Water Cooler Games - A paean to Dogz, at whose heels Nintendogs nips

A paean to Dogz, at whose heels Nintendogs nips
July 10, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Casual Games, Console & PC Games, Game Design

Author's note: Nintendo has created a community at Gather.com to facilitate discussion of their "Touch Generations" series of games. I have cross-posted this article there, and readers may want to view the other articles in that series.

Nintendogs, as many of you already know, is a pet puppy simulator. You the player adopt a pet (actually you purchase a pure-bred one), then train and tend to it. As some of you may also know, Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired to create Nintendogs after he got a pet puppy of his own. And as many of you also know, Nintendogs sits comfortably in the lap of Nintendo's "Touch Generations" strategy for the Nintendo DS, the company's attempt to appeal to broader player demographics.

What you may not know is that another puppy simulator beat Nintendogs to the punch by no less than a decade. In the mid-1990s, PF Magic created a series of virtual pets games for Windows computers called Dogz, Catz, and Babyz (collectively, Petz). Dogz was the first, released in 1995. The game--if it is even fair to call it that--sold quite well, with million copies running on the then-new Windows 95 operating system.

In Dogz, as in Nintendogs, the player adopted a puppy. As in Nintendogs, the player had to tend to the puppy through feeding, grooming and petting. Where Nintendogs uses the "innovative" touch screen interface to pet and interact with the dog, Dogz used the mouse for the same purpose. Unlike Nintendogs' strangely Japanese eternal puppy fetishism, one's Dogz dog actually grows from puppy to dog, and his progress is influenced by player attention. Ten years and several acquisitions later, Ubisoft released a version of Dogz for Gameboy Advance. Even though it is the direct decendent of the original PF Magic dog simulator, thanks to Nintendogs' successful marketing campaign Dogz for GBA appeared to be just a knockoff.

In later versions of Dogz (and first in 1996's Catz) the program made an important change in the way it ran. Catz and Dogz now lived on your Windows desktop rather than in a windowed playpen. They ran around seemingly outside the familiar prison walls of window frames, dashing to and fro to feed, retrieve balls, and interact with other custom-windowed objects. One could stow a dog in a sort of doghouse on the desktop or quit the program entirely. As much as Dogz did for rich interactive characters, it perhaps did as much to raise doubt in computer users' minds about how much of the power of their computers they really exploited. Advances in real time computer graphics like John Carmack's then-recent Castle Wolfenstein 3D and Doom 3D engines did the same, but Dogz seemed to trace the potential for computer software to bridge the chasm between productivity and entertainment.

My friend Andrew Stern was an integral part of the Petz development team. PF Magic was sold to Mindscape in the late 90s, and the products were quietly retired. Soon after, Andrew and my friend and colleague Michael Mateas began work on Façade, the first legitimate interactive drama. Michael's doctoral research centered around the expressive artificial intelligence and reactive planning language the two used to drive the two computer-controlled characters Grace and Trip. Andrew's experience creating Dogz, Catz, and Babyz provided instrumental experience for authoring Grace and Trip's convincing procedurally animated facial expressions and body movements. The techniques used on Dogz certainly influenced Andrew's approaches to these later believable characters. Alas, both go largely unsung.

Given Andrew's role in an arguably more sophisticated and certainly much earlier dog simulation, I must admit that I grimace a bit amidst the effusive praise heaped upon Nintendogs. Andrew is a modest and measured fellow, as you can see in his retrospective look at Dogz in the face of Nintendogs. In the face of the unsung ancestry of Nintendogs, I want to point out a few essential differences between the two titles, and their possible implications.

For one part, I think it's important to reconsider to Nintendo's decision not to age Nintendogs dogs. The reasons are clear, I think. For one, it's less work to simulate a puppy than to deal with the body and behavioral changes of a growing, then aging dog. For another, puppies are cuter. But this decision also turns the Nintendog into a perverse toy, and kind of infantilization of the growing, changing relationship one might actually have with a real pet. Certainly this design choice relates somewhat to the Japanese obsession with cuteness and youth, an obsession made clear in everything from toys to porn. And perhaps one might argue that a perennial puppy might be a more desirable pet than a full-grown dog. But in the absence of an aging and deepening character, Nintendogs dogs quickly feel plastic. After some time with my Nintendog, and not too much at that, I found myself feeling as though I were staring into the eyes of a resin doll or a tin robot. But worse, I imagined that a hypothetical "Nintendolls" actually might satisfy me more--the lack of convention for doll behavior invites imagined responses, a cornerstone of doll play.

