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The Cult of the NeoPet
Wired is running an article examining the ups and downs of the Neopet Addiction. The overly cute online 'game' mostly consists of teaching kids to look at ads, but somehow has developed a large following online. From the article: "A generation agrees. Neopets has a staggering 25 million members worldwide. It has been translated into 10 languages and gets more than 2.2 billion pageviews per month. These dedicated Neopians spend an average of 6 hours and 15 minutes per month on the site. That makes Neopets the second-stickiest site on the Internet - ahead of Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and eBay, according to Media Metrix. What's more, its demographics are the stuff of marketers' dreams: Four out of five Neopians are under age 18, and two out of five are under 13." Relatedly, Kotaku has a quick blurb about the Scientology backdrop against which this cuteness is projected. Update: 12/09 19:14 GMT by Z : Fixed broken link. There's a bug there, methinks.
At least Neopets don't poop on your furniture and scratch the carpet.
This is your brain on neopets: :(
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The link in the story is wrong. Go to http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/neopets.h tml
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
That is not exactly a marketer's dream. Mid-20s with high income is a marketer's dream. They're happy to settle for middle-class under-30. Under 18 and there is usually a limit to how much you can milk kids for, in terms of their weekly disposable income (above which there is the parental filter) vs. the disposable income of post-college people.
Advice: on VPS providers
Anyone know what happened to the founders? They were strangely silent in the Wired article, even though they apparently still work for the company.
:-( ).
The Scientology angle's pretty interesting, and the echos of Scientology-speak with their management were positively eerie. I've come close to crossing swords with that group in the past, and I must say I'm not keen on doing so in the future.
I have to say, it's a very clever concept. It's worth visiting just to look at the bizarre creatures they've created. You don't need to sign up and sacrifice your body thetans to them in order to take a look.
Fortunately.
D
(I ran an anti-Scientology site until I found that dealing with the anti-cult was almost as life absorbing as actually being in Scientology
Neopets combines a lot of the known elements that can make a website 'sticky'. As a web designer, I'm pretty aware of why. Just look at how successful things like Pokemon and Tamogachi pets were. However, these don't require you to take your save card or deck everywhere, you don't need to have some stupidly large object dangling from your keychain, and you can access them almost anywhere. This is just to start (concerning the convenience of them) off.
Not only that, but in schools, I read a lot of school studies about kids getting in trouble for playing Yahoo games or AOL games in classes with computers in front of them. With Neopets, you get all those games with a new skin and it appears to give you rewards for them as well. Even if kids end up buying the merchandise later, a big reason that Neopets does so well is because they have so many things that appear to reward you for using their web services with no fees up front. And their so damn cute!
I should know, I've seen people kicked out of computer labs in college for playing on Neopets when people were trying to finish their finals. Its rather creepy.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
I can finally buy that Xenu Space Plane I've had my eye on.
"Relatedly"? I don't mean to hop on the Zonk-busting bandwagon, but that's not a word, man. See also: "irregardless", "Zonk-busting".
From the kotaku link:
"Adam and Donna are nice people, in and of themselves.
The negative aspects of NeoPets, all came from the side
of Scientology-Oriented business structure/psyche. From
the very get-go, any employee who applies for a job,
will be faced with a couple of personality screening
tests. I shit you not, I had a more comfortable time
with my SAT's in high school! A lot of people make fun
of Scientologists in an ignorant sort of way; they don't
really know what goes on behind the curtains, but I
assure you, it's not pretty. In hindsight, it's a little
ironic that many of the execs are part of the cult, and
many fledglings didn;t seem to get promoted to that
level without first converting (this was the case while
I was there). A mere observation, more than anything
else. Unfortunately, many businesses that visit/partner
up with these guys will look at the architecture of this
successful business, and will be inclined to adopt it
for themselves. It is for this reason alone that I want
to see NeoPets fail."
Scientology scares me... I mean praise L-RON!!!
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I have to admit, I assumed that virtual pets were a fad that would vanish. But Neopets, Nintendogs, etc. seem to be going strong. I guess the genre must have an appeal of its own beyond novelty.
"Second stickiest site" begs the question: what's the stickiest site? (So many wrong answers to that question come to mind!)
I dont have time for pets on my computer, I have a dog that needs train', an adult male cat thats bugging me right now to go outside running around the house meowing like hes bored, and another cat that just gave us early gifts (kittens) for Xmas, anyone want some kittens?
If there's one organization on this Earth that I can't stand, it's the Cult of Scientology. I make a point of harrassing them every chance I get.
We actually did a bit about this story last night on GeekNights.
They typically have their people sitting at little tables in the subways of NYC offering "free stress tests" and copies of Dianetics, hoping to get new converts. Every time I pass them, I take the time to stop and explain to the people they've ensnared that it's a cult. It's scary how many people don't know.
Typical example:
Me: Scientology is a cult. "You know that, right? They believe in an ancient alien named Xenu who exploded the souls of other murdered aliens with H-Bombs billions of years ago. They take your money."
Prospective Scientologist: "What? Wow... Thanks for the warning." -leaves-
Scientologst Asshole: "Hey! You can't say things like that! I'll call the fucking police! Leave NOW or I'll call the police! We're not a cult! It's slander to say we're a cult!"
Me: "The police, eh? Yes, why don't you call them? I'll stick around and wait."
They never actually call the police, but I wish they would sometime. I'd love to see these geniuses attempt to explain to a cop just what illegal act I was committing. "He was telling people about us!" "He says Scientology is a cult!"
So do a good deed. Spread the word about scientology.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
"The overly cute online 'game' mostly consists of teaching kids to look at ads"
I don't remember there being any ads when i first signed up, but then that was a while back.
forever thousands of
Irrelevant comments are added to this site and and should be
removed as soon as possible
to allow for more effeicant use of server space
penises are getting shorter and shorter
orofices should be plugged
shiza should drip from your mouth
tart
Neopets is pretty big with college-aged people, since is it has over 100 games that you can play for free! They have some multiplayer games, but even in single player games you can set up a challenge against other people for neopoints or items. Also each month they reset the high scores and you can win a trophy if you are in the top 10 high-score for those games. If you arn't that ambitious, you can still play a game 3 times a day and, based on your score, earn a small amount of neopoints. Two other areas of the site that attract college students are the battledome (where you can challenge other people's pets to a fight), and the social aspect of the site (guilds, forums, etc)
as for kids, my nephew (who is 4 years old) just started playing neopets after McDonalds gave out stuffed neopets in their happy meals. he can't play alot of the games, but he has fun playing some of the kids games, as well as feeding his pet, and doing his 'dailies' (like trying his luck at the Fruit Machine, or the advent calander they do every december. Every day in December you can visit the calander and get a prize.)
Just thought I'd share some info I knew about Neopets.
I wouldn't trust a Scientologist as far as I could throw him, let alone trust him with my child's entertainment.
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You know, I was one of the first people on Neopets, way back before anyone in the world seemed to know about them. There weren't really any ads at that point, there were far fewer pets, and the pets they had were often a lot stranger. The one thing that had me interested was an early plan to explore and interact with some sort of real-time map, sort of like an MMO. Your pet would be able to move around on this map, learn skills... The concept, even at that point, was vague.
They never did get that feature up, and thus I quickly lost interest.
Gamertag: WyleType