Post by Stephanie (swordlilly) on Jun 27, 2023 1:38:28 GMT -5
Heya, I'm hoping to get this article into the upcoming issue (this Friday). I know it's a bit of a short notice but if anyone could help me glance over it before I submit it (ideally by Tuesday or Wednesday), I would be very grateful. ;u;
Conversations about the in-game economy come up every now and then on the Neoboards. Some Neopians feel that the economy is extremely unstable and alienating, while others feel that inflation is just part of the game. To get some clarity into the experiences behind these opinions, I decided to do a little research.
I reached out to Neopians that I saw engaging in various forms of active earning onsite, such as gaming, restocking, reselling, and participating in creative contests. I also reached out to Neopians who seemed to be pursuing onsite hobbies that require spending, such as pet customising, avatar collecting, and gallery building. I asked them about their experiences with the in-game economy, and in total collected 132 responses over the span of two weeks, near the beginning of this year’s Altador Cup season.
As with any kind of research based on surveys, it is important to note some limitations of this method. The people I reached were mostly people who are currently interested in Neopets, or at least interested enough to keep up with events like the Altador Cup and fill out a survey such as this one. People who have tried Neopets in the past and are already alienated may not have seen this survey. Casual players may also be underrepresented in this survey because of their tendency to avoid community discussions about the economics aspect of the game. I also acknowledge my personal bias: I believe that there is extreme inequality in-game and that it is a gameplay problem serious enough to require staff intervention. To reduce the impact of my personal bias on the survey data, where possible, I asked about quantifiable facts. I also provided space for respondents to write open-ended answers so that they were not limited by the options I gave. Finally, I conducted the survey electronically through an impersonal form and allowed respondents to remain anonymous if they chose, so that the survey data would not be skewed too much by social desirability bias. Bearing in mind the limitations of my method, then, here is the data I collected, which will hopefully open up some conversations about how to change the game for the better.
Most of the respondents are active players, with 69.7% playing for more than an hour per day, and 27.3% playing for less than an hour per day but still bothering to check in every day. Of these, 43.2% are currently struggling to meet their in-game goals, while 31.1% are “somewhat affected” by in-game economy issues but not particularly engaged with the site at the moment. 25.7% are either uninterested in the game economy or not affected. 66.7% have taken a hiatus at some point because they lost interest in the site, and 73.5% have been with the site for more than seven years.
On a day-to-day basis, 66.6% of respondents collect less than 100K worth of passive income in-game; half of those collect less than 50K per day. 28% collect between 100K and 300K, and 5.4% collect more than 300K per day.
In terms of daily active income, 65.5% earn less than 100K; two-thirds of those earn less than 50K per day. 25% earn between 100K and 300K per day, and 9.1% earn more than 300K per day.
17.4% of those surveyed are loyal subscribers who enjoy in-game benefits like the Premium battledome and Super Shop Wizard, and also purchase merchandise that come with codes for in-game items. 56.8% “sometimes” or “occasionally” make purchases, while a quarter of Neopians (25.8%) are entirely free-to-play.
Nearly half (47.7%) of those surveyed are currently struggling to meet pet-related goals, such as training and customising. A quarter (25%) are pursuing collections that are shown on userlookups. 20.5% are working on obtaining items for their personal collection or use, while 6.8% have no Neopoint-related goals.
From these numbers, we can extrapolate what people mean when they say they struggle to save for things. Let’s say someone wants to paint their pet Candy, for example. According to Jellyneo’s price history, which can be checked against records kept by independent observers, the market price of a Candy Paint Brush increased from 4 million to 10 million NP in the span of three months near the beginning of last year, and then stabilized around that price. An active player in the lower-mid income bracket earning perhaps 100K total a day and spending 50K on pet training can expect to save 1.5 million NP a month. This means, if they happened to start saving when the Paint Brush was valued at 4 million NP, what at first looked like a little over three months’ work would have ended up being more than six months’ work.