For another part, consider the context for Nintendogs versus Dogz. As I already mentioned, Nintendogs is clearly a strategic title for the company. It's certainly a serious, legitimate title, and I don't mean to discount that fact. But Nintendogs is also intended to backdoor new players into a Nintendo DS. "I don't play games," a target buyer might think, "but I do like puppies." There is nothing wrong with this strategy; indeed we need innovative and unusual titles in the videogame business. But consider how Nintendo reinforces interaction with the dog. Nintendogs should be walked every day. One must pick up their droppings on walks. The player can teach the dog tricks through reinforcement and reward. Players must purchase food and toys and earn more money through shows and contests. As in many Nintendo titles, regular play activity is rewarded. Daily play is preferred. All activities cost money--from buying the puppy to providing it with food and water to acquiring toys to play with.

Conversely, Dogz attempted to make pet ownership a kind of sideline activity, something one might pick up as a playful release from spreadsheeting or word processing. The unwindowed pets shared the computer's workspace with the player. Petz could be stored away neatly, present yet backgrounded. This approach simulates an aspect of pet ownership that Nintendogs misses--the informal, casual companionship afforded by pets.

Perhaps we can locate Nintendogs' tendency toward the obsessive in the broader context of Miyamoto's games--games that frequently service obsessive search and collection (coins in Super Mario Bros., stars in Super Mario 64, treasure in Zelda: Wind Waker, etc.). And the need to perform--literally, to succeed in contests to produce income to continue to feed and shelter your puppy, or to upgrade its habitat, or to provide it with puppy friends--feels like a strange kind of violence against pet ownership. Nintendogs is a remarkably well-produced game. The use of touch controls is indeed satisfying and well-engineered. The dogs are indeed cute, and petting and playing with them does create real endearment. But playing it makes me wonder, is Nintendogs a simulation of the pets as companionship--or just of pets as yet another aspect of consumption.

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Comment from spencer on July 10, 2006

You forgot Oddballz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddballz

Comment from Patrick on July 11, 2006

Yeah Ian, way to stand up for historical perspective in the face of popular fadism.

The question of course is which sells better, the Pet simulator that belies companionship or the one that belies comsumption?

I'm impressed that Petz did a million, thats a mighty number in any decade, I think the original Nintendogs did roughly the same. The difference is that Nintendo's puppy model encourages content extensibility, so now we're seeing dalmation versions, and chihuahua version (well maybe not) and so on. So they can just keep milking the franchise until it dries up.

Like Greg Focker said in Meet The Parents "you can milk anything with nipples."

Comment from Graham on July 11, 2006

I think you sound a little too bitter, as if you're angry at Nintendo for ripping off Dogz or something. I doubt that's your actual intent, but that's how it sounds.

More than that though, is that your analysis of Nintendogs is misleading. You write about how it encourages persisitent, regular play, while Dogz was something 'on the sidelines'.

While it's true that Nintendogs encourages regular play, it's important to note that it's structured in such a way that you needn't play it for long. It's the kind of game you're expected to play for 15-30 minutes, and in that respect it /does/ mimic the casual, informal relationship one might have with their dog. It's the exact kind of relationship Dogz encourages, except with the added negative consequences of irresponsibility. It provides the depth to the experience that you claim it lacks due to the lack of aging.

And let's not pretend that only the Japanese are obsessed with cuteness and youth. Most people prefer puppies, and while I'd prefer that they aged and, yes, even died, I can't hold marketability against them.

Comment from Dylan on July 11, 2006

Nice analysis about how game mechanics facilitates behavior.

Sounds like Nintendogs plays on and reinforces the constant "need" to perform (ie production and consumption).

I've been playing Animal Crossing lately, and that game certainly does, no bones about it.

It'd be interesting to see cross-title interaction in these games.

Where money earned in one game could be transfered to another.

Comment from Barry on July 12, 2006

One of the last RFPs we responded to before our studio closed down was from Ubisoft, who apparently has the rights to develop games using the Petz license. They were looking for a sim-type game and we had a pretty awesome pitch, but they moved as slow as molasses. Standard "will sim-games sell on the console" bs. Ah well. Hopefully the Petz franchise will rise again.

