The virtual pet game and franchise Neopets is 25 years old this year, and it’s going through a reinvention inspired by its new owner and CEO Dominic Law.
Neopets is showing up at San Diego Comic-Con from July 24 to July 28 to draw attention to the anniversary, which happens on November 15. Since restructuring in a management buyout last year, Neopets has actively forged new ways to engage with the new generations of players with strategic licensing partnerships and community-led initiatives.
First launched in 1999, Neopets has often been viewed as a free-to-play online blend of Pokémon and Tamagotchi. Over time, Neopets has had more than 150 million registered users for its core free-to-play web game.
This has led to a 100% increase in monthly active users. And Law said in an interview with GamesBeat that he aims to triple that by the end of 2024. With new Neopets mobile games and multiple toy deals lined up such as PhatMojo in June, he shared Neopets’ growth strategy and 2025 plans.
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SDCC 25th anniversary revival plans
The latest non-exclusive Master Toy Deal with PhatMojo will debut at San Diego Comic Con this week and then roll out in retail stores. Neopets has expanded IP collaborations to fan-made projects – a strategy that the company hopes will fuel a renaissance of the Neopets IP and enhances brand loyalty, contributing to new revenue peak since 2017.
Neopets’ new Director of Licensing & Brand Development Rebecca Glowacz is seeking ways to expand the brand’s licensing portfolio in global conferences such as Hong Kong International Licensing Show, Las Vegas Licensing Expo, Brand Licensing Europe.
Neopets also teamed up recently with Geekify to launch a new tabletop roleplaying game set in the world of Neopets. Featuring a dice-driven d20-based system that’s easy to learn for both beginners and advanced players alike, the official Neopets Tabletop role-playing game is a blast from the past for tabletop gaming.
In that game, you can build a party, explore the vast expanses of Neopia, and revisit all old nostalgic stomping grounds by going on quests, solving puzzles, helping the locals, and making the world a better place (or getting up to no good). With over 50 species to choose from (including old classic species and some newer faces), and a plethora of abilities to build a character, players will find new challenges in Neopia. The Neopets Tabletop Roleplaying Game is in the midst of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.
Neopets has also cut a deal with Phat Mojo, which will show up at SDCC this week with limited edition Aisha and Shoyru plushies, along with an exclusive in-game code. This very limited run of 500 Aisha plush can only be found at the Neopets booth, while the 500 Shoyru plush can be found at the UCC Distributing booth. Purchases at either of these booths will give fans access to exclusive codes. Neopets will also have NeoHoods clothing and WYP Pin Sets with exclusive in-game codes as well. The plushies are expected to hit retail later this year.
Neopets is also planning social media giveaways with the hashtag #NeopetsSDCC2024 and appearances by Big Aisha, a mascot.
New origins for a neglected brand
Law has been a fan of Neopets for decades. He stayed with it through the heyday in the early 2000s, but it has fallen out of favor more recently.
“Neopets has been around for 25 years,” Law said. “We’re celebrating our 25th anniversary for something that was a big part of my childhood. I use the game to reconnect with my childhood friends when I first moved back to Hong Kong from Canada.”
Law joined the original parent company of Neopets about four years ago. He was helping them to make a game for the Chinese gaming company NetDragon, which had acquired the rights eight years earlier. They were restructuring the education business for a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Neopets was part of NetDragon’s acquisition of Jumpstart.
“It was a neglected” property. Law reviewed the business plan and proposed to spin it out from NetDragon through a management buyout. They received a lot of support and that management buyout — to spin out the IP of Neopets as a separate company — happened in July 2023.
The company got additional funding as it spun out of NetDragon. And Neopets plans to do a fundraising round later this year.
“We’ve already proven that with our own cash flow that we have been able to achieve a lot of growth, so it makes sense to prove that out and then we’ll be able to show that it’s worth investing into things for the next stage,” Law said.
Reviving the classic game
Now Law is in the process of reviving the classic game and developing a more robust business.