Neopians in the middle income tier can struggle as well. My personal experience was saving for a Queen Fyora Stamp, which was valued at 50 million NP when I started saving. I wanted to complete my Faerieland stamp album so I could wear the avatar to match one of my pets’ spring-themed customisations on the Neoboards. At my saving rate of about 300K total a day, I thought I would be able to reach my goal within a year. It ended up taking me more than two years of daily, active playing to catch up to the market price as it inflated, and the final price I paid was more than 150 million NP. Other items that I have seen people struggle to save for include the Petpet Kadoatie, which inflated from 15 million to 60 million NP in a year, and the Battledome weapon Thunder Sticks, which inflated from 25 million to 75 million NP in a year.
New and returning Neopians who have taken significant time away from the game feel the effects of inflation most keenly. One described “a crushing feeling of helplessness.” “I don’t have fun earning NP,” they said. “It feels like every day, every 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 NP I earn is just a pinch of sand when compared to my goals, and when I finally do have enough money to achieve them, they run me entirely broke for months and I have to rebuild all over again.”
Another respondent agreed that “it’s kind of insane how hard it is to get certain items. The overall economy in this game is incredibly unstable. The only reason I was able to afford anything like Paint Brushes or Petpets at all were because I won the Poetry Contest at one point and sold one of the rare items I got from it. It’s really disheartening because while this game has a lot of potential, and I will always love playing it, the state of the Neopets economy is easily driving away new (and even old) players.”
Kuroneko_kitty said she is “priced out” of completing her Battledome sets. “Getting good Battledome weapons (beyond the basic beginner items) has been a goal of mine for a long time and these items specifically are VERY badly effected by the current inflation.”
A respondent who didn’t share these feelings said, “My answers reflect today and not how I have felt at various times over the years. As I’ve been on Neo over 18 years.”
One anonymous respondent with insight into the behaviors of the super-rich said, “I think part of the issue is that people who have hit the NP cap are forced to continually purchase rare/expensive items which means there are less floating around for normal players, and inflation is made possible because these people are still able to buy for higher prices, and can hold the items indefinitely since they don’t need the NP.” The Neopoint cap, as I understand, is caused by an old coding limitation; a player can hold up to 2,147,483,647 NP in the bank and another 2,147,483,647 NP in the shop till. If they earn NP beyond that 4.2 billion and they don’t want to give away anything, then they are essentially “forced” to spend the extra NP on investments to keep growing their net worth. So a lot of desirable items like Paint Brushes, Petpets, album items and Battledome weapons get bought up and held indefinitely, which creates scarcity in the general market. In the real world, when prices inflate wildly out of control, the response of most governments is to raise bank interest rates, the idea being that the super-rich will face a choice between storing their money in the bank or investing in property. When storing in the bank becomes a more lucrative option, they will release their holdings and make more of it available for the general population, so the money ends up just sitting in the bank looking pretty instead of causing damage in the market. In the Neopian economy specifically, this respondent’s idea is that if the Neopoint cap could be increased, then it will slow down the inflation of prices in the general market.
The ever-increasing money supply and the unequal distribution of it also contributes to inflation. A 20-year-old account playing nearly 15,000 NP per bet (50 + 2 for every day the account has aged) can expect to earn about 150K a day from Food Club, while a new account starting with a bet amount of 52 NP gets barely anything. When there are more Neopoints entering the economy all the time but the actual supply of goods remains the same, the prices go up, making life more difficult for Neopians earning less than average on a daily basis. It is no wonder that the majority of current active players are longtime players. One idea I asked respondents to vote on was capping Food Club revenue. I suggested a cap of 10K per bet and a floor of 5K for newcomers, but more than half disagreed with this idea, though I think it’s important to consider survivorship bias here since I was not able to reach the already alienated players. Most of the survey respondents were in support of raising the revenue from games, though, essentially raising minimum wage. Currently, it takes at least about an hour to grind 50K a day from games, which is a very small amount compared to the hundreds of K that veterans are making from passive income. Adding more items to the Hidden Tower and adding more Neopoint sinks like the Dr. Sloth auctions of the old days were also propositions that most respondents agreed on.
In the open-ended space I provided, respondents suggested increasing the drop rate of desired items from dailies and random events, updating Battledome prize pools, and reworking the restocking mechanic so that desired items aren’t constantly snatched up within seconds. The recent change to the creative contest prize pool, spearheaded by Ziporen, is one that many respondents are grateful for.
