Neopets and Dohring were heavily lauded in the business world for such brilliant advertising methods, as banner-based advertising had been becoming decreasingly effective at the time, though they received some criticism from consumer advocacy groups for marketing products so aggressively to children.
#Games like neopets 2015 mac#
Using a method now trademarked as “immersive advertising,” Neopets had no banner ads, instead relying on in-game product placement, for instance in one of its Flash games the user brushes a Grarrl’s teeth with a Crest battery-powered toothbrush, or they can purchase Capri Sun or Kraft Mac and Cheese as food items. The real boom of Neopets happened after it was purchased by Doug Dohring in 2000, who began the push for better advertising to monetarily support the site and its team, still headed by the founders Adam and Donna. The first in these early days, for instance, led to the discovery of the Battledome, where pets could then train and level up their fighting abilities, a feature that would be used in many a war-based site-wide plot henceforth. Plots, intricate and alluring stories of Neopia told through comics and puzzles, ended up being the main holder of interest for both the players and the site’s creators, who eagerly pumped out new characters and enticing story arcs which lasted weeks at a time. The site and its features grew as it gained members. Right two: the Fleye, which later became the Buzz. Left two: the Badeek, which later became the Kacheek. The original “Bruce,” modeled after English entertainer Bruce Forsyth, and its later redesigns. You can look through a collection of all the pet design contests and voting polls here. Users were often involved in the creation of aspects of the site, such as voting on new pets, names, or designs. The community was small in the beginning, like any, although growing quickly. With Adam at the helm doing programming and databasing and Donna doing the designs and artwork, was born: a surprisingly extensive site where the user creates and cares for a virtual pet, plays games, earns in-world currency to invest in in-world stocks or buy items to spruce up their pets or show off to other players, and explores the virtual world of Neopia.ĭuring the first few months of the site, the creators and their team used it as a playground of sorts. The original idea was cutting edge, according to Donna – a Java-based Zelda-style game where you were the Neopet walking around inside its own world, but the idea was scaled down as they moved the game toward a more maneagable webpage-based style with Flash and Java elements thrown in. Our story begins a decade or so before the overabundance of cutesy online pet games like Webkinz and Club Penguin, a time just before the garrish adolescent stage of the internet populated by MySpace profiles with auto-playing MP3s and red Comic Sans text on poorly compressed jpg background – it is November 15th, 1999, and booming young British couple Adam Powell and Donna Williams have just released their novel website Neopets.
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But the full story of Neopets had begun much before I came around to it. In our last installment, I discussed my own history with Neopets, how I was raised in this online world and how my interactions with it shaped who I am today.
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