Comment from andrew stern on July 12, 2006

I'd like to contribute a few historical tidbits, to add to Ian's write-up (thanks, Ian, btw):

First released in 1995, Petz were as far as we know the world's first virtual pets, before Tamagotchi debuted in 1996. (The only previous product in this domain was Little Computer People which wasn't directly interactive, nor a pet really.) Tamagotchi ended up really making "virtual pet" a household word, with something like 20M keychain pets sold; at the time we called Petz "computer pets".

Petz were also among the first pieces of interactive entertainment that were fully downloadable — I remember hacking together our first website, just as Internet Explorer was debuting in 1995 or so — and had downloadable objects, e.g. toyz, food, new breedz (particularly in the case of Oddballz). These objects came with their own code to integrate them with existing pre-built behaviors. A similar technique is what the Sims used in 2000 for its objects (Maxis developed that technique independently, I'm sure).

Further, Petz and Babyz were among the first to incorporate voice recognition (you can literally teach Babyz to associate arbitrary baby-talk syllables with objects), basic AI learning through positive and negative reinforcement, and genetics — yes, by Petz 3 they could breed, we had phenotypes and genotypes, you could inherit physical and behavioral traits, etc. (Of course Creatures was the big product of the day much heavier into a-life techniques specifically than Petz; another big product you almost never hear about these days.)

It may not be obvious, but the Petz are 3D characters, rendered in a cartoony style (much like the Facade characters), with a blend of procedural and hand-crafted animation. They are 3D characters originally running on Windows 3.1, x486 PC's -- machines running at 100MHz or so. And, the originally ENTIRE Dogz 1 product fit on only 2 floppy disks, 2.88MB! (I remember, I made the installer :-)

Petz 1-3 sold a total of at least 2 million copies (we stopped getting updates once PFMagic folded; we suspect it's closer to 3 million); witness this press release from 1998 before the third version of the system was even released, and this writeup from a few months later. At total of something like 20 breeds or more were developed, many of them with archetypal Warner-Bros-style personalities mapped on to them: grumpy bulldogs, finicky poodles and siamese cats, lazy persians, wild alley cats, scaredy cats, happy go-lucky mutts, etc. etc.

There is still quite a community of Petz players, hacking their own new breedz, etc.

I'd like to list some of the other key members of the PFMagic Petz team, for posterity's sake: Rob Fulop (who conceived the concept of a virtual pet), Adam Frank, Ben Resner, Alan Harrington, Jeremy Cantor, Jonathan Shambroom, Ted Barnett, Peter Kemmer, Brooke Boynton, John Scull and Laurie Sirois. Additional team members included Andre Burgoyne, Richard Lachman, Allison Hennessey, Joan Howard, Margaret Wallace, Chris Hunt, Gary Levenberg, Shelby Gaines, Les Hedger, Melanie Holst, Kristen Again, Andy Webster, Jared Sorenson, Rachel Olhava, Will Friedwald, Jesse Sugarman, John Rines and a dozen or more others I'm sure I'm forgetting. And some scarily good voice talent — our best actor was a freak of nature, really.

Petz 4 was pretty much a mod of Petz 3; Petz 5 was developed years later by a completely separate team, I haven't played it so I don't know what they added (or what they may have changed or broken from the original code base). The GBA version, also developed by a separate team, is probably completely rewritten, sharing none of the original code-base I presume, only borrowing the license and perhaps some of the design principles.

Comment from andrew stern on July 12, 2006

Further, here's a few design notes relevant to Ian's comments.

First of all, working on these products was a dream job, with a dream team. There were plenty of conflicts among team members (they brought in a corporate shrink at one point :-), but the quality and hard work that went into them was thrilling to be a part of and learn from. We really enjoyed ourselves, we knew we were making something fresh and forward-thinking.

Several of us on the design team strove for (and tended to push through) what I'd call relatively "pure" design principles. Interestingly, this may have at times hampered the overall appreciation of the product (yet with the side effect that this design purity I think afforded Babyz the ability to be exhibited at the Siggraph 2000 art gallery, and recognition as a cutting edge "Eliza's Daughter" in Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck).

For example, you had to play with your Petz over the course of several real-time weeks to see them grow up and experience the full range of their behavior; similarly, Babyz go from newborn to walking 1-year-old. There was no way to speed this up (ie, quitting and launching it over and over in the same day didn't age them, nor would changing your system clock do the trick). Not all players stuck with it, and therefore only saw a fraction of what the characters were capable of.

