Can You Really Build a Business on Internet Nostalgia? Neopets’ New CEO Certainly Thinks So

In July, a tiny ripple reverberated through the web, barely perceptible except to the type of extremely online millennial who can still hear a faint dial-up tone ringing through their formative memories. The news was niche, but carried untold emotional import: Neopets—the virtual pet browser game and touchstone of the 2000s internet—was back.

Technically, the site never left. After launching in 1999 by a pair of British developers and cultivating an audience of 25 million active users at its peak in the mid-2000s, Neopets became a cultural touchstone amongst kids growing up on Web 1.0 for its wholesome, elaborate universe (and the sophisticated economies that developed within and around the site). The site wasn’t without controversy: Parents fretted over the use of “immersive advertising,” and at one point, the site’s business practices were linked directly to Scientology, according to The Outline. You might argue that Neopets’ greatest legacy was helping to train young minds—and the next generation of online platforms—the addictive necessity of logging on in order to tend to relationships both real and otherwise. In 2005, after Viacom bought Neopets for $160 million, Wired reported that the site was the second-stickiest on the internet, “ahead of Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and eBay.”

Then its user base aged up and moved on, and the enterprise switched hands a few times. Up until this summer, Neopets was under the ownership of the Chinese company NetDragon Websoft, where it languished; while roughly 100,000 daily active users remained over recent years. The death knell seemed all but guaranteed once Adobe Flash Player discontinued in 2020, which rendered much of the Neopets site unusable. Then there was the ill-fated 2021 attempt to sell NFTs via the Neopets Metaverse, which drew ire from the remaining die-hards and nostalgic millennials alike.

Enter Dominic Law, a 36-year-old Harvard Business School grad and NetDragon employee who took an interest in the gaming brand that had been such a big part of his own childhoods spent in Toronto and Hong Kong. After coming on board as Neopets’ chief metaverse officer—and witnessing the post-NFT launch debacle (and enduring fan fervor) firsthand—Law led the team that negotiated a management buyout from NetDragon and put Neopets under the domain of the newly formed World of Neopia Inc. this past July.

Since then, Law has been spreading the word that the glory days of Neopets are nigh; at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, a company booth and party promised to deliver a full blast of “Neostalgia.” Whether the wayward millennials—and their progeny—are enticed to return to Neopia after what feels like 50 internet lifetimes later, is another story. Below, Law and I chat about the ill-fated NFTs move, as well as his aspirations for the next decades in Neopets gaming.

Our conversation has been edited and condensed.

Vanity Fair: You started playing Neopets when you were about 12. What was your favorite thing to do in Neopia?

Dominic Law: I used the Neoboards a lot, and the NeoMail. I first joined Neopets one summer when I went back to Toronto to visit, and my friends invited me to play. So for me, it was always more like a social media platform.

Why do you think the NFTs didn’t work out? You were the chief metaverse officer around that era, right?

When we decided to launch the NFT collection, I was not yet involved with the IP—it was a third-party solution provider that pitched us. I’m sure you probably read about the backlash and all the hiccups that we went through. After the initial NFT launch, I was tasked with cleaning it up and putting it back onto the right track. We definitely started off on the wrong side with the community, with us pushing too much of these NFTs and having a pretty bad execution.

But also, ever since Netdragon acquired Neopets—and even before that, I think for the past decade—it’s been a very badly managed brand. It’s been decaying. We hadn’t been fixing a lot of things that should be fixed. The minigames, the plots, and a lot of the experience went dead overnight when Flash discontinued in December 2020; they’d announced it a few years ago and we never really planned ahead for that. So that’s a big part of how the community felt like they were betrayed.