Ziporen wrote, “I think that it is possible to fix things, but I’m not sure if I really trust staff to follow through at the moment outside of patch fixes” like the Advent Calendar and Lost Shards events we saw this past year, which flooded the market with desirable items and encouraged some rich Neopians to transfer NP to the poor through their buying of said items as investments.
Some respondents advised caution in these kinds of patch fixes. One person wrote that while “this year’s events so far definitely helped with some inflated items such as Meowclops and Candychan, unfortunately there were side effects such as some Petpet Paint Brushes skyrocketing into the heavens. It’s really easy to give solutions like re-releasing old items but we also have to be careful with side effects.”
“Being able to attain any stamp avatar via dailies shouldn’t be the goal,” another person said. It is possible to adjust the game difficulty too far in the other direction, where people achieve their goals too quickly and then get bored.
Many respondents described a feeling of being in limbo. “Nowadays my primary interest is the creative/fandom side of the site,” one said, “but it’s really hard to feel motivated even for that because of how toxic the social and economic aspects have become as a whole.”
Jigglypuff70 wrote, “I personally barely play the game as it is right now. My current goals are to get all of my pets painted, and to have at least 20 million NP. So far I have 14 million, and a significant portion of that is from passive income like Trudy’s Surprise and Food Club. One thing I think could be nice is if there were more quests or if the quests had nicer rewards. I could see quests being a more accessible and fun way of making NP for newer accounts if they had better payouts.”
In the end, Neopians seem to disagree on what the game is truly about. The name of the game, Neopets, would seem to indicate that it is about raising and training virtual pets, customising them, and interacting with other pet owners. When items that are central to this aspect of the game become increasingly inaccessible, players experience feelings of betrayal and outrage, because it feels like the core nature of the game has become corrupted. Players are supposed to have fun caring for and showing off their pets, not constantly toil and struggle to earn basic items.
I also learned, however, that there are Neopians who play the game more like a virtual investment game, where the fun is in collecting assets and watching them grow in value over time. These Neopians need a way to stay entertained without dramatically affecting the daily quality of life of regular Neopians.
I hope that this article has shed some light on different Neopians’ experiences with the in-game economy and provided some tools for talking about how to make the game more welcoming to new and returning players.
Neopians’ Experiences with the In-Game Economy
by swordlillyConversations about the in-game economy come up every now and then on the Neoboards. Some Neopians feel that the economy is extremely unstable and alienating, while others feel that inflation is just part of the game. To get some clarity into the experiences behind these opinions, I decided to do a little research.
I reached out to Neopians that I saw engaging in various forms of active earning onsite, such as gaming, restocking, reselling, and participating in creative contests. I also reached out to Neopians who seemed to be pursuing onsite hobbies that require spending, such as pet customising, avatar collecting, and gallery building. I asked them about their experiences with the in-game economy, and in total collected 132 responses over the span of two weeks, near the beginning of this year’s Altador Cup season.
As with any kind of research based on surveys, it is important to note some limitations of this method. The people I reached were mostly people who are currently interested in Neopets, or at least interested enough to keep up with events like the Altador Cup and fill out a survey such as this one. People who have tried Neopets in the past and are already alienated may not have seen this survey. Casual players may also be underrepresented in this survey because of their tendency to avoid community discussions about the economics aspect of the game. I also acknowledge my personal bias: I believe that there is extreme inequality in-game and that it is a gameplay problem serious enough to require staff intervention. To reduce the impact of my personal bias on the survey data, where possible, I asked about quantifiable facts. I also provided space for respondents to write open-ended answers so that they were not limited by the options I gave. Finally, I conducted the survey electronically through an impersonal form and allowed respondents to remain anonymous if they chose, so that the survey data would not be skewed too much by social desirability bias. Bearing in mind the limitations of my method, then, here is the data I collected, which will hopefully open up some conversations about how to change the game for the better.
Most of the respondents are active players, with 69.7% playing for more than an hour per day, and 27.3% playing for less than an hour per day but still bothering to check in every day. Of these, 43.2% are currently struggling to meet their in-game goals, while 31.1% are “somewhat affected” by in-game economy issues but not particularly engaged with the site at the moment. 25.7% are either uninterested in the game economy or not affected. 66.7% have taken a hiatus at some point because they lost interest in the site, and 73.5% have been with the site for more than seven years.
