BeforeNintendogstook the idea to mobile devices way back in 2005,there was a swath of browser-based pet games. The game that broke ground on that concept wasNeopets, which debuted in November 1999 and helped shape an entire generation of gaming. Where a lot of early internet culture has disappeared into broken links and dead Flash projects,Neopetsis undergoing a rebirth ahead of its 25th anniversary.
Old, broken Flash gamesare being either emulated or rebuilt from the ground up, players are returning toNeopetsin droves, new mobile and card games for the franchise are coming out, and all of this has been supercharged by the game freeing itself from its previous ownership. Game Rant recently spoke with Dominic Law, the CEO that securedNeopets’ independence and has been a driving force for the game’s renaissance since July 2023. Law started as a player of the original game and achieved what he characterizes as a dream come true–bringing the game he loved back to prominence decades later.The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
NeoPass Is More than a Login Portal
Q: Can you introduce yourself?
Law:I’m Dominic. I’m the CEO ofNeopets, andI’ve been leading theNeopetsrenaissance, as we call it, since July of last year. I’m very excited to be here and talk .
Q: How does NeoPass change the experience of players?
Law:NeoPass is a new infrastructure layer that we’re introducing to theNeopetsecosystem. It will impact users in a few different ways: first of all, it’s an upgrade on conflict security and the login system that we’ve had. As you know,Neopetsis a 25 year-old-game, and there’s a lot of obsolete codebase and stuff that we’re trying to upgrade. Of course, this complex login system and security is a big part of what we’re trying to fix. NeoPass is a single sign-in across the games; it ties Neopets.com and the original classic game with the new game experiences that we’re introducing, including two new mobile games, and having a one login experience would make it easier for users to switch between theNeopetsgame experiences.
Having some of the in-game items to be highly shared and some of the rewards can be transferred. All our users have been collecting Neopoints for many, many years. We want to make sure that they can have that experience across other games, and potentially that’s one of the attractions for our core users to also go try out our new experiences. But with the new experiences, we’re also hoping to attract lapsed users to come back–people who haven’t played the classicNeopetsgame for a while might be interested to try out a new modernized game. One of them is more of a 3D environment as well. New users or returning users will also be able to explore the classic game as well, as a living kind of a historical relic that preserved the early internet game culture.
It’s interesting how we’re using the infrastructure layer to do a lot more than just log in as a crude update. It’s also kind of like the first step for us to connect with theNeopetsecosystem, together with the e-shop that we’re launching later this year. People who are buying our merchandise through our E-shop can also earn rewards and that can tie to their otherNeopetsgame experiences as well.
One interesting thing that I’d like to talk about is also how we’re opening up this infrastructure to our fan-run projects or community-driven projects, including Dress to Impress and Sunny Neo as the first to adopt. These are fan-run projects that’ve been around for decades. I believe we are the first game studio to open up such APIs and really deeply integrate with community-run projects to really improve the overallNeopetsexperience, and really living our very community-centric culture to revive this brand IP alongside the community.
Q: What motivated working with those community events like that?
Law:I’m aNeopetsplayer. I’ve been part of the community, and one of the main reasons that we believe that we can make this work, that we can revive theNeopetsIP, is we work very closely with the community. For the past decade,Neopetsas a company has been in the corporate structure setting, and there hasn’t been any updates or improvement in gameplay. But over the years, what kept us afloat has been this Discord community who stuck with us throughout the years,even when it’s been a decaying game. A lot of people left, but the core community has been around for nearly 25 years. That’s why we believe that the community is at the core of the DNA of theNeopetsexperience, so working with them is definitely a very important part of reviving this whole business.
These community-run projects are where they’ve been established, outside of the game, relationships, bonds, community, and they’ve been exchanging ideas and sharing their love for new pets on all these platforms. During the lack of updates and during the conflict whenhalf of theNeopetsites became broken overnightbecause of the discontinuation of Flash, they stuck with us. Also, these community projects have a really exhaustive and extensive archive of everythingNeopets-related. That’s kind of why we say like the community has kept us together, and we have a lot of these fan-run projects all over, all over. We want to rebuild the trust and rebuild a bridge to really let everyone who wants to contribute to reviving theNeopetsIP come together and do it.
