Neopets Gambling Controversy

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."

Comments

Why not make it educational?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

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!

--
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Parenting and online games

[beavis88]

...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

[garcia]

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.

OMG I'm turning my kids into gambling adicts!

['nother poster]

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.

As a parent...

[neomac]

... 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.