On a day-to-day basis, 66.6% of respondents collect less than 100K worth of passive income in-game; half of those collect less than 50K per day. 28% collect between 100K and 300K, and 5.4% collect more than 300K per day.
In terms of daily active income, 65.5% earn less than 100K; two-thirds of those earn less than 50K per day. 25% earn between 100K and 300K per day, and 9.1% earn more than 300K per day.
17.4% of those surveyed are loyal subscribers who enjoy in-game benefits like the Premium battledome and Super Shop Wizard, and also purchase merchandise that come with codes for in-game items. 56.8% “sometimes” or “occasionally” make purchases, while a quarter of Neopians (25.8%) are entirely free-to-play.
Nearly half (47.7%) of those surveyed are currently struggling to meet pet-related goals, such as training and customising. A quarter (25%) are pursuing collections that are shown on userlookups. 20.5% are working on obtaining items for their personal collection or use, while 6.8% have no Neopoint-related goals.
From these numbers, we can extrapolate what people mean when they say they struggle to save for things. Let’s say someone wants to paint their pet Candy, for example. According to Jellyneo’s price history, which can be checked against records kept by independent observers, the market price of a Candy Paint Brush increased from 4 million to 10 million NP in the span of three months near the beginning of last year, and then stabilized around that price. An active player in the lower-mid income bracket earning perhaps 100K total a day and spending 50K on pet training can expect to save 1.5 million NP a month. This means, if they happened to start saving when the Paint Brush was valued at 4 million NP, what at first looked like a little over three months’ work would have ended up being more than six months’ work.
Neopians in the middle income tier can struggle as well. My personal experience was saving for a Queen Fyora Stamp, which was valued at 50 million NP when I started saving. I wanted to complete my Faerieland stamp album so I could wear the avatar to match one of my pets’ spring-themed customisations on the Neoboards. At my saving rate of about 300K total a day, I thought I would be able to reach my goal within a year. It ended up taking me more than two years of daily, active playing to catch up to the market price as it inflated, and the final price I paid was more than 150 million NP. Other items that I have seen people struggle to save for include the Petpet Kadoatie, which inflated from 15 million to 60 million NP in a year, and the Battledome weapon Thunder Sticks, which inflated from 25 million to 75 million NP in a year.
New and returning Neopians who have taken significant time away from the game feel the effects of inflation most keenly. One described “a crushing feeling of helplessness.” “I don’t have fun earning NP,” they said. “It feels like every day, every 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 NP I earn is just a pinch of sand when compared to my goals, and when I finally do have enough money to achieve them, they run me entirely broke for months and I have to rebuild all over again.”
Another respondent agreed that “it’s kind of insane how hard it is to get certain items. The overall economy in this game is incredibly unstable. The only reason I was able to afford anything like Paint Brushes or Petpets at all were because I won the Poetry Contest at one point and sold one of the rare items I got from it. It’s really disheartening because while this game has a lot of potential, and I will always love playing it, the state of the Neopets economy is easily driving away new (and even old) players.”
Kuroneko_kitty said she is “priced out” of completing her Battledome sets. “Getting good Battledome weapons (beyond the basic beginner items) has been a goal of mine for a long time and these items specifically are VERY badly effected by the current inflation.”
A respondent who didn’t share these feelings said, “My answers reflect today and not how I have felt at various times over the years. As I’ve been on Neo over 18 years.”
One anonymous respondent with insight into the behaviors of the super-rich said, “I think part of the issue is that people who have hit the NP cap are forced to continually purchase rare/expensive items which means there are less floating around for normal players, and inflation is made possible because these people are still able to buy for higher prices, and can hold the items indefinitely since they don’t need the NP.” The Neopoint cap, as I understand, is caused by an old coding limitation; a player can hold up to 2,147,483,647 NP in the bank and another 2,147,483,647 NP in the shop till. If they earn NP beyond that 4.2 billion and they don’t want to give away anything, then they are essentially “forced” to spend the extra NP on investments to keep growing their net worth. So a lot of desirable items like Paint Brushes, Petpets, album items and Battledome weapons get bought up and held indefinitely, which creates scarcity in the general market. In the real world, when prices inflate wildly out of control, the response of most governments is to raise bank interest rates, the idea being that the super-rich will face a choice between storing their money in the bank or investing in property. When storing in the bank becomes a more lucrative option, they will release their holdings and make more of it available for the general population, so the money ends up just sitting in the bank looking pretty instead of causing damage in the market. In the Neopian economy specifically, this respondent’s idea is that if the Neopoint cap could be increased, then it will slow down the inflation of prices in the general market.