Q: NeoPass offers exclusive rewards and perks tied to the new system?
Law:That’s the rewards program that I alluded to. As an example, I’m playing on different Pets games or buying merchandise through our E-shop. The NeoPass login will make it easier for us to reward our loyal players and loyal community members based on their achievements inside the game or based on what they contributed. And that’s on top of this infrastructure layer, part of it is the rewards callback system and the loyalty program.
25 Years of Virtual Pets
Q: What other big plans are there forNeopets’ 25th anniversary?
Law:Yeah, so we’ve been talking about this NeoPass. Then there are the two new mobile games that we’re launching: one of them isTales of Dacardia, which is going out next month in beta. We’re going to do alpha testing and beta testing in Canada first, and then we’ll probably do something like a more global launch later on. And then the other game, it’s a refactor ofFairy’s Hope, a match-three game that we have under alpha testing as well. That will come out in Q3.
Also, on the non-video game side, we’re actually also launching a brand-new physical trading card game with Upper Deck. That will be one of the biggest launches in recentNeopetshistory. We’vebeen working with Upper Deckfor the past two to three years to really develop it, to come up with this brand new game, a lot of game balancing, game design, great artwork, and we’re very excited that we’ll be launching actually in the next few months with expansion packs and everything as well throughout the year.
Our actual birthday is in mid-November, on November 15. Leading up to that, there will be a lot of conferences that we’re attending that will be engaging with our fans. We’ll be launching these new products, new games, so it’s going to be a very exciting and eventful year for us.
Q: Tell us aboutWorld of Neopets?
Law:That’s a longer term development for something like aNeopets2.0. It will be a much bigger project that we’re building towards. For that one, we expect that it will be at least like two or three years before it actually goes out to the market. In the past, we thought about maybe doing smaller releases, like alpha releases, but it’s such a huge game that we’re probably going to build a lot more out of it, then we’ll do testing when the time is right.
You can imagine the whole 3D open world ofNeopets’original game, but with a modernized MMORPG-stylesimilar toAnimal CrossingorThe Simstype of building, collecting, interacting with other pets, having your pet as like a virtual companion, and dressing up and providing the best for new pets and also socializing with other friends and having that social environment. So that’s the big vision of this game we ultimately want to build, but for now, we really don’t have the resources to really build so many things all at once. This is kind of like something that we’ve been wanting to build more and more and, hopefully, in the next two, three years, when we have enough resources either from the investors that we fundraise from or from this whole revival ofNeopets, we’ll go generate enough resources for us to invest into a lot of these new modern game experiences.
Q:Neopetsis older than some of our readers. What’s the key to your longevity?
Law:Part of it is the community and why the community is so sticky. You’re still with us over 25 years. I think a big part of it is becauseNeopetsis a game that has actually changed a lot of people’s lives and inspired a generation of kids who played it. If you think about it,Neopetswasas popular asRobloxandMinecraftare today, or even more so because we were the first digital-native virtual pets game and the first browser-based MMORPG.
The kids that played it back then, it opened the door of the internet to them.Neopetswas opening a whole new world to our generation, a whole generation of users that learned about online social or learn about online sharing or online forums or in-game trading.Neopetscombined all these into online social gaming that’s totally new to that generation of players. That emotional attachment and bonding is something that’s unparalleled and unmatched compared to other types of games where you play for a year or two, and then you finish and top that off.Neopetsis actually a lot more tied to their life changing moments–they made their first friends online or have this emotional attachment with the Neopet itself. That bonding and that community is very unique to a game like ours; that rarely existed in other games around that time. And for us to survive 25 years, I think that’s the key.
Q: What’s it like being a finalist for the 2024 World Video Game Hall of Fame?
