Life Skills Learned from Neopets
Although I mainly play Neopets for enjoyment, it’s interesting to think about what I’ve learned from it. Especially from playing it at such a young age all the way to today.
I’ve heard other players say that Neopets introduced them to web development and it’s now their full-time job, while others have honed their art and writing skills through Neopets’ site competitions. So, I thought I’d compile a list of life skills that Neopets can help teach:
Web Development
Neopets allows you to customize multiple pages with basic HTML and CSS, two programming languages that are essential to front-end web development (the design of how users interact with a website). The game encourages this by allowing users to share their creations and hosting competitions to highlight especially creative layouts.
In fact, customizing my pets’ pages is part of what got me into making my own websites like this one! I’m a bit rusty, but I still use the basic HTML and CSS knowledge to customize some aspects of this website.
Art
One of my favorite aspects of Neopets is how it encourages player art through multiple different mediums. They have spotlights for drawing and writing competitions. You can also dress up your pet and have it enter a beauty contest.
Players can submit traditional or digital art for their Neopets art gallery entries. For writing, they can enter the poetry and storytelling contests or submit an article for the Neopian Times newspaper.
Overlap with DnD
Side Note: I’ve noticed a lot of fans of virtual pet sites are also fans of Dungeons and Dragons.
For example, the creators of Tattered World also created a storyline for DnD. Virtual pet sites may have even been my own gateway hobby to DnD. I think there’s a lot of overlap between DnD and Neopets fans, which makes sense. Both of them involve using your imagination to create characters and stories.
Communication
This one may be a bit obvious, but I think it’s still worth mentioning. Neopets has its own forum called the NeoBoards where players can post to discuss aspects of the game, give feedback, and connect with others.
There’s even a guild system where there’s groups that hold their own events and competitions. Trading is also a big part of Neopets that requires negotiation skills to be able to haggle prices. All of these aspects have some type of social component that the game encourages. It’s more fun to share your experiences with other players, after all.
Finance and Economics
Learning the market is one of the more important aspects of the game since many goals require large amounts of neopoints, the in-game currency. Although neopoints can be achieved by just playing casually, players can earn even more by strategically utilizing the in-game economy. Similar to its real life counterpart, Neopets’ economy follows the laws of supply and demand. Here are some of the multiple different systems for earning neopoints:
Restocking
A popular way of earning neopoints is restocking, which is the act of buying items from a Neopian shop and then selling them at a higher price. Essentially, it’s the “buy low, sell high” rule. Similar to a real economy, the rarer and more in-demand items will sell for a higher price.
Stock market
Something I’ve always appreciated about Neopets is that it has its own stock market, which also follows the rule of buying low and selling high. The risk of investing in this stock market is much lower since Neopian companies rarely go out of business, and of course, there’s far less complexity than the real life version. However, it’s still a nice way of making passive income.
Banking
Like Neopets’ other economic systems, banking is relatively simple. You can collect interest daily which varies depending on the interest rate with the maximum being 12.5% (If only bank interest rate were this high in real life). This also incentivizes players to budget and save their neopoints for bigger purchases.
Statistics
Another interesting skill Neopets can help teach is statistics. There’s a game called Food Club where players can bet on which pirates will win the eating competition for that day. Multiple factors decide the odds of winning for each pirate: Their win/loss ratio, their favorite foods, and their food allergies. Many guides advocate for the use of spreadsheets and calculators to keep track of the data.
Unlike real life gambling, players will generally profit over time as the odds are more in their favor. Many different strategies exist for placing bets, but a lot of players simply copy the bets of people who have already crunched the numbers for them. Still, it can be an interesting way to learn some basic statistics if you place your own bets.
Time Management and Consistency
These soft skills are some of the most prominent ones that Neopets can teach. Many things take time to earn. Pet customizations, for example, can cost millions of neopoints. Although they’re certainly achievable, it can take a while to save up for them. The most practical way is to play a little bit every day to gradually build up the neopoints, while also juggling your real life responsibilities.
Closing Thoughts
That being said, I do think Neopets can still teach valuable lessons and at the very least familiarize players with more complicated systems, like the stock market. Although, you might get strange looks if you bring Neopets up in a job interview.
Minecraft and Roblox are the only other games nowadays I know of that teach kids similar skills. Even then, I would say they’re in a fairly different genre from Neopets.
Regardless, I never went into Neopets with the intention of building any skills. I simply wanted to play with some virtual pets, so it’s a nice bonus that it was able to introduce me to so many different skills and concepts. :)
Similar Posts
With how long it’s been around, there have been many other posts that discuss real life skills learned from Neopets. Here’s a few that I was inspired by: