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Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Jul 5, 2017 6:45:29 GMT -5
Apparently, according to Jellyneo, JumpStart/Neopets has been acquired by a company in China called NetDragon. However, Neopets will remain part of JumpStart. With this, I am cautiously optimistic that things will change, but we'll see. I'm not entirely thrilled with the press release, though, as there are a couple of false information/terms, like the 'excellent management team' (urm, I'm going to question that, given some circumstances) and the fact that JSN 'created' Neopets (not true, unless you've been living under a rock) The Press release |
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Post by Shinko on Jul 5, 2017 7:13:03 GMT -5
Apparently, according to Jellyneo, JumpStart/Neopets has been acquired by a company in China called NetDragon. However, Neopets will remain part of JumpStart. With this, I am cautiously optimistic that things will change, but we'll see. I'm not entirely thrilled with the press release, though, as there are a couple of false information/terms, like the 'excellent management team' (urm, I'm going to question that, given some circumstances) and the fact that JSN 'created' Neopets (not true, unless you've been living under a rock) The Press releaseI don't think the person who wrote up the press release did much research into the subject, no. XD We'll see what happens, though! I'm just hoping this doesn't result in a second round of absurd layoffs, if only for the sake of Scrappy who legitimately seems to love Neopets and its community in a way that nobody has since we lost old TNT back in March of 2015. |
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Post by Jae on Jul 5, 2017 9:34:33 GMT -5
From the wording it sounds like they acquired all of Jumpstart, not Neo in particular, so they might leave the specific JS people in charge of their sites. They made a point of mentioning the 75m unique users on the site so they may want to leave it alone instead of disturbing the status quo.
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Post by RielCZ on Jul 5, 2017 11:40:54 GMT -5
Having been to China several times, I can say that the Chinese... have a tendency to run things well. There are many technological successes in China including Huawei, Baidu, WeChat/WeChatPay, AliBaba... Now, I have not heard of NetDragon before this, and I'm not guaranteeing them to be stellar, but... Maybe Neo will actually work in Mainland China now!  (Yes, I am optimistic about this acquisition.) |
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Post by Jae on Jul 5, 2017 12:24:23 GMT -5
On one hand, tapping into the mainland Chinese userbase could be a nice boon to the site. On the other hand, I hope Neopets doesn't adopt the harsh censorship present on many Chinese sites >_>
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Post by Rabbit ♠ on Jul 5, 2017 13:26:45 GMT -5
I messaged Scrappy earlier today about this to see if she could tell me anything and she's optimistic about this. As for my opinion, I agree with Scrappy. This will lead to good things to all of us. I got a good feeling about this.  |
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Post by Breakingchains on Jul 5, 2017 17:17:25 GMT -5
NetDragon apparently does stuff with MMOs and apps, none of which I have ever heard of. Granted, that doesn't mean as much in the modern MMO-soaked market, but the internet doesn't seem to know about them either. I did some hasty searches and the only one that brought up very much material is a licensed Disney game that appears to have decent review scores. One looks like a Maple Story imitator.
I could try playing around with some of their games and apps and see if they put out quality stuff. In my limited experience, stuff produced by China for an American market tends to be split right down the middle in terms of quality, so I have no idea what to expect.
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Post by Ryanruff13 on Jul 5, 2017 17:29:21 GMT -5
This definitely is interesting news. The main thing, however, that I'm just wondering about is how much this will directly impact the site itself, though Scrappy's reply above does leave me pretty optimistic that things will change. In particular, I wonder about the financial impact that this will have on Neopets itself; given how NetDragon seems like a pretty competent company from what I've gathered, this may spell out great things for Neopets' resources. And as Jae said, drawing in a Chinese audience could be great for the site. (Fun fact: learning Chinese has been one of my goals lately, further contributing to my fascination that a Chinese company bought out JumpStart.) Add NetDragon's focus in developing for the mobile market on top of that, and I'm quite interested in where this will go. Edit: Going off of what Breakingchains said, I'll probably suspend further judgement until I learn more about the overall quality of NetDragon's output. So tl;dr: I'm cautious, but cautiously optimistic. If that makes sense. |
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Post by Rabbit ♠ on Jul 6, 2017 16:25:46 GMT -5
Scrappy made a board on the TNT boards about this. Here's the link. |
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Jul 7, 2017 10:46:54 GMT -5
I'm making a list of things which NetDragon could do to improve the site:
1. FINALLY make a Mobile version and try to have as many features as possible (games (including Key Quest), Battledome, buying from shops (both site & user)/using the Trading Post) accessible from it.
