Neopets

Users can earn Neopoints from playing games. Games come in many different genres, which include action, puzzles, and luck & chance. Most games have set maximum earnings or playtime. Players may also earn trophies and other awards from games if they score high enough or perform better than other users. Many single-player and multiplayer browser games are available. Users can also participate in contests and spotlights judged by staff to showcase the users' talents. Quests to retrieve items may also be performed for specific NPCs. Challenges may be made against other players or random players in a "World Challenge" for a prize piece and Neopoints from the jackpot for certain Flash games. Monthly competitions also exist for multiplayer games with four week-long elimination rounds.[8]

The economy is based on Neopoints. Users can also exchange real money for Neocash, used exclusively for the NC Mall.[9] Users can earn Neopoints through playing games, selling items, and other transactions.[10] Once earned, they can be saved in the bank, used to buy items from other users or non-player character (NPC) shops, used to buy and sell stocks in the Neopian stock market called the NEODAQ, or used to buy various other things.[5] Items can be bought from shops found throughout the world of Neopia that are run by NPCs who may allow bargaining. Users can open their own shops to sell items, sometimes after obtaining those items at a lower price from sources such as other shops or charities. Items may also be exchanged through trading or auctions.

Neopets has a community for users to chat with and contact other users. Each user has their own profile they can edit with HTML and CSS and are represented by avatars provided by the website, as users cannot upload their own. Most avatars must be "unlocked" by completing certain in-game tasks, such as winning a contest or getting a high score on a game.[11]

Users may request other users to be "Neofriends" or block other users from contacting them. To comply with COPPA, users under 13 years of age cannot access any of the site's communication features without sending in parental consent via fax.[12] The main features include:

• NeoMail, a personal in-game communication system like regular email. Users can write messages to other users and restrict who can contact them through NeoMail.
• Neoboards, public discussion boards for on-topic discussions. Users can enter their own "neoHTML", a restricted form of BBCode, to customise their posts and signatures.
• Guilds, groups of users with similar interests and their own message board.

Discussions through these features are restricted and may not involve topics such as dating and romance or controversial topics like politics and religion. Continuous moderation is performed by paid Neopets staff members, and users can help moderate the site by reporting messages they believe are inappropriate or offensive. Messages are also automatically filtered to prevent users from posting messages with profanity or lewd content.[12]

Neopets was conceived in 1997 by Adam Powell, a British student at the University of Nottingham at the time. He shared this idea with Donna Williams and the two started work on the site in September 1999, with Powell responsible for the programming and the database and Williams the web design and art. The site launched on November 15, 1999 from offices in Portsmouth Road, Guildford, a location still commemorated on the site.[13][14] Powell stated that the original goal was to "keep university students entertained, and possibly make some cash from banner advertising".[15] The site contained popular culture references, such as a Neopet that was simply a picture of Bruce Forsyth.[16]

The user base grew by word of mouth and by Christmas 1999, Neopets was logging 600,000 page views daily and sought investors to cover the high cost of running the site. Later in the month, American businessman 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.[17] Dohring founded Neopets, Inc. in February 2000 and began business on April 28. Intellectual property that did not belong to Neopets was removed but the site kept the British spellings.[16] The website made money from the first paying customers using an advertising method trademarked as "immersive advertising"[17] and touted as "an evolutionary step forward in the traditional marketing practice of product placement" in television and film.[18] In 2004, Neopets released a premium version and started showing advertisements on the basic site that were not shown to premium members.[19]

