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Defending Neopets.com
Written by Phenylalanine
I never thought I'd be in the position where I was outraged to the point of actually defending Neopets. But it's happened.
Recently Neopets has blocked Australian users from such games as Tombola, and the Fruit Machine. They're trying to avoid media-induced backlash over the site's 'gambling' games. I was completely shocked to see, in particular, what one article had to say about Neopets.
I wrote this thing, it's quite long.. I'm not sure if I should post it somewhere on the web, or send it as a letter to various news orginizations, or just sit here and fume.
I am looking for feedback, I guess.. any kind of feedback...
Here goes:
MEDIA REPORT RAMPANT WITH LIES
Half truths and outright lies abound in an article issued by Australia's Today Tonight show.
This article, http://seven.com.au/todaytonight/story/?id=16887, attacking the children's activity website Neopets.com, and one of their sponsors, McDonald's Inc., contains blatent untruths and abysmally poor research.
Neopets.com is a free online game, where users can create or adopt virtual pets. There are tens of thousands of virtual items as well; food, grooming supplies, toys and medicines for use on their pets. Items are obtained through 'Random Events' or can be bought from shops in the virtual world. Currency for buying items comes in the form of Neopoints, which can be earned from buying, selling, and trading items, or scoring in any of the approximately 150 games included on the site. The site also boasts player driven competitions, such as art, poetry and web design, (users are allowed to use HTML to improve the appearance of their pet's identity pages).
As Neopets.com is often seen as a children's gaming site, there is a very strict and well enforced ToS (Terms of Service) to abide by. In compliance with COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), Children under the age of 13 cannot use certain features of the site, such as the messageboards, without signed parental permission. There are also links to automated abuse report forms anywhere that abuse of the site may occour. Offenders are banned, or 'Frozen' quickly.
The 'controversy' arose when McDonalds Corporation of Australia put Neopet soft toys, or 'Plushies', in their Happy Meals, as part of their promotion. Drawing attention to Neopets.com, some parents were allegedly upset to see that some of the games on Neopets.com were gambling games, where the player can choose to bet some of their Neopoints.
The Today Tonight Show then published this 'investigative' article, http://seven.com.au/todaytonight/story/?id=16887, on Neopets.com's alleged encouragement of gambling activities in minors.
Quote: Among the activities the site offers are virtual pokies, roulette games, and card games where one of the cute characters teaches children the rules of poker and blackjack.
Out of the over 150 games available on Neopets.com, 2 games are 'pay' Slot Games, and 1 is a once-a-day free slot. There are a total of 5 'Spin the Wheel' games, inaccurately stated as roulette in the article. There are 8 card games available, several of which are variations on Solitaire. Less than 30 of the games total require an entrance fee of Neopoints, the fee laying anywhere from 5 to 500 Neopoints.
Quote: As Michelle's son Harley explains, you need to gamble to raise points to feed your virtual Neopets.
This statement is blatently false. There is never a 'need' to gamble on Neopets.com. As stated above, less than 30 of over 150 games available on the site require a Neopoint entrance fee. That's over 120 games available free of Neopoint charges, and the potential to earn Neopoints in all of them, every day. Games aren't the only way to earn Neopoints. Virtual items can be found, bought and sold for profit. There's a virtual stockmarket, where you can invest, and track the performance of virtual companies within the site. There are multiple art and logic competitions, all for item and Neopoint prizes, without ever gambling or betting.
Quote: He says if you don't gamble up enough points to feed your pet, it goes to the "orphanage".
This is another lie. Neopets do not ever leave or get sent away from their owners by force. Unfed neopets become unhappy, and can be subject to negative events if they remain unhappy. Players do not even need to spend their Neopoints on food, because there are a few locations on the site where they can receive completely free food items once a day. These locations are very well known, are advertised around the site, and are often listed on gaming Fan and Help Sites.
There is no orphanage anywhere on Neopets.com. There is an Adoption Centre, or 'Pound', where players can leave their pets for other users to adopt if they are leaving the game, or if they find the responsibility of looking after their Neopets is too great. Players are highly discouraged from ever leaving a pet there, with everything from messages explaining the responsibility of owning a pet, to their pet begging them not to leave them, if they decide to proceed.
Quote: Players who don't win enough points gambling to buy food actually have to send their Neopets to a "virtual soup kitchen".
Again, "who don't win enough points gambling" is untrue; as stated above, there is never any need to gamble on Neopets.com. The phrase "have to send" is also speculative, because there is no reason why players 'have' to send their Neopet anywhere. A 'soup kitchen' is available to players who have less than 2000 Neopoints. This is a minimal number of Neopoints, (players can earn up to 1000 Neopoints each time they play a game), and the patrons are usually players who are just starting out on the site.
This statement in the article clearly condtradicts the statement directly above it. If you have to 'gamble' to keep your pet fed, and therefore out of the 'orphanage', then why are there multiple locations where players can feed their pets for free?
Quote: "A nine-year old boy doesn't have the ability to question," Michelle said. "He doesn't even know what a virtual soup kitchen is."
This statement would make the entire paragraph above it speculative. If nine-year old Harely doesn't have 'the ability to question', does he then hold the ability to properly assess a complex game without assistance? Is the entire investigative stance of the article dependent on a nine-year old? Surely his mother was assisting and supervising his online playing time, and could easily have corrected his misconceptions about the rules of the game? The article doesn't mention at this point how long Harely had been playing Neopets either. In Harely's defence, if he was very new to the game, then perhaps he wouldn't know all there is to know about it. If these are his statements about Neopets.com, then he clearly doesn't. Why would an article about a game seriously interview someone who does not know how to play the game, or is not capable of assessing it?
