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Neopets
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For the company of Neopets, see Neopets, Inc..
Neopets

Screenshot of the Neopets homepage on 10 September, 2008.
Developer(s)
Neopets, Inc.
Publisher(s)
Neopets Inc.; Viacom Inc
Designer(s)
Adam Powell
Platform(s)
Cross-platform
Release date(s)
15 November 1999
Genre(s)
Fantasy, Digital pet
Mode(s)
Single-player with multiplayer interaction.
Media
Web browser
System requirements
Web browser with Adobe Flash Player plugin. Adobe Shockwave and 3D Life Player (both optional)
Input methods
Keyboard, mouse
Neopets (originally NeoPets) is a virtual pet website launched by Adam Powell and Donna Williams on 15 November 1999.[1] Six months after the web site was launched, Adam Powell and Donna Williams successfully sold a majority share to a consortium of investors led by Doug Dohring. On 20 June 2005, Viacom bought Neopets, Inc. for $160 million (USD).[2]
Neopets is based around the virtual pets that inhabit the virtual world of Neopia. Visitors can create an account and take care of up to four virtual pets, buying them food, toys, clothes, and other accessories using a virtual currency called Neopoints. Neopoints can be earned through playing games, investing in the game's stock market, trading, and winning contests. Users can explore the world of Neopia with their Neopets and interact with each other through the NeoBoards, NeoMail, guilds, and Key Quest.
Neopets also operates a pay-to-play version known as Neopets Premium, which offers additional features and benefits for a monthly fee of $7.99 (USD). Neopets, Inc. produces and sells a wide variety of Neopets merchandise, such as plushies, stickers, notebooks, three video games and a trading card game. While the site has been praised for being "gentle" and educational, several issues such as immersive advertising and gambling-based games have garnered criticism.
Contents[hide]
1 History
2 Gameplay
3 Site content
3.1 Games
3.2 Exclusive content
4 Community
5 Immersive advertising
6 Reception
7 Merchandise
8 References
9 External links

History
See also: Neopets, Inc.
Neopets was conceived by Adam Powell while studying at the University of Nottingham in 1997. Powell left and started UK-based advertising company Shout! Advertising in 1996, which grew to be the third largest click-through program on the Internet by 1999. He also co-founded Netmagic, an online banner advertising design and sales firm and Powlex Ltd., a web site design firm. Donna Williams was a marketing manager for Shout! Advertising from September 1997 to July 1999 responsible for internet advertising, sales and services, graphic and web design. He and Williams started creating the site in September 1999 and launched it two months later on 15 November 1999. Powell was responsible for the programming and database, and Williams the web design and art. The site grew by word of mouth and by Christmas of 1999, they received 600,000 page views daily and sought investment to cover the high cost of running the site.The same month, Doug Dohring was introduced to the creators of the site and, along with other investors, bought a majority share in January of the following year. Neopets, Inc. was created in February 2000 and began business in April. The website made profit from the first paying customers for an advertising method trademarked as "immersive advertising", touted as "an evolutionary step forward in the traditional marketing practice of product placement" in television and film
Media conglomerate Viacom bought Neopets, Inc. on 20 June 2005 for $160 million and planned to focus more on banner ads instead of immersive advertising.On the first day of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the Altador Cup started as an annual international online gaming event and had 10.4 million participants the first year. The entire Neopets site was revamped on 27 April 2007, referred to as Neopets 2.0 in the Neopets FAQ. On 17 July 2007, the NC Mall was launched in a partnership with Korean gaming company Nexon Corporation. The next day, Viacom announced on their website that by the end of 2008, Neopets would be changing their company name, not the site name itself, to NeoStudios, "which will focus on developing new virtual world gaming experiences online, while continuing to grow and evolve the existing ones." Yet that did not happen and the name of the site has not been changed.
After the changes in ownership, the site still retained its British English spellings.To date, since August 2003, the site has been translated into ten other written languages: Japanese, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Spanish, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Dutch and French. However, Neopets announced on 1 January 2009 that the Italian, Japanese, and Korean areas of the site would no longer be updated.

Gameplay
Neopets is set in the themed lands of the fictional world of Neopia, which has its own calendar and timezone running concurrent with the real-world Pacific Time.It also has its own economy and stock market based around the Neopoint. Players earn Neopoints through various means including playing games and selling items. Once earned, they can be invested or used to buy various goods and services.

A customizable Neohome
Users are free to choose their own path in the world of Neopia, from collecting things to battling against other users. Visitors can create a free account. A user then creates a Neopet and chooses its unique name, physical characteristics, and personality and may own up to four per account. A newly created pet comes with randomly rolled stats used for battling in the Battledome. Players need to feed and care for their Neopets when they grow hungry or get sick, although they will not die if they are neglected.New users start out with a newbie pack of various items that introduce a basic feature of the site, such as food for feeding a pet. They can get more items for their Neopets by earning Neopoints, the site's currency, through various activities including playing games and selling items.
Users can interact with their Neopets by reading books to them, caring for them, and playing with them. This will make their mood better. They can train their Neopets to be fighters in the Battledome against other player's Neopets or non-player characters. Wearable items, such as certain clothing, can be used to customize a Neopet. Players can build a customizable Neohome for their Neopets, furnish them, and buy extensions that reflect the socioeconomic quality of the house.
Players can collect certain virtual items and display them in a gallery or album. In addition to items, players can also collect trophies, avatars, and site themes, although there is no function to display the latter two.
Users found breaking the rules set in the Terms and Conditions may have their account suspended, a temporary block of your account, or "frozen", which is permanent.

Site content
The content of the site is updated almost on a daily basis with the addition of new games and items, weekly content, and other things. In addition to the site content updated by Neopets, players also contribute user-generated content to the site.Player contributions come in the form of prescreened submissions and readily editable content that is automatically filtered, such as the site's weekly electronic newspaper The Neopian Times and their own user lookup, respectively.

Games
There are many active games from which users can earn Neopoints and awards. Before 22 November 2006 the games were divided into three categories: Puzzle, Action, and Luck/Chance. After that date the Games Room was reconfigured and now games are divided into many more categories. Various games and activities include Flash and Shockwave games, PHP games, 3D Life Player games, contests and spotlights, and quests to retrieve items.
Neopoints can be earned from playing games, most of which have a set maximum of earnings or playtime. Players may also earn trophies for their trophy cabinet from games if they score high enough for the Hi-Score Tables, which are reset on the first day of each month. Challenges may be made against other players or random players in a "World Challenge" for a prize piece for certain Flash games. A monthly competition also exists for multiplayer PHP games with four week-long elimination rounds.
Neopets offers several different contests and spotlights, where winners are chosen by judges on the Neopets staff or voted on by members of the Neopets community. Contests include several formats, such as writing a story, making a short animated film or drawing a picture of their Neopet. Spotlights showcase what users have done with customizable content. Winners also receive a trophy and a reward, which varies with the contest or spotlight.
In Australia, a cross-promotion with McDonald's where McDonald's promoted Neopets plushies in their Happy Meals and Neopets featured McDonald's-related content led to a controversy with Neopets' luck/chance games in October 2004. A story on the Australian tabloid television show Today Tonight featured a nine-year-old boy who claimed that the site requires one to gamble in order to receive enough Neopoints to feed one's Neopet or else it would be sent to the Pound. While this is factually incorrect (gambling is not required, nor are pets ever sent to an orphanage if they are not fed), it is true that the website has a number of games of chance that are directly based on real-life games such as blackjack and lottery scratchcards. In 2004, Neopets prohibited users under the age of 13 from playing most games that involve gambling because of the boy mentioned above.