Media conglomerate Viacom purchased Neopets, Inc. on June 20, 2005 for $160 million and announced plans to focus more on the use of banner ads over the site's existing immersive advertising.[1][20] The website was redesigned on April 27, 2007 and included changes to the user interface and the ability to customise Neopets.[21] In June, Viacom promoted Neopets through minishows on Nickelodeon. Promotions included the second Altador Cup and led to an increase in traffic through the site.[19] The first Altador Cup was released as an international online gaming event to coincide with the 2006 FIFA World Cup[22] to improve interactivity between users and had 10.4 million participants the first year.[23] On July 17, the NC Mall was launched in a partnership with Korean gaming company Nexon Corporation. It allowed users to use real money to purchase Neocash to buy exclusive virtual items.[24] On June 17, 2008, Viacom formed the Nickelodeon Kids & Family Virtual Worlds Group to "encompass all paid and subscription gaming initiatives across all relevant platforms", including Neopets.[25] By June 2011, Neopets announced that the website had logged 1 trillion page views since its creation.[26]

In July 2009, the Neopets site was the target of an identity theft hacking scheme that attempted to trick users into clicking a link that would allow them to gain items or Neopoints. Upon doing so, malware was installed onto the user's computer. According to reports, the hack was aimed not at child players' Neopets accounts, but at using the malware to steal the financial data and identities of their parents. Viacom stated that it was investigating the issue, and that the hack was a version of social engineering rather than an "indictment of Neopets security practices".[27] In an on-site newsletter for players, Neopets denied the report and claimed that the site's security measures prevented the posting of such links.[28]

Torrance-based educational software company JumpStart Games (formerly known as Knowledge Adventure) acquired Neopets from Viacom in April 2014. Server migration began in September. JumpStart-owned Neopets was immediately characterized by glitches and site lag. On 6 March 2015, much of the Neopets Team remaining from Viacom were laid off.[29] On July 3, 2017, Chinese company NetDragon acquired JumpStart Games.[30] With the support for Adobe Flash ending in 2020, the Neopets Team announced in 2019 that it planned to transition Flash elements of the site to HTML5 by the end of 2020.[31] The Neopets Team also started working on developing a mobile-friendly version of the site as well as a mobile app.

On the weekend of 27–28 June 2015, the site's chat filters, designed to prevent adult language and content, stopped working. The site's forums and other user-edited spaces were flooded with adult content and obscene images.[32]

In a statement on Facebook, JumpStart apologized, explaining that the issue was due to a "facility move," and that during that move, the moderation team was not able to access the Neopets community.[33]

In 2016, Motherboard reported that the login data of 70 million Neopets accounts was stolen.[34] It contained not only usernames and passwords but also email addresses, birth dates, IP addresses, and PINs. It turned out this information was being stored in plain text by Neopets and had first been retrieved in 2012; every single account created prior to that year was affected. Neopets responded by posting about the leak on their official Facebook page and sent emails out to all affected players telling them to change their passwords.

Immersive advertising is a trademarked term for the way Neopets displayed advertisements to generate profit after Doug Dohring bought the site.[16] Unlike pop-up and banner ads, immersive ads integrate advertisements into the site's content in interactive forms, including games and items. Players could earn Neopoints from them by playing advergames and taking part in online marketing surveys. Prior to the arrival of the NC Mall, it contributed to 60% of the revenue from the site[2] with paying Fortune 1000 companies including Disney, General Mills, and McDonald's.[50]

It was a contentious issue with the site with regard to the ethics of marketing to children. It drew criticism from parents, psychologists, and consumer advocates who argued that children may not know that they are being advertised to, as it blurred the line between site content and advertisement. Children under eight had difficulty recognizing ads and half a million of the 25 million users were under the age of eight in 2005.[16][50] Dohring responded to such criticism stating that of the 40 percent of users twelve and younger, very few were seven or eight years old and that preschoolers were not their target audience.[51]

Others criticised the functionality of the site. Susan Linn, another psychologist and author of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood considered the purpose of this site was to keep children in front of advertisements.[46] Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Adbusters magazine, said the site encouraged kids to spend hours in front of a screen and recruited them to consumerism.[16] Neopets executives stated that paid content comprised less than 1% of the site's total content.[46] Children were not required to play or use sponsor games and items, and all ads were marked as such.[16][50]