“We’re attracting a lot of our lapsed users to come back to play our game based on nostalgia and based on the updated gameplay and bug fixes that we’re doing,” Law said. “It’s been a game that’s still mainly on the browser. But we are extending the Neopets IP to other gaming experiences as well. So we’re fixing the classic game but also trying to reach new generation of players with the new gaming experiences.”
For gaming, there’s a two-pronged strategy. The Neopets company is developing a more robust licensing program, Law said. It is hitting the streets with more merchandise and different ways to experience Neopets.
The company just launched a new physical card trading game via Upper Deck, and this is one of the central products the company is pushing at San Diego Comic-Con this week as well as the next Gen Con tabletop gaming event starting on August 1.
“This is like the first step for us to rebuild the licensing program,” Law said. “We’re excited to have more merchandising products that can reach retail shelves. What we’re seeing is Neopets has a very strong brand awareness even now. Even though the IP the game and the company has been neglected for the past decade. We see there’s a lot of potential for us to do this revival.
In 2021, during the heyday of the metaverse and non-fungible tokens, Neopets started its own metaverse project. But it has since put that on hold, Law said. Metaverse projects have fallen out of favor for various reasons, and the enthusiasm for it is a lot less than it was during the pandemic when no one could go out.
“We’re definitely still exploring a lot of technology and how we could improve gameplay and make Neopets more relevant to what’s happening in the broader gaming industry the next cycle of evolution,” Law said. “It’s still an unproven case of how Web3 gaming can become mainstream. To show that it’s more than a ponzi scheme, it needs to get to mass adoption. It’s a chicken and egg problem. The market is not ready.”
AI is one of the hyped tech trends that has taken over. Both the metaverse and blockchain have moved to the back burner in terms of major company priorities.
“The launch of the NFT was quite messy,” Law said. “We minted it out and raised a good amount of money from that NFT launch, knowing there was a strong brand awareness for Neopets. But what happened was we antagonized the user base, including our most loyal supporters on the classic game. So we decided to do the right thing to focus on what what matters most to our IP and to our core users, which is fixing the classic website for the 25-year-old browser game, and then extending from that core to really develop the Neopets experiences, which is what my childhood memories consist of and what other a lot of our lapsed users are fond of as well.”
The company is is working on the World of Neopia, which is recycling a lot of the 3D assets that the company started creating with the Neopets metaverse project. The company is still investing in the 3D World of Neopia as part of a long-term strategy to modernize the gaming experience of the franchise. The World of Neopia is a “very long-term project,” Law said.
The high-priority projects
Among all this activity, the main focus in the short term to medium term is fixing the 25-year-old classic game on the website. The company has regenerated revenue on the site in the past year, with bug fixes being one of the most important updates.
The company brought back more than 100 mini games as currently playable on the site. Previously, most of them became unplayable because the end of Flash, and then a lot of those mini games were never converted to modern HTML.
The company also launched a new plot, The Void Within, to drive users to come back. Neopets is creating consumable content to get fans to come back via social media and merchandising. It’s turning Neopets into a bigger source of entertainment beyond the classic game. There’s a match-3 game coming in September. There are other mobile games coming as well as well as other new experiences in gaming.
“We’re making sure the content is becoming more modernized,” Law said. “We want it attractive for users who don’t want to come back to the 25-year-old game, while they wait for the new experiences that we’re building out like the World of Neopia,” Law said.
About 70% of the user base is in the U.S. and Canada. Many kids who were young in the 2000s still remember it. The long-term goal is to restore the lost glory. Just fixing bugs could get millions to come back, and hitting the market with new products could do even more, Law believes. By November 15, Neopets will make a lot more marketing news about its 25th birthday.
“Whether we can return to our former glory — that really depends on the new games we build out and how well we can do the licensing program,” Law said. “The sky’s the limit. When it comes to a good IP, we can become the next Sanrio,” which has had big success on platforms like Roblox with Hello Kitty.
He added, “Capturing the imagination of the next generation. That’s completely possible. There’s a lot of potential with the Neopets IP with the love and respect of the community. We’re definitely taking a stab at it.”
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