maybe it't time for a move or career change.
We could have nicer things, but we don't. I am not sure I would give up a winning sports season for any car.
Will children always be prey to corps? Absolutely, unless parents do their part. Today it's pretty easy to just spend your money making life easy. The cost of doing so is high however.
Those trends you speak of simply mean more folks are making poor choices.
Companies are a problem however. Today they have the same rights as one of us, but don't have the disadvantages. That does need to change in order to put people on more solid ground.
Waiting for this to happen because it's the right thing to do is a bad choice though. Kids only grow up once.
Blogging because I can...
If enough parents actually did provide Neopets with some feedback, things might change. I am not sure they need to however because enough parental involvement really diminishes the problem.
Go ahead and mail them. Tell your friends to as well.
Be sure and check the site out and decide for yourself before doing so however.
Blogging because I can...
> /Sorry, but having an addictive game for kids to play poker and blackjack for more chips doesn't seem very educational to me./
/I was astonished to see a 20-something kid playing his pocket Nintendo in the middle of a lecture/
/How will they possibly be able to learn to sit through a lecture/
Actually, Neopets is far more than a casino. It's also a fully functioning economic simlation with commerce and stores, a bank with variable interest rates, and a stock market with mutual funds and corporations to invest in. It's a safe way to learn about and get a feel for real-world commerce without losing real money. No textbook can approximate that.
>
I hate that too! It'd be far better if he'd skip the lecture, as I and many of my friends did in school. Y'see, not everyone can learn from lectures (some do better from textbooks) and some profs just regurgitate the textbook, making the content of their lectures close to useless. Many students will skip these forms of lectures, but some profs will make a point of dropping one or two valuable sentences that are required knowledge for the test. It's these profs that end up with classes full of students playing Nintendo, or playing Solitare on their laptops or card games in the back of the class. I've been there.
>
I have faith that if the lecture is useful, then they will sit through it. Really, no lecture should be "sat through", it should be "listened to". There is a difference.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. --Ford Prefect
You have more than 2000 more posts on /. then I do, and I have a 4 digit UID!
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Unlike real slot machines, you could actually skillfully win that slot machine in Super Mario Bros 2 if you timed the presses right, in fact, and I sware to god on this, there was a certain setting on the Nes advantage turbo knob that could guarantee you 1ups -every- time if you just turned on turbo and held the button down.
video games too, though they are getting damn good. (It's not a shutout anymore.)
It helps an awful lot to have been born right near the start of the whole video/computer thing.
My favorites happens to be Tekken and SSX. One can get out a lot of frustration playing the former, nothing but pure fun, plenty of trash talk and attitude on the latter.
The worst, for me, are the puzzlers. My days are numbered on those.
The sick part is that a good win against the kids still feels damn good and I suppose it shouldn't. Their time will come though. We all get old, they will have younger fish to fry in due time.
Blogging because I can...
Cute, but after 3 years of watching someone waste time and wonder why, you pick things up along the way. I've been treated to far too many 'Today on neopets...' stories than I need to.
You weren't monitoring as closely as you think you were because all of your examples were obvious user exploits.
Oh...and they've all since been corrected which shoots your ignorant, anti-corporate rant to hell.
To "feed" their pets, Neopets players have to win points in a variety of mini-games, including versions of poker and blackjack.
There's a soup kitchen where the poor can get free food. Also, neopets can't die of starvation (God knows I've tried!)
Today tonight is utter crap, there's about as much journalism in today tonight as there is in the fox news network aka fuck all.
Anyone who watches Today Tonight or A Current Afair, with the least bit of intelligence knows they are nothing more than trouble makers who almost always take the most controversial side of arguments just to generate viewing numbers and get people angry. The fact that major corporations (McDonalds) actually listen to them is really scary if you consider the amount of unprofessional journalism and general lack of any real understanding of the stories subjects they use every week.
For those of you not lucky enough to get today tonight, get your cutting edge current affairs (and latest ufo sightings) from an equivalent US service here: www.nationalenquirer.com
My 2 friends were into Neopets...They spent at least 2 or 3 years into it. They had "hacks" for it, and scammed a bunch of people out of their fake online money. They now have a warning for people that do that, but they didnt get caught (they became friends with the creator of neopets. Yes-THAT addicted)
They since stopped, but one of them now is obbsessed with Final Fantasy Online...From one addiction to another....sad.
"she approached Today Tonight claiming McDonalds was setting her son up for a life of gambling addiction." Yeah, what a great parent - it's okay the give them a lifetime fat ass, but a big no to lifetime gambling. It might be worth mentioning to all those not from the great southern land, that Today Tonight is a pretty low brow show, that mainly revolves around inciting public outrage, however reasonable it may actually be to keep gambling from children.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
...Anyone wants to know: http://www.neopets.com/refer.phtml?username=thaine shkelch (I get free neopoints for you getting an account - Yay!)
The easiest way to get neopoints without doing anything, is to use their stockmarket. You buy at 15 np/share, and sell at 20+ np/share. Easy, you dont do anything, earn a lot... :) Their stockmarket works like s***.... Totally random.