The ever-increasing money supply and the unequal distribution of it also contributes to inflation. A 20-year-old account playing nearly 15,000 NP per bet (50 + 2 for every day the account has aged) can expect to earn about 150K a day from Food Club, while a new account starting with a bet amount of 52 NP gets barely anything. When there are more Neopoints entering the economy all the time but the actual supply of goods remains the same, the prices go up, making life more difficult for Neopians earning less than average on a daily basis. It is no wonder that the majority of current active players are longtime players. One idea I asked respondents to vote on was capping Food Club revenue. I suggested a cap of 10K per bet and a floor of 5K for newcomers, but more than half disagreed with this idea, though I think it’s important to consider survivorship bias here since I was not able to reach the already alienated players. Most of the survey respondents were in support of raising the revenue from games, though, essentially raising minimum wage. Currently, it takes at least about an hour to grind 50K a day from games, which is a very small amount compared to the hundreds of K that veterans are making from passive income. Adding more items to the Hidden Tower and adding more Neopoint sinks like the Dr. Sloth auctions of the old days were also propositions that most respondents agreed on.
In the open-ended space I provided, respondents suggested increasing the drop rate of desired items from dailies and random events, updating Battledome prize pools, and reworking the restocking mechanic so that desired items aren’t constantly snatched up within seconds. The recent change to the creative contest prize pool, spearheaded by Ziporen, is one that many respondents are grateful for.
Ziporen wrote, “I think that it is possible to fix things, but I’m not sure if I really trust staff to follow through at the moment outside of patch fixes” like the Advent Calendar and Lost Shards events we saw this past year, which flooded the market with desirable items and encouraged some rich Neopians to transfer NP to the poor through their buying of said items as investments.
Some respondents advised caution in these kinds of patch fixes. One person wrote that while “this year’s events so far definitely helped with some inflated items such as Meowclops and Candychan, unfortunately there were side effects such as some Petpet Paint Brushes skyrocketing into the heavens. It’s really easy to give solutions like re-releasing old items but we also have to be careful with side effects.”
“Being able to attain any stamp avatar via dailies shouldn’t be the goal,” another person said. It is possible to adjust the game difficulty too far in the other direction, where people achieve their goals too quickly and then get bored.
Many respondents described a feeling of being in limbo. “Nowadays my primary interest is the creative/fandom side of the site,” one said, “but it’s really hard to feel motivated even for that because of how toxic the social and economic aspects have become as a whole.”
Jigglypuff70 wrote, “I personally barely play the game as it is right now. My current goals are to get all of my pets painted, and to have at least 20 million NP. So far I have 14 million, and a significant portion of that is from passive income like Trudy’s Surprise and Food Club. One thing I think could be nice is if there were more quests or if the quests had nicer rewards. I could see quests being a more accessible and fun way of making NP for newer accounts if they had better payouts.”
In the end, Neopians seem to disagree on what the game is truly about. The name of the game, Neopets, would seem to indicate that it is about raising and training virtual pets, customising them, and interacting with other pet owners. When items that are central to this aspect of the game become increasingly inaccessible, players experience feelings of betrayal and outrage, because it feels like the core nature of the game has become corrupted. Players are supposed to have fun caring for and showing off their pets, not constantly toil and struggle to earn basic items.
I also learned, however, that there are Neopians who play the game more like a virtual investment game, where the fun is in collecting assets and watching them grow in value over time. These Neopians need a way to stay entertained without dramatically affecting the daily quality of life of regular Neopians.
I hope that this article has shed some light on different Neopians’ experiences with the in-game economy and provided some tools for talking about how to make the game more welcoming to new and returning players.
