Choice Blog 1

Choice Blog 1 - Economy of Neopets

After reading Synthetic Worlds I became aware that an online game that I play can be considered a synthetic world. This book also made me think a lot about the importance of the economies of synthetic spaces. Neopets is a good example of a complex economy in an online game.

Neopets was created in 1999 and is primarily used by children. (I don’t really care that I’m probably too old for the game but its fun). I see some element of toxic immersion in this game because I often find myself play for a few hours when I'm supposed to be doing homework. The game takes place Neopia a land filled with strange and magical creatures. Neopets is a free game where you own a pet. Many of the pets have little or no resemblance to real animals. You can have a house and even own your own store. The game is based on primarily based on traditional capitalism. The game even has its own stock market, which I know next to nothing about.

The point of the game is to play games in order to obtain Neopets currency called Neopoints. You can use these Neopoints to buy things for your pet like food, clothes, medicine, toys and pet pets (pets for your pet). The amount of Neopoints you can earn depends on the level of difficulty of the game you are playing. You can also complete missions that fairies ask you to do (I only play the games because they are easier). The ultimate point to the games is to have your pet battle other users pets (this is something I know very little about because I do not play competitively and my pet has been at level one since I chose it). To battle you need to buy weapons, shields, healing stones, potions and you can even purchase strength.

You can store the Neopoints that you earn in the National Neopian Bank. If you leave all you money in your inventory it can easily be stolen, so the bank is a good idea. It functions similarly to a real bank. You store you money there and you can collect interest on it. You can pick an account type based on the initial deposit you make, the higher your account type, the more interest you are able to collect. You also have an interest rate .

A picture of my Neopet and the Neopian National Bank page.

User market place and examples of food and prices.

Another important element of Neopets is the ability to create you own store. Once you have collected enough Neopoints you can open up a store with your extra items. Items in Neopia have recommended values set by the creators of the game. In a store you can create your own prices. The other day my Neopet became infected with a disease called Chickaroo. The only way to cure the disease was with an herbal omelet. This is considered a rare item that you cannot find just lying around. The game suggested that the item cost 300 Neopoints (NP) but ended up costing 10,000 NP. Neopia does have stores which quickly go out of stock and often contain few items at a time. You need to go to a store own by another user. They sell there products at a much higher rate than at the stores. You have no choice but to buy from other users. The user shops in a way set a monopoly in the sense that you can only buy from them and they control prices. You still have the option of shopping around users stores but they all have similarly high prices.

I think another important point of interest is the ways in which the Neopets comapny makes their income. Aside from the online game, the Neopets company is currently selling Neocash (this is a very new development) which you can use to purchase items in and outside of the game. You can buy exclusive items with this real money. Neopets also has a line of video games for various game platforms. They also sell plush toys and other toys. The website also has many advertisements throughout the site. Some companies that have ads on Neopets are Capitol One, Verizon, Microsoft, McDonalds, Virgin Mobile, various brands of cereal and Target most of which are targeted towards children. The ads appear on almost every page and even appear in the game windows. Some games are also promotional. I remember a Limited Too matching game and another game for some fast food chain (I can't find an example of this right now, this type of game changes).