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Mushroom_king
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What was really special about Neopets was that it was a place where kids of any gender could be themselves, and they had a safe place to be creative and social that doesn't exist any more.
I really don't mean this to sound "um, ackshually, it's for BOYs too-"
Rather, that its genderlessness-
Having re-read the article, I don't mean to sound argumentative or accusatory, but it reads more like a list of the writer's stereotypes and assumptions about what girls and boys like than anything Neopets did on purpose: Neopets is about as much of a "girl game" as Pokemon or Lego.
Temma slashes dummies
And us: www.youtube.com/live/_TahpWR...
I'm not trying to say any of this because I think Neopets being a girl game is bad, but rather that I believe it's reductive. It's more important that a game recognised it had a huge userbase of girls and women and chose to celebrate and encourage them without feeling any need to change itself
-was incredibly incredibly important in a sea of games and toys and websites "for boys" and "for girls", that there was such an incredibly popular and culturally relevant website that recognised, celebrated, and encouraged its girl players without compromise or enforcing a user binary.
Again I really appreciate respect being paid to a game that doesn't get the recognition it deserves for its impact and cultural relevance, but I think pigeon-holing it into a "girl game" actually does a disservice to the girls and women who played it and the good it actually did for them.
but as someone who grew up with it, Neopets wasn't a "girl game" the way the Barbie or Polly Pocket sites were. It was much, much more important that it was a space where girls were equally encouraged, supported, and celebrated without being exclusively and stereotypically marketed to
-it didn't necessarily pander only to girls: it just didn't punish/exclude girls, or pivot once they found out girls were interested.
I was a huge Neopets player when I was a kid and I knew just as many boys who played, and there was just as many campaigns focusing on stereotypical "tough" aspects-
Genuinely I'm very grateful to see this preserved, and I don't think the accompanying article is entirely wrong, but I think it does miss part of the value of Neopets and its impact on the gaming landscape by focusing only on its appeal to girls; more pertinently, it was a creative space for kids.
It's true that Neopets's popularity with girls is probably a big reason why it's overlooked today by modern "gamers", but describing it only as a "girl game" ends up just kind of reinforcing a dichotomy between "girl games" and "real games" when I think Neopets was unique in how-
