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nutrinopets
Nutrinopets is a virtual pet site where players can feed, care for, and battle a virtual pet. Users can chat on the message boards, buy virtual goodies and train their pet and make it stronger.
Criticism of similar games
The idea of the game is similar to Neopets. Games like Neopets have received criticism for their targeting of children for advertizing. Critics have claimed that children may be more suceptible to advertizing than adults are and that the games may be designed to expose children to advertizing from sponsors. For example, in neopets, advertizers may pay to have the name of their brand on games or prizes, such as the hershey trophy, pressuring children to be exposed to the brand labelling if they want to progress in the game. Hand-in-hand with this strategy would be a deliberate design for the games to be "addictive", so that children continue to be exposed to advertizing and continue to play, bringing in revenue for the game company.
On a more general level, computer games have been criticized for contributing to the obesity epidemic by presenting children with a more attractive passtime than exercize. Other general criticism of online video games is that they may provide people with an artificial sense of community while actually preventing them from interacting with others by encouraging them to stay at home inside.
The site has been in a revamping state for almost a year in preparation for what owner and manager 'Kady' calls 'V2'. While there have been promises of completion for the 'V2' project, very little progress has been made since it's initial introduction to only part of the public in August of 2007. It was first introduced to what is called 'Special Accounts'. Special Accounts are what users may pay to have special privileges and advantages, such as the Special Account Forum. While the project was introduced in the Special Account Forum, owners 'Kady' and 'Ticondrius' had threatened to delete any account that shared information about the V2 project. Of course, normal users found out about the project and confusion ensued.
Several weeks after the introduction of 'V2', Nutrinopets had changed their format, it's Normal Account population greatly declined, mainly because only Special Accounts were informed of the changes, and that the new format was outlandish compared to it's older format.
There have been complaints of staff showing favor over other members while moderating the forums, which is often proven correct. While Nutrinopets is directed mainly to children, there are adults as well.
While one of their rules is "No Profanity" adult members and even staff use an assortment of obscenities on the forums.
