You might be familiar with Neopets, an online virtual pet website and virtual world where you can create and take care of virtual creatures known by the same name. Most of the kids in the 2000s could have experienced this as it was a fan favorite. While the team is on its journey to bring back the same memories, we sat with the CEO of Neopets, Dominic Law, during gamescom asia 2023, who gave an engaging interview with discussions surrounding his childhood memories of playing Neopets, the IP expansion, future plans, and more interesting details which we will share in this space.
Can you tell us in brief how you started on Neopets for our readers to get a glimpse of the progress?
Yeah, sure, thanks for having me here. I first started as a Neopets player close to 7 years ago when I was 12 years old. It’s actually my childhood game, where I used to communicate with my friends in Canada. I moved from Hong Kong when I was 9 years old, and I lost connection with a lot of my friends in Canada because back then, there was only a landline, and international calls were expensive.
So, one summer, I visited Toronto, and my friends introduced this game called Neopets, and I was immediately hooked on it. I played it a lot and used it mainly for socializing, messaging to play with my friends, experiencing Neopets together, joining guilds, and being on the leaderboards, discussing anything.
So, it’s interesting how I’ve been able to get back to Neopets through professional endeavors working to revive the IP and working closely with the team and the community to try and bring Neopets back to its glory days. So, I joined the parent company of Neopets around 3 and a half years ago and had hoped we would structure an education-type of business, including the gaming business. While working on side projects, I got to work closely with the Neopets team and the community.
Eventually, I had the conviction that I needed to build my career on this and revive this beloved childhood IP, turning it into a spinoff project for NetDragon, allowing for a lot of independence. With the new entity setup and the leadership team, I think we are in a much better position now to truly build Neopets back.
How does it feel from being a player and now to the CEO of your childhood game?
I think, definitely, it is a dream come true. There aren’t many opportunities in life where you can work on something you love that meant so much to your childhood. And being able to reconnect with my own childhood memories and fond memories of this IP, is definitely the biggest motivator for me to drive this forward and make it work for the community. It is meaningful and means a lot more than just personal love.
How many people are currently working on the NEOPETS team?
We have this entity that has merged three previous teams working on different parts of Neopets, including the original team across the US. Also, the team that worked on one of the side games, Island Builders, on mobile for the past two years, and the new team members that we bring in to help build the game back to its glory days.
This team is more dispersed over the world, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the UK, and the top 20 markets outside the US. So it’s interesting that we are growing new members and teams, merging the original teams. The total size may be around 50 people now, so we are still a small studio, but we are working hard to be efficient and prioritize to get us to the next stage.
(On being asked on the Head Office and team area) I would say we are a global IP. Our team is 100% remote. I’m personally based in Hong Kong, and we have around 10 people in Hong Kong, which is a small part of the user base and the team as well. So, we are recruiting globally and building the team on a global scale.
We are also expected to bring Neopets to a much more global audience. It has always had a global presence, but we have users predominantly active in North America. We aim to expand this presence to the rest of the world, capture the imagination of players worldwide, and make it a long-lasting, sustainable IP.
We currently see two mobile games for NEOPETS but the Island Builders title is not available everywhere. Why is it so?
So, one thing we are doing with Island Builders is that we actually took it down, rebuilt it, and fixed a lot of things based on the previous feedback from our beta versions. We are currently going through the beta version, and we have recruited kind of like a couple of thousands of beta testers from the community to help us gather feedback. We are looking to relaunch Island Builders early next year.
Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind creating a Neopets-themed Match 3 game? Why particularly a match-3 as a core aspect?
The match-3 game you are referring to is another side game of Neopets. To be honest, the decision to create it was made before my time, and it was kind of like, ‘Maybe we can use the Neopets IP to build something.’ One thing we are trying to do is to have a more unified website since we took over in July, which is for connecting the Neopets experience. We are trying to allow our users to play the classic Neopets game by offering more experiences they can enjoy.
However, what remains true to the IP across all these brands is that we are going to stay true to our DNA, which is more about the hypercasual segment. Neopets has always been a whimsical world that embraces diversity in creativity and is also a family-friendly IP. This is a way for us to experiment with new formats and hope to use these new game experiences to reunite the players who enjoyed the original game.
