Neopets and other cautionary tales
For people of a certain age, Neopets – an online virtual site and game launched in 1999 – was a milestone in the journey of the world wide web. Nowadays it is not only a source of nostalgia (it’s still alive and kicking!) but it serves as a visionary of early digital adoption.
Immersive Experience
Neopets was one of the first web experiences to monetize time spent on page, creating an interface to encourage users to stay on page as long as possible
Social Network
Before Facebook and Twitter, Neopets created its own social network with users who could connect with each other to trade and sell items, or explore special interests on forums and guilds
Branded Content
In the universe of Neopets you could visit McDonald’s and grab a Coca Cola, pioneering immersive advertising content
Digital Economy
Neopets even had its own stock market, NEODAQ, where you could invest your online digital currency (you could also spend that currency at the virtual casino if you wished)
But there’s a dark and exploitive history alongside the fairytale. Neopets is a classic example of feel good revisionist history around the evergreen VC funded message “adapt to new tools or get left behind”.
Neopets was founded by Adam Powell and Donna Williams, two university students, and it really took off once an investor named Doug Dohring entered the picture.
“Two years after launch, Neopets had 14 million accounts, with the average user spending 117 minutes a week in Neopia. By 2005, the number of accounts had swelled to 92 million.”
Doug Dohring was not only the bankroller but a Scientologist, who was interested in spreading Scientology principles throughout his work. Side note: Doug Dohring was also father to another millennial nostalgia icon, Jason Dohring aka Logan Echolls on Veronica Mars.
Donna Williams recounted on a Reddit AMA:
“We were not aware of it at first as we were totally naive.
Basically the first group of investors (who were the guys that had spare office space in Glendale as their automotive firm was being downsized) were scientologists.
When we realised it was a bit of a shock. Somewhat awkward moment when you realise you started the biggest entertainment site visited by millions of children and teens, but the upper management you just signed the company over to are part of some weird religion that is banned in some countries…”
While Donna and Adam insisted they shut down any religious content, the structure Dohring brought to the site was centred around Scientology principles and psychology around ‘tiered experiences’ which became an inseparable part of logging onto the site.
In 2002 Neopets was raking in $15million a year and attracting the eyes of law-makers for its unethical advertising to children.
“With 11 million users, 39% under 13, Neopets is one of the Internet’s most popular and “stickiest” destinations. Users visit on average for 3 1/2 hours a month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. But unlike sites that generate ad revenues by inserting pop-ups or banners along a page that are easily identified (and ignored), Neopets offers marketers what company CEO Doug Dohring calls “immersive advertising.” The company integrates ad messages into the site’s content, creating “advergames” for clients based on a product-or brand-awareness campaign. The company then tracks site activity and provides demographic and usage data to customers, offering a window into kids’ purchasing habits.” - TIME
At the time this business method did not break the Children’s Online Privacy Act, it merely bent around it as the laws could not catch up quickly enough with the digital age. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin would introduce mechanisms to address this loophole, and would later advocate to ban similar methods employed by Big Tobacco companies targeting kids.
In addition to the sneaky advertising, having a primarily young audience made it especially predatory that Neopets were replicating gambling games and in turn training young minds to return to the site repeatedly for the addictive dopamine hit of knock off Blackjack.
“The young audience of Neopets also made the site’s gameplay problematic. A large portion of the sites’ mini-games were clearly inspired by popular, real-life gambling games. Underage kids gambling on Neopets resulted in a Today Tonight story after a mother’s complaint. Neopets had to temporarily remove the gambling-based games from the site for Australian users. However, this one was later lifted. Child psychologist Michael Carr-Greg argued that the mini-games were “sanitising, normalising, and glamourising gambling”.” - HappyMag
While the gambling games were using imaginary money, the evolution of the site allowed for the organic development of a Black Market of Neopets characters that ended up costing players real adult money. A situation that escalated over a number of years and made waves in 2021:
“Players are understandably unhappy with the black market ordeal plaguing Neopets, and it seems that the majority of the blame is rightfully on the development team. With the combination of bad security, poor vigilance, and a complicated retrieval process, it seems like more could have been done to prevent a black market before it became what it is today.” - ScreenRant
Arguably the worst impact Neopets had was becoming an unwitting tool for child predators. There are several accounts by now-adults recounting how they were lured by child predators in message boards and chats. As the internet grew, and gameplay grew, millions of children were entering online spaces that developers had little foresight (or interest) to prevent predatory behaviour allowing the exploitation of children online to proliferate.
To me, Neopets is a prime case study in digital capitalist revisionist history. The exponential growth of this site is often portrayed as a success story, while its harmful impacts are conveniently forgotten. They can’t exist without each other, yes Neopets was a colourful and cheery game a lot of us spent our time on as kids, that can’t be divorced from the fact that we were being trained to return to a site to be marketed to and roleplay gambling games. Would it have been as popular if there wasn’t a magical giant omelet to visit every day?
Right now the conversation is AI, a few years ago it was digital currencies, there’s always a current internet based technology being shoved in our faces as ‘the future’. Something we either need to get on board with or get behind. And any caution is treated as resistance:
“People were scared of email too!” Yes, and there are 3.4 billion phishing emails sent per day.
“Businesses didn’t want to go online when the web came out, now everyone is!” Yes and cybercrime costs us over $10 trillion annually
“People were scared of the internet too when it came out” Yes and 1 in 5 women have experienced significant online harassment
Quick digital adoption without guardrails has always spelled disaster. If you work in digital as a marketer, developer, tech sales, or any other job role it is time to apply an equity lens to your work and be part of creating positive online experiences. Even if the conversations are hard, even if it means ripping off the mask of a cute lil Neopet to reveal the murk underneath.