... don't all these US websites have protections already in place for children under 13?
we sell the toys, the toys are alright, but when the site that created them starts to be pulled down from 'gambleing games' that have been there for 4+ years, its strange how mcdonalds reacted to the 'today tonight' show, 1) the show is utter bull shit, all it is, is to make the flames bigger. 2) theres more than just 7 9 10 to watch, but as 'today tonight' is right after the news, most people think its real for some reason...
How can they be allowed to teach young children to become marketing people?
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Fortunately, we still get Media Watch every Monday. It's arguably not quite the same since Stuart Littlemore QC stopped presenting the show, but it's still essential viewing. Their web site also has a streaming feed of each episode.
What does this have to do with Today Tonight? A few years ago, Today Tonight reported that they attempted to interview Christopher Skase, a businessman who fled Australia for Mallorca in Spain, but could not even approach his house by car because of constant police barricades. A keen viewer, having recognised that they were actually driving around Barcelone, wrote to Media Watch, who then blew the story open. Those of us who had previously doubted Today Tonight's credibility, and found this irrefutable and rather hilarious proof, still refer to them as Barcelona Tonight.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
Well you got to teach them somehow??? A world full of gambling junkies is fine with me.
--- hows it taste mother f$#@er!!!
Today Tonight is nothing but a half hour of paid advertising obfusicated as scientific reports, "what will kill you today" stories, and of course the always popular, "conmen dupe dumb people, lets fell sorry for them" stories.
Not to be rude here but...
Your child was caught playing an online moneyless simplified version of a game that you can gamble at. Hey i bet you could gamble at those games of "life" or even racing those fisher Price racecars. Im totaly going freak out and try to shut down some site or company(or at least try to hurt it). I used to have a neopet account and such. I played for maybee a week, grew board, and stopped. Just like that. If a child is going to get a gambling problem this way, he/she probally was going to have it anyway; why not find out about it now?
I'm a bit younger than you, but I remember learning to do addition when I was 3.
My grandfather taught me.
He taught me by teaching me how to play blackjack.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
The word "dragon" refers to species of lizards that walk with their bodies raised from the ground (repites that drag their bodies, like crocodiles, are classified as skinks).
Australia has numerous species of dragon icluding the water dragon, the bearded dragon, the frill-neck, the thorny devil, and the goanna (as are all of the monitor family). Many other countries have dragons, possibly the most famous being the Komodo dragon of Indonesia, not Japan as other posts have claimed, a creature with such poor dental hygene that its bite is lethal due to secondary infection rather than poison (the only species worse is the British).
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with that idiot Steve Irwin (I like all my limbs right where they are).
The ticket arcade games at Chuck E. Cheese, Boomers, etc., yes, they are gambling. They have Wheel of Fortune stop-the-blinking light machines, just as they have Wheel of Fortune slot machines in casinos. And the kiddie casinos have Flip-It, identical to the casino game (a big pile of quarters/tokens looks like it is about to fall over the edge into the win slot, but adding your quarter/token to the pile won't cause the avalanche you expected) -- except in the kiddie version wins are paid in tickets.
Pets in the game cannot die. If you do not feed them, they will reach a level called "Dying," but they do not ever actually die.
You may have up to four pets per account.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
You were in my marketing class?
:P
Seriously, I used to play Tony Hawk on GBA every friggin class. Me and my bud would switch off to see who got the high score.
Still got an A. I realized by the first exam that I wasn't going to need to pay attention to class since I couldn't read what was on the projector and could barely hear him in the back of the auditorium and STILL got a 100%. Only reason I went to class was for the hot future marketroidettes and the pop quizzes
Paizurishitetai desu ka?
Neopets teaches far better money management than Monopoly, Life, and similar games.
Neopets has an extensive market simulation, with over 10,000 discrete items available. There are many shops with virtual vendors, each specializing in a particular category of item. They have limited inventory, sales for special days, and you can even haggle with the vendors to try and get a lower price.
In addition, players can set up their own shop and resell their items at a profit. Realistically, larger inventories require purchasing larger shops. There's also a trading post, which allows for more complex exchanges between players.
Neopets has a job system, where you can employ your pets. Successfully completing jobs adds work experience to that pet's resume, and allows your pet to take on more difficult and financially rewarding jobs.
Neopets has a business management mini-game. Different materials are available to manufacture products out of, each of a different quality and price level. The cost of workers and managers varies according to their experience and college degrees. After production, there's store quality, making sure supply meets demand , and advertising to manage.
Neopets has a bank with savings plans. Like real banks, you get higher interest rates if you have more money in the account. Also like real banks, it can take a very long time to get your return to nontrivial levels. Keeping your money in the bank protects it from robbery and inflation.
Neopets has a miniature stock market, with 41 virtual companies trading as of the time of this writing. The stock market has quite a few features of the real stock market: companies have ticker symbols, there's a "Neodaq" index, companies can and do go bankrupt. It even has broker fees.
In short, Neopets is one of the most brilliant and comprehensive money management simulations available to the general public.