2. Switch the site from Flash to HTML5.
3. Hire some more artists who can adapt to the Neopets style, especially when it comes to more unique artwork. I would also say programmers but considering they're a MMO developer company they probably have a few the can spare now and again for big projects.
4. More Neopets-based app games wouldn't be a bad thing. In addition to fixing up Ghoul Catchers how about bringing back Habitariums and Petpet Park as app games? Heck, Key Quest would make a good app game if they don't think fixing up the one on the site is worth it (probably can make a better version from scratch than trying to figure out what's broke at this point; just keep the Vault section so players can redeem keys via the site). Hmm, what else, maybe make a "Neopets Stories" app that lets players replay or experience how playing through old plots were like, including the comics, puzzles, and battling potions. There's a LOT of potential with Neopets with how much lore and stories the site has.
5. That said, would be nice if they made more lore. And I know I'm going to sound like a newb (I guess?), but it would be great if for the plot developing they would hire old TNT members part of the content/creative department. I guess we should first see how JS does with the plot their making, see if they can capture the Neopets feel.
6. Get the Battledome out of Beta. Yes, technically it is but it's still missing several promised features (a mode where 1P Challengers HP increase, Stealing needs to fixed, etc.). And more battling events/plots wouldn't hurt either.
7. More Games Room games too. Like at least bring over the Petpet Park games.
8. Updating worlds with old artwork that matches ones with newer artwork, improving annual events like Altador Cup, AAA's Challenges, Charity Corner, & Advent Calendar.
9. Take in user feedback. Many users know the site better than JS does (such as the official fan sites like Jellyneo) and we know what we would like to see. I'd even suggest in the following weeks they should have a survey to get a feeling what's the general consensus of the Neopets community.
Any other suggestions?
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Post by Shinko on Jul 7, 2017 11:04:21 GMT -5
We'll see what happens, but I'm not super optimistic that there will be vast, wide-sweeping changes to the site like the above suggested. Hiring artists and increasing the mobile presence, sure, but remember that NetDragon has acquired Jumpstart, not just neopets. There's no telling which facets of Jumpstart will be their priority.
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Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Jul 7, 2017 12:17:52 GMT -5
We'll see what happens, but I'm not super optimistic that there will be vast, wide-sweeping changes to the site like the above suggested. Hiring artists and increasing the mobile presence, sure, but remember that NetDragon has acquired Jumpstart, not just neopets. There's no telling which facets of Jumpstart will be their priority. And I'm going to agree with this, hence my cautious optimism (as well as others). We know that there will be changes coming to the site, but they're more than likely hold their cards close. As you mentioned, it was just a little over two years ago that Jumpstart acquired Neo from Viacom and it was a rocky start. The 2 mass layoffs (the second one in particular) probably erased a lot of goodwill alone along with the damage to its reputation. |
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Post by Ryanruff13 on Jul 8, 2017 20:13:12 GMT -5
We'll see what happens, but I'm not super optimistic that there will be vast, wide-sweeping changes to the site like the above suggested. Hiring artists and increasing the mobile presence, sure, but remember that NetDragon has acquired Jumpstart, not just neopets. There's no telling which facets of Jumpstart will be their priority. And I'm going to agree with this, hence my cautious optimism (as well as others). We know that there will be changes coming to the site, but they're more than likely hold their cards close. As you mentioned, it was just a little over two years ago that Jumpstart acquired Neo from Viacom and it was a rocky start. The 2 mass layoffs (the second one in particular) probably erased a lot of goodwill alone along with the damage to its reputation. Agreed on both counts. As much as I'm still interested as I said above, I'm not even sure to what extent NetDragon is even aware about Neopets, much less how much they're concerned about it. I'm still a little reassured by what Scrappy said, but come to think of it, we yet don't know what information that she's basing her prediction off of. At least, assuming the worst-case scenario, it probably won't cause as much disruption as the JumpStart buyout initially did. But even then, it can't hurt to expect the unexpected and be cautious. |
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Post by mac on Jul 9, 2017 7:02:58 GMT -5
I have been trying to do some research about this company and their products since the news broke, but it's difficult to find much of anything. Their official website is out of date and many of the pages for their games are either broken or have not been updated for several years. One game in particular, Disney Fantasy Online, had a website that had not been updated at all since 2012, but the page stayed online until the end of last year. When I tried to visit 99.com, their gaming portal that is listed as a product on their homepage, I was put through several automatic redirects until it resolved on a completely unrelated Chinese gambling website. There's footage of Dungeon Keeper Online on YouTube, one of the MMOs NetDragon developed, and if you have any experience with World of Warcraft, you'll recognize the art style and especially the UI. They were definitely "inspired" by it.
