Neopets: Online Game for Kids of All Ages

With online gaming becoming more and more popular, kids are itching to try their hands (keyboards? joysticks?) at this Internet-based entertainment medium.  Parents may be concerned about the costs, as many of them require the purchase of startup software (to run on the PC) and a monthly membership fee (to access the Internet servers where the games reside).  Especially for younger children, the subject matter of some games may present a problem as well, with violence and sexual themes being the most prevalent.

So does this mean that your younger children can't play Internet-based games?  Hardly.  Welcome to the wonderful world of Neopia and its inhabitants, the Neopets.  It's fun, it's kid-friendly, and it's free!

To start, you connect through your Web browser to www.neopets.com and creates your account.  Once that's been done, you can create your first Neopet.  You can choose from over 40 different species (some are rare and can only be obtained during game play), giving it a name and selecting options like gender, color, habitat, personality, and physical attributes.  Once you're happy with all your settings, you save them, and voila!  You have your first Neopet!  You can have up to four Neopets in an account, either created and named yourself or by going to the pound to adopt an abandoned pet.

So what do you do after that?  Well, there are food items to buy (your pets do get hungry), games to play, towns and villages to explore, battles to fight in, schools to train in, and shops to scavenge.  The monetary unit in Neopia is called the Neopoint (or NP for short), and they come in handy when you're doing all that shopping.  Luckily, playing the games helps you earn Neopoints.  You can even set up your own shop and buy and sell Neopian items, earning more Neopoints.  And there are also random events, where a character will pop up and give you something.  Sometimes it's just a trinket, but every so often you can stumble across something that's worth quite a bit.

Who do you run into in Neopia?  All kinds of strange creatures.  There are areas of Neopia occupied by faeries (yes, I spelled that correctly; the game was designed and developed by a couple of British college students), strange underwater creatures, prehistoric beasts, pirates, spooky monsters, outer-space aliens, and my personal favorite, the mutants.  There are good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, and you never know who you'll meet on the next screen.

It doesn't take long for new gamers to realize that Neopets can come in more colors than the one you chose when you created your pet.  All those creatures mentioned above?  They're all Neopets, too.  So you can change your pet's color by purchasing paint brushes or morphing potions or transmogrification potions.  And a new feature recently added lets you buy clothes, accessories, and backgrounds to dress up your Neopets just the way you want them.

If you think you're the only human in Neopia, you aren't.  You can use the site's Neomail to send messages to other players.  You can even band together in groups called guilds, which allow gamers with similar likes to create their own mini-community.  It's a lot more fun when you're playing with people you know!

Regarding my comment on "my personal favorite" Neopets, yes, I've been playing on Neopets for over six years.  About 4-5 percent of all accounts on Neopets are owned and run by those over 18.  For some parents that sends up a warning flag.  Adults playing on the same Web site as their kids?  Don't worry.  Neopets has numerous processes in place that prevent children under a certain age from receiving Neomail from older gamers.  All message and guild boards are monitored and offensive material removed immediately, with offenders being warned or even having their accounts frozen.  Great care is taken to make sure that a child's playing experience is fun and protected.

As I mentioned, the site is free.  Businesses sponsor the site, and there are ads on each page.  However, they're inobtrusive, and won't interfere with game play for most users.  If you want to get fancy, you can spend $8 a month for what's called a premium account.  You gain access to some extra features and a few more random events each week.  And to make it even more interesting, you can use your cell phone to access yet another world in Neopia for about $3 a month.

The one possible drawback that Neopets has for gamers is that it's not an online video game.  It runs on your Web browser and that's it.  But the artwork is excellent, the storylines and activities are well-constructed, and the site is just plain old fun.  Not a bad deal for free, huh?  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go feed my pets and see if I can find that Krawk Transmogrification Potion I've been looking for...