Law:Oh, I didn’t know about that! I’m definitely excited! I mean, I think it’s more of a collective effort for the IP. I would probably attribute all this success and turnaround to the team and to the community. It’s exciting if we get awarded.Just being nominated, I think, is a huge honor that shows that there’s something very unique aboutNeopetsand this wholeNeopetscommunity that we call Neopians. It’s exciting that we’re seeing that a lot of us are coming back together.
The Neopets Renaissance
Q: What’s fueling the current renaissance inNeopets?
Law:Oh, this is awesome, I think it’s a very exciting journey. Everything is on steroids, we have great early momentum and early traction. The fans are excited, the community is excited, the team is excited. Most of the team members playedNeopets, andwe’re super passionate and loyal to this IP alongside our community. We’ve been working very collaboratively together.
I think the whole journey has just started, and we’re already seeing huge momentum. We’re doubling, close to tripling, on a lot of metrics in terms of user engagement, so it’s exciting that we’ve been able to drive a lot of changes and updates and that attracts lapsed users to come back. But there’s a lot of work cut out for us. We have huge challenges and many obstacles that we still need to get through, but it’s been a great journey and very rewarding emotionally because seeing the light of the revival, that his renaissance is actually working, and that we have a strategy in place that has been showing early results has been very rewarding. From a career perspective and also from reviving a childhood IP of my own life, I think that emotional reward is beyond, it’s beyond words.
Q: As a lapsed player, I have to ask if The Omelette is still around.
Law:It is! The Omelette is a daily activity that a lot of our users do.
Q: Do my pets miss me?
Law:Of course, I’m sure there are a lot of users who come back actually feel like they’re launching straight back into their childhood. Imagine you can play a game with all the same data and your pet is still there waiting for you. All that emotional bonding definitely strikes a lot of returning users. That’s a unique experience that you probably won’t be able to get elsewhere. It’s kind of like all the Y2K trends that we’re seeing now.
But you know, Neopets is something more because it’s probably a much bigger part of your past life or your past gaming experience. You can launch right back into it and see that most things haven’t changed, some might be broken, but most of the environments are still exactly the same. That definitely will bring back a lot of memories.
Q: How’sthe transition from Flashgoing?
Law:To be honest, it’s not as fast as we could do it. I mean, converting Flash objects to HTML when there’s so much content and so many pages onNeopetstakes a lot of time. It’s been a lot of drag that’s always on the backlog and always on our to-do list. But what we’ve been able to achieve is to look at whether there’s new technology or third-party tools that can help us achieve these conversions a lot faster.
For example, since we took over, we actually looked at using an emulator called Ruffle. It helped us bring back more than 100 minigames to be playable on the classicNeopets, compared to a year ago when there were only like a dozen of games playable. Instead of converting all the minigames one by one, leveraging these open-source tools actually enabled us to bring back and convert a lot of the site content differently and still make it quite a seamless experience for our users to enjoy. So that has been great.
Other than emulation, there are two common ways for us to convert the Flash content. One is direct conversion one-to-one, and one is thinking of ways to revamp some of the systems as a whole and make the experience even more seamless. This whole NeoPass project is a perfect example of that. Instead of trying to convert and improve and patch up the existing login system, we introduced a new infrastructure layer that can replace some of these old networks and those systems, and we don’t have to kind of like patch them up and give a complete upgrade. I think there’s a few ways of approaching this.
Q: How would you describeNeopetsto someone learning about it for the first time in 2024?
Law:For the first time learning about it, I would sayNeopetsis the perfect place for you to understand early Internet gaming culture. We basically kept the purest form of it alive–it’s like a living historical relic. So it’s a great time for you to come back and enjoy and explore something that’s so significant in the gaming industry history, but also being part of this journey that can potentially see the renaissance of something, a great revival of a great IP is going to be a hell of a journey. And if anyone hasn’t heard aboutNeopets, I welcome you to join us and be part of this historical moment of turning a nostalgic IP into something great again.
