sometimes i get really really tempted to finally just bang out an essay on virtual economies because i want an excuse to talk about how backwards, restrictive, unintuitive, inconvenient, and twisted the current premium item system on neopets is because its one of the worst things ive ever seen in my life and is likely one of the main reasons the site has stagnated so much
Give me a rundown, because my above average knowledge on economics intrigues me on how you make the connection
okay, I’m going to give you the most basic backstory I can
for this website because it’s critical to understanding how exactly we got to
this point.
when neopets first stepped into business ventures, its main
method of generating revenue was through a relatively new (at the time) form of
advertisement. basically shoehorning in shops, events, games, and items based
around promoting/selling you products into the world to leave a direct impression
this worked for a time because the game’s playerbase was growing
exponentially, with the number of active, unique accounts doubling and tripling
as each year passed. The traffic alone was enough to help it stay afloat, as
well as their pushing of toys, card games, console games etc. all with neopets
branding
this boon didn’t last nearly as long as management hoped,
because, as most fads do, neopets started to decline severely in popularity. I wont
go into too many details about this since that’s a whole other can of worms,
but it’s mostly due to a series of buyouts and the laying off of creative
staff/community figures and the new tiny staff doing absolutely nothing to
improve the site over the span of literal decades, instead pumping out pseudo-updates of a handful of new mostly
useless items and features made possible with the magic of cheap outsourcing.outsourcing that cant even bother to draw their own art half of the time
meanwhile during all of this the website’s not been updated design
and code-wise since early 2000’s. there really isn’t anything I can think of
that shows just how dilapidated this website is than the fact that clicking on
an item in your inventory to interact with it still opens a completely new
window instead of an on-page popup
that being said, nothing I can say here can give you the
full idea of just how broken and barely-functioning the site is to navigate and
use, so I’d recommend making yourself an account and doing a little
sight-seeing for yourself
but, what I wanted to get at here with this backstory was
that once the traffic dried up, in order to stay profitable, you can’t just
outsource everything as cheaply as possible and fire all your staff, including all of the forum moderation,
and expect to stay alive. you still need a method of revenue.
so they dug their heels in deep and decided to go directly
for the blood of what little of their playerbase was left with their premium content system.
this is a lot already, i know. i can go on if you really want
alright i had a few glasses of wine and a lot of you are asking for me to finish this so, picking up where i left off: the premium content
most of the premium content on neopets manifests in the form of special clothing items/accessories for your neopet, located in the NC mall. NC standing for neocash. if you have any experience with neopets, you’d know the “primary” form of currency has always been neopoints. well, it was that way until the NC mall was introduced, along with a ton of new clothing for your pets.
this stuff comes steep as you can see. most items in the store will run you about 100-200 neocash, so about 1-2 dollars. premium currency isn’t exactly an uncommon thing among virtual economies – in fact, most of the time, it’s a staple and to be expected.
considering what i said before about much of the site being partially or completely nonfunctional, one of the few things the player base is still invested in is neopet customization. non-premium clothing is extremely scarce, not very well-drawn, and usually only fits one type of neopet. there are 55 different neopets with widely varying body shapes, so it’s too much effort for the outsourced artists to draw one item of clothing in 55 different ways.
unless it’s a premium item, then it fits every single neopet just fine (excluding a certain colors like mutant and baby that changes the lineart). you can see why this would be appealing to anyone who wants to have a fully-clothed customized neopet.
even this on its own would still be fine, but as it stands, there are thousands and thousands of different premium clothing items produced – but only a tiny fraction of them are ever on sale at once. this is because almost every new item released is on a strict retirement timer – usually about a week to a month, a season if you’re lucky. wanted to mulligan away the tiny amount of premium currency you’ve managed to earn for a special item? sorry bud, if you don’t have it by friday, that item’s gone.
lucky for you, there’s an item trading mechanic on-site if someone else out there has that cool accessory you just barely missed…
..or maybe not. here’s the current rules on premium item trading:
yep. you’re only allowed to exchange premium items for other premium items. absolutely nothing else. neopoints/neopoint items? nope. someone else’s cool rare pet? nope. commissioning an artist and paying with an item? absolutely not. you are absolutely fucking pigeonholed into paying up for neocash in one way or another. you’ll be banned on sight if you’re caught doing this.
there’s not even a proper transfer system for your items. you have to mutually gift your trading partner by putting your NC item into a gift box. which you have to pay for. you could even pay for fucking wrapping paper for the damn thing, which literally does nothing but alter cosmetics. i can’t make this shit up.
with all this in mind: why even try? the system is built in such a way that wrings you for as much money as possible. the staff can’t even stand the thought of you using any means besides emptying your damn bank account and jumping through about 50 flaming hoops to get a wig for your pet dragon.
but, like with any shit system, if you push your playerbase, they push back.
there’s a massive neopets black market. these rules are broken routinely by thousands of players every day, choosing instead to deal in offsite forums. one of the largest and most successful neopets black market sites is shopneopia, and make no mistake, in terms of the site’s rules, it is very, VERY illegal to buy ANYTHING from this website.
but goddamn if they aren’t the unsung heroes of this whole ordeal. they’ve cut out all the bullshit that neopets has put in place and just put all the elusive premium shit you want in one centralized place to send you whenever you want, and nobody can fucking stop them. they’re genuine, friendly site veterans and i know for a damn fact that everyone on neopets right now with any premium items at all got them through this website, or some other similar one. i’ve had friends come out to me and say they’ve been using this site for years.
tl;dr the neopets economy is such a player-unfriendly dumpster fire that the majority of the userbase trades and buys items exclusively on the black market
