Virtual pet
From Caelwiki
A digital pet, also known as a virtual pet, is a type of artificial human companion. They are usually kept for companionship or enjoyment. People may play with a digital pet in lieu of a real pet.
These are distinct from robot pets and other entertainment robots in that they have no concrete physical form other than the hardware they run on. Interaction with virtual pets may be goal oriented. If it is, then the user must keep the virtual animal alive as long as possible and often help it to grow into higher forms. In order to keep the pet alive and growing the owner needs to feed, groom and play with the pet. If the interaction is not goal oriented, the user can explore the character of the pet and enjoy the feeling of building a relationship with it. Often these games use realistic visual effects or interaction to make the pet appear alive and give a sense of reality to users.
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Genuses of digital pets
Gadget Based
Sonic Adventure 2 for the Sega Dreamcast had virtual pets which could be either used in game or transferred to the Visual Memory Unit, which enabled a transformation from game based to gadget based.
Example gadget based digital pet: Some virtual pets, like the Tamagotchi, are sold self-contained on a simple, hand-sized computer. In the case of the Tamagotchi, a small screen has an image of the pet, while buttons on the case let the user perform different tasks, such as feeding the pet, playing with it, washing it, and so on. Dissatisfied pets can emit beeps.
Webpage Based
Virtual pet websites, such as Neopets and Zetapets , have been created. These sites are free to play and accessible to all who sign up. They can be accessed through a web browser and often include a virtual community, such as the planet Neopia in Neopets and the world of Marada in Marapets. In these cities, you can play games to earn virtual money; which is usually spent on items and food for your pets or for rare items. Marapets has several currencies, and money is earned from battling, restocking and playing games.
Some sites adopt out pets to put on your webpage and use for roleplaying in chatrooms. One example is The Silver Unicorn. They often require the adoptee to have a page ready for their pet. Sometimes they have a setup for breeding your pets and then adopting them out.
Other sites that adopt out pets to put on a webpage are centered around writing for and breeding said pets to create newer, often 'showier' creatures. An example can be found at The Nexus, a forum that centers around breeding dragons. Members are often encouraged to create their own species of draconic creatures, to adopt from other members, and to breed the various species together. Unlike with some adoption agencies for webpage based cyberpets, where the owner of the species is the only one that can breed said species, the Nexus encourages all of its members to share and interbreed their species together, and the resulting offspring are usually adopted out to story-based or stats page-based web-pages.
Game or Application Based
Other virtual pets are in software sold to be run on PCs or video game consoles. As the computing power is most powerful compared with Webpage based or Gadget based digital pet. These kind of digital pet are usually able to archive a higher level of visual effects and interactivity. Examples like Nintendogs render a realistic figures of dog.
Example game or application based digital pets: the creatures in Black and White, Dogz, Nintendogs, Petz
History
Digital pets created a massive fad in Japan, where they originated, and to a lesser extent in the United States during the late 1990s. There have been significant improvements of digital pets after Tamagotchi's success. From dot-images (such as Tamagotchi) to rendered and animated 3D games (such as Nintendogs). Today, there are "Digital Pets" which have physical bodies, known as Ludobots or Entertainment robots.
The idea of an actual animal composed of technology rather than flesh also inspired a number of anime, such as Digimon (itself a contraction of "Digital Monster").
Common features of digital pets
There are many common features between different digital pets, some of them are used to give a sense of reality to the user (Such as pet's responds to "touch"), and some of them are just for enhancing the playability (Such as Training).
Communicating with digital pets
With advanced video-gaming technology, most of the digital pets do not show a message box or icon to display the pet's internal variable, health state or emotion like earlier generations (Such as Tamagotchi). In contrast, users can only understand the pet by interpreting their actions, body language, facial expressions, etc. This is very important to help keep a natural pet's behavior from breaking the feeling of a relationship between user and digital pet.
Sense of reality
To give a sense of reality to users, most digital pets have certain level of autonomy and unpredictability. The user can interact with the pet and this process of personalizing can make the pet a unique being and cause the user to believe that it is different from others. Personalizing increase the responsibility of the pet to the user. For example if a Tamagotchi left alone long enough it will 'die.'
Interactivity
To increase user's personal attachment to the pet, the pet would interact with the user. Interactivity can be classified into two categories: Short-term and long-term.
Short-term interactivity includes direct interaction or action to reaction from the pet. Example like "touching" a pet with mouse cursor and the pet will give a direct responds to the "touching".
Long-term interactivity includes action that affect pet's growth, behavior or life span. Example like training on the pet may have good effect on pet's health. Long-term interactivity is quite important for a sense of reality as the user would think that he have do something that influences the pet.
Two kind of interactivity are always combined. Such as playing with a pet (short-term interactivity) may make the pet more optimistic (long-term interactivity).
Example of common features
- Responds to calling.
- Responds to touching.
- Training the pet.
- Supplies or toys for the pet.
- Dressing up the pet.
- Competition or trial amongst pets.
- Meeting other pets.
Ethical Concerns
As digital pets' behavior becomes more realistic, they simulate different kinds of emotion and self-awareness. There is concern that they may progress to the point where they require the same humane treatment as animals.
While users can do whatever they want on their digital pets nowadays, this might encourage children to form bad habits. It is arguable that a relationship with digital pet cannot compare with one with an animal. Because a real relationship; for example, a boy and his new puppy might teach him that he shouldn't always follow his desires and how to interact with others; while one with a Tamagotchi would lack that lesson and real interaction.
Specific Pets and Pet Sites
- AquaZone
- Creatures
- El-Fish
- GoPets
- Grophland
- Insaniquarium
- Jinopets
- Marapets
- Neopets
- Nintendogs
- Oddballz
- Petz
- Powerpets
- Sorpiland
- Subeta