Can you share any plans for future updates or content additions to keep the game fresh and exciting for players over time?
I think we are early on in this journey, and we have been able to attract a lot of our users back. But what I would like to say to the community is if you have played Neopets in the past, come back and say hi. I think your pets are probably hungry, so please return and feed them. You are never really gone; you have always been here, and there will be a lot of new and exciting things happening in the world of Neopets. It will be exciting to come back and be a part of the journey to bring Neopets back together.
(On the secret sauce of keeping games fresh) I think the secret sauce for Neopets is nostalgia. A lot of people have really fond childhood memories, and I’m sure many users will remember playing it: the cute characters, the storylines, and the creativity have captured the imagination of a whole generation of players. So there is probably more than one reason for them to come back. It’s something other games can’t quite offer.
But can we compete out there with other games? That’s definitely tough. At least as an IP, we can become a more entertaining and global IP, so there should be more reasons for fans to interact with our IP. That’s what we’re building on our merchandise, licensing business, and trying to introduce Neopets in different types of products. This way, there’s more than one way for non-gamers to interact with and become attached to us.
In a fun twist, if you could be any Neopet, who would you choose?
I mean, my favorite Neopet has always been Shoyru. It was the first pet created, and I still love it the most. But if I were to exist in the world of Neopia, I would much rather be one of the NPC characters *laughs* one of the heroes maybe. Altador is my favorite just because of my love for heroes and history.
What is your NEOPETS IP expansion plan that you can share with the fans?
Oh, we have announced quite a lot of things. For example, we’re going to launch a brand new trading card game with Upper Deck. We’ve been working on this project for close to two years, and there is a huge team from Upper Deck developing this game. I can’t wait to release the game alongside Upper Deck and take it to the global stage, attracting more people to join in. It is probably the most exciting launch in terms of new products. We have also been working on licensing, so please expect a lot of major categories to be included in licensing since we are looking into it.
At Gamescom Asia, we launched our 25th-anniversary design, which will be one of the main themes for the products we are launching in the coming year or two. Another product we’re launching is the 25th-anniversary edition of Monopoly. It will be exciting. I mean, I personally played Monopoly when I was a kid, and having a Neopets version of it is kind of like a dream come true as well. We have been communicating with the community, so if you have ideas on launching merch, let us know.
TV adaptations of popular IPs are becoming a trend now (just look at Angry Birds). Will we ever see any movie or live-action series based on NEOPETS?
Well, I would love that to happen. Moving Neopets to the big screen would be one of the milestones I would think of in the long term. If that ever happens, I’m going to watch it all day long, and week long, whatever length of time it will be on the screen.
But we’re not there yet; it’s just the beginning of our journey. But we definitely want to have that aspiration and build towards it. We do get pitched animation series or shorter formats, so we’ll probably work on that first since it’s more achievable. And then in terms of the big screen, I would love to have it, and we will continue to explore.
What is/are the next Neopets game the fans can expect?
We are launching Island Builders, and I think it will be relaunched in the first quarter of next year. That will probably be the most exciting Neopets game update you can see. In the original Neopets Classic, we will launch a new plot coming early next year. The new flagship game we are creating is called World of Neopets. It’s going to be a 3D RPG simulation-type open-world game, so you can explore the world of Neopia from the view of Neopets.
It will have the key elements of the classic Neopets game with new features giving you an Animal Crossing experience. For the mini-games, we will create a lot of multiplayer-based games, drawing inspiration from games like the Mario Party series. That’s how we are shaping the new World of Neopets game.
A great game takes years to build, so we’re working on it slowly but surely. We are also positioning ourselves for future fundraising to support the development of these new game experiences. It’s going to be an exciting journey, and it’s just the beginning. So, I would encourage anyone to come on board and embark on this Neopets renaissance together with us.
That’s all for our Neopets interview! Did you feel we missed out on any query in this Neopets Interview? Let us know in the comment section below!
For more Mobile Gaming news and updates, join our WhatsApp group, Telegram Group, or Discord server. Also, follow us on Google News, Instagram, and Twitter for quick updates.
