Pets are pretty great. As a kid I was surrounded by dogs and cats and despite the general chaos of the house and the animal hair everywhere it was awesome. Tamagotchi’s were pretty big at this time as well, and I remember having one and really enjoying it. I had an old clamshell DS and I remember whatever magazines I read at the time raving about how great this Nintendogs thing was, so I figured I’d grab a copy. I love dogs, I love Nintendo, I really liked my Tamagotchi. I’m going to love Nintendogs.
I hated Nintendogs. It wasn’t until recently when I started thinking about how much I love the idea of pet games but actually enjoy so few of them that I realised why I didn’t like Nintendogs. It wasn’t that it was boring, repetitive and not very much like owning a dog at all. It was that there was no consequence to your actions. Tamagotchi’s were infamously easy to kill. Don’t feed it enough or pay it enough attention or let it become ill and you will soon find yourself with an ex-Tamagotchi. If you stopped feeding your dog in Nintendogs there was no consequence, nothing you did could have any negative outcome. This made a Nintendog not a pet but a toy.
Now obviously a dog dying is horrible and I don’t think I’d play a game that let that happen (seriously, this is why I never played any of the original Tomb Raider games), so I think it’s important that a virtual pet not be a representation of a real pet. It’s OK to let a Tamagotchi die because it’s not a dog, cat, ferret or tarantula. If it was any of those things then it wouldn’t be OK, even if it was still virtual. But a pet without risk and consequence isn’t a pet. Without that element there isn’t an incentive to keep looking after your virtual dependent.
Let’s see, if I was making a pet game I think I’d make it a fish with a human face voiced by Leonard Nimoy. No, nobody would publish a game like that, that would be silly. Better to be some abstract digital representation with a cutesy voice, like a Digimon but with less Pokémon impersonation. Then, a challenging but not-too-difficult care system that meant you had to remember to look after your pet, perhaps with rewards that incentivise continued play like gear unlocks or an evolving emergent personality for your pet. After that all you need is a hard failstate for if you fail to look after your pet, forcing you to start again with a new pet with a new personality. I realise at this point that what I’m pitching is a hardcore roguelike pet game, but come on. That would be awesome.
Yeah, I should totally make a pet game. Even if it probably would be a lot like a Tamagotchi.
