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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....
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
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.
...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.
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...
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.
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....
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 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.
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.
... 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
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.
"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!