Neopets is Basically Garbage

This week I asked everyone on the creative team at Tomo to play Neopets. In light of the recent purchase of Neopets by MTV Networks, it seemed wise to mount a concerted analysis.

I had never played Neopets before Tuesday. It is Friday now, and I'm here to report that Neopets is basically garbage. I'm appalled. Nevertheless, as a Good Midwestern Boy, it seems incumbent upon me to begin with the good:

• Some of the mini-games that are part of Neopets are fun.
• It's conceptually interesting to use an RPG-style world as a giant leaderboard to aggregate results for all the mini-games under the Neopets umbrella.

And now, the bad:

• The game's website is an organizational and graphical disaster. Witness, for example the pet page of ThePawOfJustice, my neopet. Sherman, set the Web Design Wayback Machine to 1997! Marvel also at the number of times the linking word in a neopets.com link is the "here" of "click here." The basic quality of the Neopets web design is, by itself, enough to damn this web-based game. (But wait, there's more...)
• It was very difficult for me, as a new player, to figure out what I was supposed to be doing in Neopets, and how I was supposed to try to accomplish it.
• Some of the mini-games are terrible.
• There is no unifying organizational principle in how the mini-games function. Some have similarities with each other, but learning the context and syntax of one game usually didn't help me anywhere else.
• The mini-games are all over the place in terms of their relationship to the larger game world. Am I controlling my character in this mini-game, or am I being addressed directly as the player? Is my character involved in this game at all? Is this game a part of the world — does it take place in the world? at some persistent place in the world? involving characters who are persistent in the world — or is it simply a Flash-based Tetris-oid that happens to be hosted on neopets.com?

To be fair, it's pretty clear that I'm solidly in the Neopets anti-demographic, being an adult, hardcore tabletop gamer who places a high value on attractive, functional, and consistent web design. Considering all that, perhaps it's not fair for me to say Neopets is basically garbage.

But on the other hand, maybe it is. Even the young, casual gamer who isn't concerned about the aesthetics and design of anything at all would be better served and entertained by a game with consistent navigation, attractive design, decent help, and a unified player perspective on the game world. So I stick by it: "Basically garbage."

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Comments

Ouch! That pet page of yours caused me physical pain. How much of that did you do on purpose and how much was done for you?

I'd have to completely agree.

Even before Neopets was bought out by MTV, it was basically garbage (from the standpoint of an adult, hardcore gamer...and as a teen, hardcore gamer). Guess maybe being bought out by MTV hasn't improved anything?

Peter: My only contribution to the page of pain was to name the character and choose the species. The design of the page is all them.

Cyndi: Not sure if MTV is planning to exert any content changes to the game or site. My understanding is that they're mostly interested in using it as an advertising platform and cash machine.

My 10-year-old daughter (and many of her friends) all adore Neopets and the website.

I however, do detest it. I think that the detesting part comes from being an adult table-top gamer, etc...

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