Interviews
E3 2005: Neopets Interview with Associate Producer Jeff Jirsa
“There are dozens of levels, secret dungeons, shops to buy stuff in, and over 300 NPCs to interact with.”
What in the world are Neopets? I keep hearing the buzz. I’m sure many of you have. They’re said to be hugely popular, but if that’s the case then why am I clueless?
Someone who knows exactly what Neopets are is Sony. They’ve got two Neopets games coming out: one for PS2 and one for PSP. Speaking with Jeff Jirsa, Associate Producer of the PS2 version, I found out that Neopets has a wide range of fans.
“40% of the users are between 8 and 13,” he says. “Another 40% are 14 to 18. Then you’ve got the remaining users that are 19 and up. Some of the users are 60 even. We tried to make [the game] appeal to anyone between the ages of 8 and 18.
“There are simple aspects that an 8 or a 9-year-old will have no trouble [with]. But an older, more experienced player will be able to very easily utilize their experience to make the game more exciting for them.”
As informative as that was, it didn’t tell me what Neopets are. It’s time to find out.
How did Neopets start? Up until now I hadn’t heard of it. Was it a show, a cartoon?
Jeff Jirsa: Neopets was a Web site that started in 1999. The Web site is [where] you create a virtual pet and then spend your time caring for it, making sure it’s happy. There are actually battles where you can go and fight other people’s Neopets. Then there’s a huge section in there with mini-games. It’s very addictive. You play the mini-games to get Neo Points, which you need to buy food, armor, and books and furniture and whatever else you might want to spend your time doing. It’s been going strong for six years now. The demographics and the number of people that go to the Web site is staggering. More people go to Neopets than go to Google. It’s one of those things that the number of people that do use it makes it surprising that other people have never heard of it. They’ve had one of the most successful clients with Happy Meals. They’ve had one of the most successful Happy Meals in history. They’ve got a lot planned, this is just a natural progression.
A few weeks ago they announced that they’re developing a Neopets movie. I don’t know if they announced a date but I’m guessing 2007.
They’ve got the Web site, and what we determined early on was that the pets on the Web site are actual pets. They’re bizarre pets, but they’re pets nonetheless. For this game we decided to give them all human proportions so they could run around, use swords, use armor and stuff like that. We thought it was much more exciting and easier to relate to the characters this way.
The story, the basic story is that the darkest fairy has been imprisoned under the ocean for a thousand years. She frees herself and is now bent on taking her revenge on the entire world. So you play Tor and Roberta. Tor starts out as a farmer who’s always dreamed of being a knight. Roberta is the niece of a king, and she’s being pushed into being a diplomat but she really wants to be a sorceress.
Once the game gets going you’ll be able to switch between the two characters on-the-fly. Tor is all about swords and armor. His combat is all about dishing it out a lot of damage and taking it. Roberta isn’t as strong physically but she has magic, so she has range attacks.
We took a lot of time to make sure that each character was very strong independently. Operate in similar manners but have things that are unique to them. So you could almost play through the entire game using just one character or the other. But there are times when it’s more advantageous to use one or the other depending on the situation.
There appears to be a lot of levels with platforms, a lot of climbing, jumping…
JJ: There isn’t as much combat as, say, something like Ratchet & Clank, which is mostly combat. That has to do with the Web site. One of the key features on the Web site is exploring. You can click around on the Web site and go to the different regions and gather things, so we wanted to carry things across. It’s also about the adventure of it. One of the things that a couple of people said was, “It made them feel like they were playing something like Zelda for the Super Nintendo, where you’ve got this big, open world with a lot of stuff to do and lots of combat but there’s stuff all over the place that you can do.
The worlds themselves, we’ve got about 60 different regions that you can go to. The majority of it is tied together in one seamless environment. Once you’ve made your way to a certain point in the game, you can actually start Tor’s farm where the game originates and spend about 20 minutes running to the other side of the world and never experience a load zone. That’s one of the things we’re proud about.
After that there are dozens of levels, secret dungeons, shops to buy stuff in, over 300 NPCs (non-playable characters) to interact with. We’ve got about 100 different enemies to fight, 12 unique bosses, close to an hour of pre-rendered FMVs. Overall gameplay is probably going to come in at around 60 hours. But that kind of goes back to what I was saying about the demographics. Your more advanced players who are more into the gameplay, they’re going to spend 60 hours playing the game. But your younger players and newer players, they can pretty much stick to the main path and get through the game in 30 or 40 hours and not really feel like they missed out on much. So it all kind of gets down to how advanced of a player you are and how much you want to get into.
What about the PSP version? Can you tell us how it differs from the one on PS2?
JJ: One of the things I ran past – and this is very integral to the Web site – one of the things on the Web site is a thing called petpets. So if I’m on the Web site I have a virtual pet. So I’m taking care of it and I’m feeding it. Well, a little while ago they introduced a thing called petpets where I can get a pet for my pet. As long as you keep feeding it [the petpet] it’ll follow you, and certain petpets give you bonuses like regeneration or attack bonuses, things like that.
As long as you keep feeding it, it’ll keep following you. As long as they keep following you, they’ll keep giving you this bonus.
The PSP version is interesting in that it kind of takes a world similar to this, where you’ve got the Neopets, who have been humanoid, but the petpets are still animals. In the PSP title the petpets are pulled into another world where they find themselves in a similar position as this. They’re intelligent, they can stand on their back legs, they can use things and go on their own little adventure.
How long have you been working on this?
JJ: It’s been in development in various stages for close to two years. The current version you see right now, we’ve really been pounding away at that for the last year.
What about the PSP version?
JJ: I’m not as familiar with that version, [but I do know that it] started principal development within the last year. That one’s coming together very quickly.
Is there a reason why you chose a different camera angle for the PSP version?
JJ: Some of that had to do with the technical limitations with the PSP. With the size of the screen it made it difficult to move the camera around like we did here. It’s such a small screen that if you move the camera down, it’ll get caught up on walls and things like that.
So they tried some things out, that kind of almost top-down thing, to give you the best viewing angle.
Any other questions?
[Looks at screen] That’s your armor, what about—
JJ: These are motes. They’re all things from the Web site. Again, almost everything in here, people who have been to the Web site will go, “Oh, a fire mote!” People who have never been to the Neopets We site before will go, “Oh, it’s a fire mote! That must be magic fire.” So it doesn’t really matter.
Basically what you can do is collect these things and then assign them to your equipment. If it’s on your weapon it’ll do more damage, if it’s on your armor it’ll protect you more. When these things are most useful is if I have a fire mote on my sword, and I run into a water creature, it’ll a lot more damage to that creature.
If I have the fire mote equipped and I get hit with a fire arrow, it’ll actually bounce back and hit the opponent.
There are 14 different motes and all of them have different effects on Tor and Roberta. Part of the fun is figuring out what your enemies are, what their alignment is (is one of them light aligned or dark aligned?) and then setting up your motes to best deal with that threat.
Awesome, thank you for your time Jeff.
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