Quote: Child psychologist Michael Carr-Greg says this is a sure-fire way to turn our kids into gambling addicts. "I don't think there would be any parents in Australian who would be very happy to know that Ronald McDonald is getting into the casino business," Mr Carr-Gregg said.
(Typos from the actual article are highlighted)
The article does not state whether Dr. Carr-Gregg personally and thoroughly investigated Neopets.com before making his statements, or whether he just listened to the speculative information presented to him about the issue. How is Neopets.com a 'casino business'? The site has completely free membership, there is no real money involved, and as stated twice before, there is never a need to gamble at any time on the site. Also as stated previously, the majority of games on the site cannot be considered gambling, as there are no Neopoint entrance fees for over 120 games.
Quote: He says children just don't have the critical facilities needed to understand the dangers of adult-style gambling.
This statement can be challenged in two ways. Once again, if children 'don't have the critical facilities needed', then why did the article rely so heavily on a nine-year old's assessment of the game, especially if he 'doesn't have the ability to question'? It is also very arguable that children can understand the dangers of gambling. They infact, easily understand that there is a very small chance of winning, and that if they bet, they will most likely lose their Neopoints. Even very young children can figure this out after playing on Neopets.com for a short while. They understand they need to earn and save their Neopoints for items that they want to own, that gambling is risky and can bring bad results, and is not usually worth it for them. Since there is no 'real' money involved, one could actually use the few gambling games available on Neopets.com as an educational tool about the dangers of gambling.
Quote: "As far as I'm concerned, this is sanitising, normalising and glamourising gambling," Mr Carr-Gregg said.
'Sanitizing' and 'Normalizing' are questionable - gambling, even in children, has been around for thousands of years. Gambling amongst youths can take such forms as: card games, 'dares'; playing trading card games, pog, tops, or even marbles 'for keeps'. 'Glamourizing' seems to be an entirely false assessment. Is having 2 Slot Games, 2 Poker Games, and 1 Blackjack game, out of over 150 games available, really that glamourous? Nowhere on Neopets.com is there any claim that these few games are a necessity, or that they are somehow better than all the other games.
Quote: No Pokies MP Nick Xenophon says this is yet another example of a junk food giant failing to act in the best interests of children.
"Let's listen to those people who've dealt with gambling addiction who say there's a very clear link between people exposed as kids to these sorts of games and developing gambling problems later on," Mr Xenophon said.
The statement "Let's listen to those people who've dealt with gambling addiction who say there's a very clear link" clearly focuses only on people who believe there is a link, and does not take into account that there are many other factors that contribute to gambling problems in adults. However, the scope of this article is not to debate what those links are. The word 'exposed' in the statement also is unclear. How much exposure is acceptable? Is five minutes watching a horserace on television too much? Is playing a few card games during school recess going to negatively influence a child's entire adult life? Is spending 10 Neopoints on Neopets.com in a double-or-nothing coinflip game going to turn children to gambling abuse?
Quote: Marketing expert Con Stavros says the pro-gambling message could be even more powerful because it was coming from McDonalds, a supposedly family-friendly brand.
"I'm surprised at the naivety of McDonalds to let themselves fall into this particular kind of situation," Mr Stavros said.
Where is the pro-gambling message on Neopets.com? The only place that Neopets.com is 'shown' to be a gambling opperation, is in the TT's article. Can a completely free site, host to over 150 games, plus an interactive world with millions of users, thousands of individual pages and activities, really be called 'pro-gambling' when less than 30 pages total, (and the majority of those are just games with a small entrance fee), have anything that could be considered gambling?
The only 'naivety' seems to be the ignorance to the truth protrayed in the biased TT's article. The only 'situation' is that presented in the biased TT article.
Quote: Mum Michelle says she was surprised to see McDonalds associated with the games.
"I wonder if McDonalds is as informed as we are now, recognising that there is gambling on this site?" Michelle asked.
As mentioned before, the actual ammount of gambling available on the site is extremely small, and it is never necessary that a user participate. Also, as previously stated: Since there is no 'real' money involved, one could actually use the few gambling games available on Neopets.com as an educational tool about the dangers of gambling.
Quote: Apparently not, because late this afternoon, McDonalds Corporation told Today Tonight it was taking the issue seriously and shutting down the gambling components of the website.
This is a very odd statement, in that McDonalds does not own Neopets.com, and yet they can 'shut down components' of the website. Neopets.com is still 100% functional, with all the 'questionable' games intact. This is yet another example of poor research and poor reporting in the article.
Quote: "As a parent you can never be too careful," Michelle said. "You think you're doing the best you can and supervising everything, but some things still slip through and my son has been playing this for months."
Surely, if nine-year old Harely was properly supervised when he was online, his mother would have noticed he'd been playing on Neopet.com, with it's many bright and colourful graphics, before months had elapsed?
Gambling games take up a minuscule portion of Neopets.com, and it is in no way manditory that users play them. The Today Tonight show has propagated a mountain out of a molehill, advocating blatent lies and half truths in their article. Journalists are supposed to investigate and report without bias. This article, unfortunately, could not be further from the truth. The Journalist who engineered it should be professionally censured and issue an apology to Neopets.com, it's players, the McDonalds Corporation, and most importantly, the trusting public.
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