Interview: Neopets CEO Dominic Law

Neopets hold a special place in the hearts of millions of millennials around the world. We talked with Neopets' new CEO, Dominic Law, to discuss the exciting revival of the beloved virtual pet website. 

Candace: I'm very excited to talk to you. I was a huge Neopets fan as a kid, and first off, I have to ask, I haven't logged in awhile. Do you think my Neopets will be mad at me? 

Dominic: They'll definitely be hungry. Yeah. And the classic fate is that their Neopets is dying, but they never do, so feel free to come back and feed them and have fun with them.

Candace: What is the new era of Neopets? 

Dominic: Yeah, I think the big part is really bringing a lot of new ideas and also reviving the Neopets IP as a whole and bringing it back to not just for our existing user base. A lot of our users have been playing for more than ten years, 15 years, and also attracting our lapse users to come back.

Users like yourself who probably previously played for a couple of years have fond childhood memories and also have quite a decent emotional attachment with your pets and asking these people, like a big part of it, but also what we ultimately want to achieve is to really extend this IP to become a multi-generation IP and hopefully, we can be sustainable and live on for like many more years to come.

Candace: Your target demographic isn't just the millennials who played this as kids; you're trying to reach everyone.

Dominic: I would say the near term core focus would definitely be the millennials who played Neopets in the past, and that would be where the brand awareness is the highest and a lot of our players would be excited to come back and see what we have in install for them.

But eventually. If this whole revival is successful, then we do see that Neopets could be an interesting IP to attract new gamers and new followers and also new users to interact with the IP as a whole, either as a gamer to play our new game experiences to enjoy the classic original neopets. com as to, to get a taste of the early internet culture or even just.

Being attracted by the cuteness and how like some of our neopets are so adorable and just as an IP as a whole. Just like the great IPs out there, like for example like Mickey Mouse or like Hello Kitty. Most people never really interacted with anything else than merchandise but they can be very successful IPs.

So that's definitely the route that we'd love to shoot for in the future. 

Candace: Did you play Neopets as a kid?

Dominic: Yes, I did. Neopets were a big part of my childhood, especially when I was using it to reconnect with my old friends in Canada. So I moved back to Hong Kong when I was in primary school, and then I lost contact with a lot of my childhood friends back then.

Since we only had a landline number and international calls were expensive, we lost contact for probably a couple of years. And one summer when I went back to visit my childhood friend got like... introduced me to Neopets and that's when I got in and realized that oh, a lot of my friends in Canada are actually playing and used this game to reconnect.

Candace: Neopets came out in the dial-up era, there wasn't a lot of competition. How do you stand out now when there's so much to play?

Dominic: I think that's an interesting question. So there's a few things that differentiate us from a lot of the other games out there. So our core user base the millennials that play Neopets when they're a kid, having that brand awareness and fond childhood memory helps us to regain that Trust or attract a lot of our lapsed users to come back.

So ever since July, we've done a couple of upgrades in terms of our website game, bringing back a lot of the mini games that were previously broken links and also improving the user journey and tried to get users to understand that, oh Neopets actually never left. We're still around and we are seeing a quick rebound of lapsed user traffic.

And our current kind of like MAU (Monthly Active Users) and like user engagement level is already at our five year peak probably shortly after this whole announcement. And we're seeing that like in July, August, and in September, that level has been quite sustainable and we're seeing growth like on a month on month basis.

So I think attracting these lab users to come back is not really about competing with other games experience that they have, but it's really to bring back that nostalgic factor. And really giving them a chance to re-engage with their childhood memories and also own a piece of their childhood memory.

So that's definitely one of the main selling points, the nostalgia. And secondly, I think because of the... Lack of change in the past decade for Neopets. I would say the silver lining is that we've been able to preserve the early-day kind of internet culture in its purest form. Back then there was less competition, but we've been able to achieve like a global phenomenon.

And like the early Wild West days of the Internet ages and actually being able to keep that culture. And being one of the main games we're able to achieve a global expansion plan and have global communities. And a lot of our committee members probably played Neopets for more than ten, 20 years, and even for our laps users to come back, or even new users to experience that is actually something that's very unique.

There's probably only a handful of games that have been able to do that with one game that lived on for more than 20 years and UPS being one of them is definitely one of the main differentiating factors for us. 

Candace: What do you think makes Neopets so special? Why do you think people come back to it? 

Dominic: From what I've gathered it's been a very magical place for kids when they first played Neopets.

And there's a place for them to explore A completely unknown world, which is like the world of the internet back then. So a lot of the younger generations played Neopets when they were a kid, and it's like the first experience to enter this whole new era back then, like 20 years ago. And because of that the change, the impact in their lives has been quite generation-defining, for example, we've inspired a generation of coders, a generation of artists, a generation of kind of like gamers and also people who end up getting into the gaming industry because of Neopets. Because we have that defining factor, and we are probably shaped. Like being part 1 of the like key foundation to shape the Internet culture.

I think that's 1 of the main reasons why people, even after so many years, they're excited to come back and just to interacting with a piece of their childhood and. Because of the uniqueness of Neopets, that's also one of the major selling point, I believe.