If you’re not familiar with Neopets, you may be a little too young to be reading this article. Originally launched in 1999, Neopets is an online virtual pet game where players can adopt, customise, and interact with their pets in the vast world of Neopia. The browser-based game reached over 150 million players worldwide at its peak — and now World of Neopia is trying to recapture some of that magic.
Since its shift in management in July 2023, the Neopets team has been hard at work to introduce the franchise to the new generation. From launching mobile games like Neopets: Tales of Dacardia and Neopets: Faerie Fragments, to its highly successful line of merchandise, and even revitalising the original browser-based experience, Neopets is quickly rising back into prominence.
We had the opportunity to speak with Chief Operating Officer Derren Lam at gamescom asia 2024 ahead of the franchise’s 25th anniversary celebrations. He shared more about the challenges of reviving a legacy franchise, their focus on IP licensing and merchandising, and what’s next for Neopets within the Southeast Asian region.
Disclaimer: The following interview has been edited for clarity and ease of reading.
For our readers who used to play the old Neopets, what can they expect from the new Neopets today?
Since the leadership change announcement in July last year, there has been lots of changes already. Starting from the game itself, we have updated the graphics, introduced new plotlines, and optimised the user experience quite a lot. We’re also extending our brand experience from online to offline and events.
As you can see during the past one year, there has been a lot of events including Singapore’s gamescom asia, events in North America, and even in Canada; we held our first offline event to meet with our fans there which had everyone excited.
How has the response been to the new mobile games, especially since Neopets used to be a browser-based experience primarily?
For the existing active players, they’re still playing the classic game on Neopets.com, so one of our key focuses for the classic game is to improve the user experience, and engage with and retain our active users. But for the longer lapsed users, they’re probably not interested in going back to Neopets.com but they still care about the IP, so our mobile games are the perfect product to fit them.
We just launched a new mobile game called Faerie Fragments, which is a match-3 casual game heavily tied to one of the most popular Neopets lands, Faerieland. We just launched it yesterday actually, and before that, we had more than 50,000 users join the preregistration program. I would say the community is excited because they can earn NP collectibles through playing Faerie Fragments, then they can use it in the classic game.
Other than the two mobile games, there’s also World of Neopets. Could you explain to us what that is?
Wow, that is a big, big plan. I would say it is our Neopets 2.0 but at the moment, the whole team is pretty much focused on the mobile game we just launched, and also working on fixing the classic game. One of the higher priority projects is also exploring an AI crossover with Neopets companionship. We believe that would be one part of Neopets 2.0 but that would be a longer term plan.
Can we expect a more mobile-friendly or handheld approach to Neopets.com and then World of Neopets eventually?
Yeah, absolutely. This is one of the most highly anticipated demands from the community, so we have started converting our browser game to be mobile responsive, page by page. As you know, Neopets has more than a few thousand pages, so we’re starting from the most popular, highest traffic pages. Right now we have more than 50 pages that have already been converted to be mobile responsive, so they can login and play the game using their mobile phone.
Would we ever see Neopets.com become an app-hosted experience, or will it remain on browser?
I think it would be best for it to remain on browser, but we will convert some major pages to become mobile responsive. We’re also considering having companion apps, so that some of the events or activities can be played using mobile phone or app, while some key events can stay on PC.
Do you find it a challenge to modernise Neopets without alienating the fans who were playing all those years ago?
It is a big challenge, actually, because especially for long-term active players, they always have high expectations on Neopets to fix and optimise the game. I think it’s a request that makes sense from them. But from a leadership team’s perspective, we want to balance between taking care of our active players while thinking about the long-term goals and plans for Neopets’ future.
But we always listen to our community, and thanks to our Community Ambassador program, players can share their feedback and suggestions to us and it will be passed to our leadership team. So it is definitely challenging, but I’m so grateful that we have an active and passionate community that works with us to revive Neopets again.
You mentioned the Community Program, do you mind sharing a bit more about that?
