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Everything I Ever Needed to Know About
Economics I Learned From Playing Neopets
Written by Little Washu
When the Tamagotchi first crossed the Pacific in 1996 and entered the pockets of
schoolchildren across America, the fascination with virtual pets hit its big
take-off. But with approximately 128,547,909 pets cared for by around 90,170,375
owners [statistics as of Jan. 20, 2005], the world of Neopets boasts a world
whose complexity is a far cry from the whining, beeping, feed-me, play-with-me
universe of the early keychain pets.
Most users would call Neopets a game, a massive multi-player online roleplay
game constructed in a world that is so comprehensive it can hardly be called a
game at all. Economically, the world of Neopia, where the Neopets “game” is set,
is more thorough than perhaps any other game in existence, including its own
currency, a stock market, and even a rate of inflation. In order to survive in
Neopia and keep one’s pet happy and healthy, one must feed it, play with it,
read to it, and give it a good home. Feeding a pet requires food; playing with
it, toys; reading, books; and a home requires purchasing a plot of land, hiring
a construction crew, selecting materials, and having a house built to your exact
specifications. This house should then be wired with electricity, carpeted,
furnished, and insured. Just like in the real world, acquiring these necessities
in the world of Neopia requires the most basic element of any economic system:
money.
The currency of Neopia, with few exceptions, is the Neopoint, or NP. Most users’
primary source of income is games, which one can play with one’s pet, and which
pay a certain amount of Neopoints depending on how well one scores. However,
there are as many ways to earn money in Neopia as there are in the real world:
one can open a shop and gain NP by acquiring and selling items, or one can
auction items for Neopoints, or one can trade with other users for more valuable
items. One can gamble, play the stock market, ear interest on a bank account,
win contests, or even do odd jobs for the Faerieland Employment Agency.
Occasionally, one may be lucky enough to find Neopoint randomly lying around the
site, but just as likely is the prospect of getting mugged by the unscrupulous
Pant Devil of the chivalrous Wandering Ghosts, who donate all stolen Neopoints
to the Money Tree, where, along with the Soup Kitchen, less fortunate Neopians
can receive a helping hand from the system. Just like in a real economy, the
cost of items fluctuates with supply and demand; a certain book can cost 417NP
one day and 3,448NP the next, depending on how many survive, how many are
purchased, and how many are printed.
Of course, this myriad of economic opportunities is only limited to the world of
Neopia. Here in the physical world of Earth, Neopets enjoys million of dollars a
year earned from worldwide advertising alone, and with their relatively recent
foray into clothing, toys, stationery, and even a game for the Playstation, the
amount of profit made by this company is unthinkable for an online game whose
popularity is spread primarily through word of mouth; Neopets spends very little
on marketing itself. Of course, the true complexity of the world of Neopets is
impossible to understand without a visit to the site, which can be found at
www.neopets.com. Only through the
experience of owning, raising, and caring for a pet can one truly fathom just
how much can be learned about real-world economics by playing in the world of
Neopets.
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