I have no idea if this scarcity of information/coverage is tied to China's Internet censorship laws, but I have a hunch that it might. They may be communicating with players through other outlets. If not, just the language barrier in general is making it hard to find. Not to imply that any of this is going to reflect what will happen to Neopets, but I thought it was interesting. Speaking of that, it makes me wonder if Neopets will change to better suit the Chinese market in the future, including censorship of content. If it does, it will take a lot of work to go back and retroactively change a lot of the artwork assets. Just something to think about.
But this is all just me theorizing from what little I've seen. It seems to me like we won't see many big changes while JumpStart is still acting as a middleman, and really, any news is good news. The site only has room for improvement and I'm interested in seeing where this takes us.
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Jul 9, 2017 12:35:25 GMT -5
I have been trying to do some research about this company and their products since the news broke, but it's difficult to find much of anything. Their official website is out of date and many of the pages for their games are either broken or have not been updated for several years. One game in particular, Disney Fantasy Online, had a website that had not been updated at all since 2012, but the page stayed online until the end of last year. When I tried to visit 99.com, their gaming portal that is listed as a product on their homepage, I was put through several automatic redirects until it resolved on a completely unrelated Chinese gambling website. There's footage of Dungeon Keeper Online on YouTube, one of the MMOs NetDragon developed, and if you have any experience with World of Warcraft, you'll recognize the art style and especially the UI. They were definitely "inspired" by it. I have no idea if this scarcity of information/coverage is tied to China's Internet censorship laws, but I have a hunch that it might. They may be communicating with players through other outlets. If not, just the language barrier in general is making it hard to find. Not to imply that any of this is going to reflect what will happen to Neopets, but I thought it was interesting. Speaking of that, it makes me wonder if Neopets will change to better suit the Chinese market in the future, including censorship of content. If it does, it will take a lot of work to go back and retroactively change a lot of the artwork assets. Just something to think about. But this is all just me theorizing from what little I've seen. It seems to me like we won't see many big changes while JumpStart is still acting as a middleman, and really, any news is good news. The site only has room for improvement and I'm interested in seeing where this takes us. I can't imagine them buying an international/outside of China company and then converting it to meet Chinese standards. I'm wondering if they bought JumpStart to work as a middleman, to get their products they had to censor to meet Chinese standards out to the world without having to censor it. In that case, it'll probably be business as usual as NetDragon wouldn't be interested in improving JS's games and let them run them as usual (maybe aside giving them a bigger budget, but who knows if that won't come with a stipulation that it's only for games NetDragon developed). At most they may create a censored version of JS games for Chinese users, though it would either be a clone or, in Neopets case, have extremely limited connectivity that the base may show up in user and click numbers but not much else. Worst Case Scenario 1: NetDragon's plan is only to have JS be a distribution platform for their games and JS's owned games, including Neopets, falls into disuse. In addition NetDragon has no interest in JS's owned games they wouldn't even sell them.
Worst Case Scenario 2: They do want to have JS games be available in China so will start enforcing heavy censorship to meet China's censoring laws. Best Case Scenario: NetDragon gives JumpStart a bigger budget, and maybe some programmers, to improve their products. JS will handle the international market while NetDragon will focus on China, making a copy of censored JS games for Chinese audience. For Neopets this would mean finally fixing up parts of the site, getting a Mobile version made, more plots & events (and maybe hire artists who can match the Neopets style to meet deadlines), and at least having the Chinese's base added to the site's user numbers and clicks (though what they'll get would be limited to what NetDragon would think be allowed). So in other words, business as usual but hopefully with more money and a bigger push to get Neopets back into the 21st century. |
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