From Fan to CEO
Q: What’s the cherished memory you have as aNeopetsplayer?
Law:Neopetsis actually a big part of my childhood. I was born and raised in Canada–Toronto–and I moved to Hong Kong. At that time, the only thing I had to keep connected with my friends was an IDD [International Direct Dialing] and the landline. It was really hard because the IDD was expensive, and I mean, I don’t really talk on the phone that much.
After a few years, when I first visited my friends in Toronto, that’s when the brand-newNeopetswas launched. All my friends were playing it, and then they introduced me to it. I used that game mainly for social play, so it’s the early internet environment for me as well. It’s a gamethat connected me with my childhood friends. We’d been able to explore the world of Neopia during those times, and that’s what kept our friendship together. That’s a big part of my childhood.
Then,Neopetsbecame very popular internationally as well. It started to catch on in popularity in Hong Kong two, three years down the road. I’m kind of like the cool kid in town because I’ve been playingNeopetsway ahead of everyone else in Hong Kong, so that’s kind of like a fun part of it too.
Q: NetDragon had you working onNeopetsNFTs, and you were also the person that dropped that project upon taking over, right?
Law:Yeah, so when NetDragondid the NFT project forNeopets, it was basically pitched to NetDragon by a third party. At that time, it seemed like an interesting move to stay to see if that project can be part of the goal to revive theNeopetsIP and sounded right because, like Web3 gaming, seemed to be gaining a lot of traction. I was actually starting to get more involved inNeopetsafter the NFT launch and a PR backlash that we’d been receiving. We were seeing whether we can chart out a future that makes sense forNeopets, and that’s how I got started to get involved.
That’s why I led the Web3 initiative forNeopetswhile it was still at NetDragon, but the reason why I got involved is because, like when I joined NetDragon in 2020, my main mandate was to actually work on the restructuring of their education technology business. During the restructuring, under education technology was an education gaming department, which included studios like Jumpstart, the original owner of theNeopetsgames.Neopetswas never really an education game, but it was grouped with the education games into the education technology department.
Part of the restructuring process is to evaluate the business plan and what we really should be doing with these types of studios and properties that we have. That’s how I kind of got involved withNeopets,and at that time, the NFT project was already going on. Because it’s such a big part of my childhood, I’ve always wanted to explore what else can be done with the IP. That’s when I charted out a business plan and eventually brokered a management buyout deal to spin off this whole company from NetDragon. We got their blessing, got their investment, and then they let us run with it with this whole revival and with this whole business plan that we’ve come up with.
So you’re right, I have been involved at earlier times during the NFT projects. Then, yeah, I mean, we’ve been listening to the community, and we have held discussions of length internally as well. We decided that the best way for it is to stop the NFT development/Web3 side of things. It doesn’t make sense for us, and really focus a lot more of our effort to reviving the classic site and to build other experiences that will be much more well-received by our community and could help us revive theNeopetsIP as a whole in general.
Q: How did it feel emotionally when you successfully spun off your company from NetDragon?
Law:Ah, it feels like a childhood dream come true! To be honest, I played a lot of games, butNeopetsis one of the games that holds a very important place. As kids do, I thought it would be fun to run a game studio or that it’d be fun to work on these games that I like. Those dreams have always been in the back of my mind.
When we were able to successfully spin it off and really lead the charge on reviving thisNeopetsIP, it’s actually very, very exciting for me. I think it’s probably the most rewarding moment in my career so far. It’s been a very rewarding journey, both emotionally and with the momentum that we’re seeing is also very rewarding. It’s a very exciting journey so far, but we know that there’s still a lot, a lot of more exciting things that will be yet to come.
Q: And lastly, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Law:I’ll definitely welcome all lapsed users to come back: just to say hi to your pets, have fun, come enjoy. Even if you don’t play the classic game, you can try some of the new mobile or card games we’re launching. I’m sure there are different ways that you can interact with theNeopetsecosystem, just come back and support us.
[END]