Oh, yes. I think everyone knows that the Neopets community is quite big, and they are separated into different groups. Some communities are more focused on Battledome, some communities may care more about the art, and some communities may care more about merchandise. So we selected 10 representatives from our community and each of them has a specific domain of knowledge to one or two areas, and we treat them as our advisory group.
If we have any problems or challenges, we will consult their ideas. Every month, we have a meeting with them and also our product team, and they will share their feedback regarding our recent launches and share some feedback they bring in from the community. So it’s a good platform for us to understand what is our community’s expectations and determine our company’s development plan.
Regarding the upcoming anniversary celebrations, what can fans look forward to?
Wow, we have big plans in store for our 25th anniversary. Starting from the game itself, we’re launching some 25th anniversary themed Neocash (NC) items. I won’t go into detail about it because it’s not 100% confirmed, and I don’t want to represent our product team, but there’s a lot of in-game items tied with our 25th anniversary. There will also be a big event which is the Wheel of Excitement. Everyone can join and participate in a lucky draw, and get some exciting collectibles or coupons from the platform.
Offline, as Neopets, we always embrace community engagement as well. We will have 25 cities at least celebrating the anniversary with our communities. So far, we have received more than 300 applications from different communities and different locations to host an offline event. I did notice that there were some applications from Singapore, Malaysia, and even Thailand as well. I’m happy to see that we have quite a strong presence in Southeast Asia.
With Singapore as one of the larger communities, where does Malaysia rank on that list?
I think Malaysia is in the top two in Southeast Asia, and then it should be followed by Philippines or Thailand.
Can Malaysian fans expect any offline events in Malaysia in the coming future?
I hope so! I think the first thing should be the anniversary celebration, but I want to have more offline events in Malaysia. To the Malaysian community, please feel free to suggest anything. Reach out to our community managers, social media managers, and we can do something.
We’ve seen Neopets expand a lot into licensing and merchandising over the past year. Which merchandise or collaborations have been the most exciting so far?
I would say, our Mystery Toy Box that is launching late November. We’re so glad to have our master toy licensing partners, PhatMojo, support us because the last time we introduced toys to the market was probably 10 years ago. It is our first time since our leadership change that we’re reintroducing the toy line and going mainstream. We’re having the first Mystery Toy Boxes release in Hot Topic, which has 400 stores across the U.S. so it’s big news to the community and also big news to Neopets.
Also, another exciting one is the Neopets Battledome Trading Card Game by Upper Deck, which was launched middle of this year, starting with its soft launch in Canada, then the public launch in the U.S. in July. The community is crazy about it, and even people who don’t know about Neopets, have become Neopets fans because of the trading card game.
With other legacy IPs like Barbie and Sonic heading to the silver screen, do you ever see Neopets going down that route?
That’s one of our key visions, to turn Neopets from a gaming company into a multi-entertainment brand, so having this transmedia element is definitely in our long-term vision. But it’s not that easy to get there in one day. We’ve started by doing in-house animated shorts and social video content to engage our active and lapsed users, and bring Neopets from a niche community to the mass market. That would be our short-term strategy. But long-term, we’re definitely looking for a good partner who can bring Neopets to the big screen.
Is there any major difference in marketing Neopets over in the West versus here in Asia?
The difference is huge. In terms of marketing strategy and design, we have to tailor design to fit different users from different markets. Just take merchandising, for example. In Asian markets, people prefer cute stuff and the colours tones would be more soft. You can see that we are launching quite a lot of cute and soft colour toned merchandise recently, and that’s to match the new market trends and tap into the Asian market. Compared to the U.S., the colour tones are more strong and sharp, so there’s quite a difference.
For Southeast Asian fans who want to get their hands on Neopets merch, where can they do that besides events?
Of course you can come to gamescom asia, but you can also go to our eShop. We just launched it on Neopets.com and you can buy whatever you want. There’s a lot of new merchandise releasing every month.
Thank you to Derren Lam for taking the time to speak with us! Make sure to follow Neopets’ new journey on their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and TikTok.
