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They speak of website effectiveness in terms of "stickiness", and by that measure NeoPets is as sticky as heroin. Couple of weeks now I've burned fooling about at this site, and it seems like a review of sorts would be the best way to pretend to recoup the investment...
So what is this "NeoPets" that everyone seems to be on about lately, you ask? Well, that's our first clue about its high stickiness factor, for NeoPets is a lot of things: games within games within games, from Flash versions of arcade classics to activities that speak to our oldest hunter-gatherer instincts to amass "stuff", and all of it loosely unified by the metaphor of adopting specimens of various fanciful animal species. The truly amazing aspect of this site's design is how it manages to pull off the balancing act of being insanely cute and yet not saccharine about it (with the possible exception of one rabbitoid species that slips over the line into triggering my urge to club and skin it).
Once one has procured a specimen, one commences to amass the site's currency points ("NeoPoints") by playing various games... some of them more subtle than others. One of the more popular forms of employment for these creatures involves a miniaturized system of capitalism, wherein one lays hands on various items of the site's mind-bogglingly vast array of virtual goodies (from ham sandwiches to collectible stamps, all illustrated in humorous detail), and then attempts to sell them to one's fellow players at a profit. This can get peculiarly realistic, such as when a site-wide storyline such as a war is being played out and items related to said conflict suddenly skyrocket in price. Yes, it's war profiteering made fun for the kiddies, folks!
While the site is generally G-rated in tone, as befits a commercial enterprise ostensibly aimed at prepubescents who haven't discovered that there are much better obsessions out in the offline world yet, the list of topics that the Management have apparently had enough trouble with in the past to rate as bannable offenses surprises even this cynic who was kind of poking around in search of the darker side (as I am wont to do). For example, one thorough rundown of warnable subjects includes the injunction to "For the love of god, stop the 'suckling' posts in roleplay." Apparently people do get it into their heads to interpret a dog, a cat, and a lizard living together under one roof as some sort of polyamorous menage... One would be rather amused to see if the incidence of Furriness in later life will be significantly higher in persons with prolonged preteen NeoPets exposure.
Contributing to the site's overall stickiness factor is a clever system of internal timers; one can try certain NeoPoint-generating activities at two hour intervals, others at three or six hour intervals, there are events that happen at specific times of day, etc., until by the time one has gotten down to the last of the timered activities, one's eligible to try the first again! Between the timered events and the game-games, it's perilously easy to burn six hours at this site without even realizing it. Not that I do this. Um. :)
So what about those games, I hear someone in the back asking? An arcade old-timer like me will probably be able to recognize the ancestors of most of the Flash games, such as "Frumball" (an implementation of the Breakout-clone Arkanoid, with the twist of using spherical blocks) or "Deckswabber" (along the same general premise of Q*Bert of hopping to change colors of tiles); for the most part, they're eerily familiar enough to make a child of the eighties mentally substitute in a few choice sound effects from the originals, and a minimum of practice reaps NeoPoints galore if one had the proper sort of misspent youth. (One does wonder if the site's younger patrons think they invented some of these... {heheh}) Another category is of what one might lump together as "casino games"; one wonders about the appropriateness of these perhaps, on a site for the younger set, but maybe it's teaching them Life Lessons about knowing when to fold 'em, or something. There are also enough brainteasers in the "Mastermind" or "Hangman" vein to warant their own category, and not one but two classic dungeon-crawl adventures that can take weeks to complete.
And now I must leave, for it's almost time for the Snowager to doze off again... Somebody put me out of my misery? Please?
So what is this "NeoPets" that everyone seems to be on about lately, you ask? Well, that's our first clue about its high stickiness factor, for NeoPets is a lot of things: games within games within games, from Flash versions of arcade classics to activities that speak to our oldest hunter-gatherer instincts to amass "stuff", and all of it loosely unified by the metaphor of adopting specimens of various fanciful animal species. The truly amazing aspect of this site's design is how it manages to pull off the balancing act of being insanely cute and yet not saccharine about it (with the possible exception of one rabbitoid species that slips over the line into triggering my urge to club and skin it).
Once one has procured a specimen, one commences to amass the site's currency points ("NeoPoints") by playing various games... some of them more subtle than others. One of the more popular forms of employment for these creatures involves a miniaturized system of capitalism, wherein one lays hands on various items of the site's mind-bogglingly vast array of virtual goodies (from ham sandwiches to collectible stamps, all illustrated in humorous detail), and then attempts to sell them to one's fellow players at a profit. This can get peculiarly realistic, such as when a site-wide storyline such as a war is being played out and items related to said conflict suddenly skyrocket in price. Yes, it's war profiteering made fun for the kiddies, folks!
While the site is generally G-rated in tone, as befits a commercial enterprise ostensibly aimed at prepubescents who haven't discovered that there are much better obsessions out in the offline world yet, the list of topics that the Management have apparently had enough trouble with in the past to rate as bannable offenses surprises even this cynic who was kind of poking around in search of the darker side (as I am wont to do). For example, one thorough rundown of warnable subjects includes the injunction to "For the love of god, stop the 'suckling' posts in roleplay." Apparently people do get it into their heads to interpret a dog, a cat, and a lizard living together under one roof as some sort of polyamorous menage... One would be rather amused to see if the incidence of Furriness in later life will be significantly higher in persons with prolonged preteen NeoPets exposure.
Contributing to the site's overall stickiness factor is a clever system of internal timers; one can try certain NeoPoint-generating activities at two hour intervals, others at three or six hour intervals, there are events that happen at specific times of day, etc., until by the time one has gotten down to the last of the timered activities, one's eligible to try the first again! Between the timered events and the game-games, it's perilously easy to burn six hours at this site without even realizing it. Not that I do this. Um. :)
So what about those games, I hear someone in the back asking? An arcade old-timer like me will probably be able to recognize the ancestors of most of the Flash games, such as "Frumball" (an implementation of the Breakout-clone Arkanoid, with the twist of using spherical blocks) or "Deckswabber" (along the same general premise of Q*Bert of hopping to change colors of tiles); for the most part, they're eerily familiar enough to make a child of the eighties mentally substitute in a few choice sound effects from the originals, and a minimum of practice reaps NeoPoints galore if one had the proper sort of misspent youth. (One does wonder if the site's younger patrons think they invented some of these... {heheh}) Another category is of what one might lump together as "casino games"; one wonders about the appropriateness of these perhaps, on a site for the younger set, but maybe it's teaching them Life Lessons about knowing when to fold 'em, or something. There are also enough brainteasers in the "Mastermind" or "Hangman" vein to warant their own category, and not one but two classic dungeon-crawl adventures that can take weeks to complete.
And now I must leave, for it's almost time for the Snowager to doze off again... Somebody put me out of my misery? Please?
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