One thing we battled over when designing the Petz was how structured and goal-oriented the experience should be; we ended up making it relatively non-goal-oriented. It's a double-edged sword; Nintendogs' emphasis on structured activities, while less appealing to me personally and I think straightjacketing the player too much, may be more what consumers want.

In a non-pure move, to help sell more units, we left out poop and death, although your Petz would runaway if neglected or overly-abused.

We gradually moved Petz from the desktop environment to rich virtual environments like houses, yards, etc.

I think a few reasons contribute to Nintendogs' success: one, the ability to do photorealistic textures obviously gives more visual detail (the Petz cartooniness is endearing, but not as appealing to adults, I think); also, being able to carry your pets with you anywhere, Tamagotchi style, is a good thing. And, a massive marketing effort and debuting on a new platform didn't hurt.

I assume Nintedogs don't age because it's more development work.

Comment from James on July 13, 2006

You guys should share these coments with some of the people over at the games.gather.com group. I'd be interested to see how they respond to comments about ripping of Dogz. I bet a lot of people their might not even know the historical context of the game so it'd be great to have so more knowledgable gamers and developers in the group.

Comment from Peter Kemmer on July 14, 2006

Hey thanks Andrew! It's great to be remembered as part of a dream team. :)

The Petz projects were truly a great time in my life, and I'm frankly surprised it's taken another company so long to come out with something along these lines.

I too feel that the highly structured nature of Nintendogs takes a lot away from the emotional/play aspect of the game. Feed and water, play with one toy, go for a walk, shampoo your puppy... rinse and repeat. The sheer variability in the way that pets, toys, and environments could interact in the Petz products radically improved the 'replayability' (if you can call it that), for me in any case. I think this also helped a lot in giving the impression that you were dealing with a real animal, and not a cute little doll.

Do you remember the story of the little girl who ran inside to literally SAVE her petz to a floppy, in the path of a tornado bearing down on her home? How many people would do that for their Nintendog, vs. going out and getting another copy? THAT is the real difference between Petz and Nintendogs.

Strangely enough, I just got a real dog of my own on Monday, a cute little pug named Peaches. Timely, eh? :)

Comment from andrew stern on July 14, 2006

aw, Peaches, very cute.

I now have a cat and a baby, but had neither when working on Catz and Babyz... in hindsight, I think the products captured cat-ness and baby-ness pretty well.

By the way, what were the names of the two rats you kept in a cage under your desk for a year or so? (Peter was a strange part of that dream, but in a good way.)

Comment from andrew stern on July 14, 2006

Well you have to realize, that was in the dotcom-boom days. Post dotcom-crash we're all more cynical and apathetic.

Oh, I just remembered another important Petz team member, how could I forget: Jan Sleeper. And I'll put a mention in for Badger. And on Babyz, Neeraj, Mike, Darren Atherton and Bruce Sherrod. I'm sure I'm forgetting others.

Comment from caribbean on July 14, 2006

Finally, I got a Nintendogs!! Absolutely fantastic! I got Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne's first volume, and a new game! Nintendogs (Chihuahua & Friends ver.)!! Well I of course took a chihuahua a my dog. Surprisingly I took a dark & long haired (not short & white) female. I gave it the name Ramu (= Rum, tha name is written in katakana).

I had little trouble with Ramu, since she didn't reconise her own name. After I fixed that, began the teaching of tricks. She learned a total of 3 tricks (only one of them she remembers clearly). Tomorrow I'll train her more. Nintendogs surely is one of the best games on earth, at least to me, since I can't get a real dog (yet).

Comment from ERK on July 21, 2006

You guys are full of crap! I have Nintendogs and Dogz. I love both of them. And that whole thing about Nintendogs not being able to die, neither can Dogz. I think the games are equally good.
The reasons why Nintendogs is better are the puppies are cuter, the dogs can't perminately run away, the graphics are better, you can walk your dogs, you can enter your dogs in contests, you can see your friends' dogs, and you can somewhat communicate with your dogs.
The reasons why Dogz is better are the dogs age, the dogs can have puppies, you can own an unlimmited amount of dogs, and more than one person can own the dogs on the game, like me and my sister each owned and cared for our own dogs on one game.
To me it just sounds like you're trying to sell more of your Dogz games. There are other ways to do that than trash taiking a perfectly good game like Nintendogs.
P.S. If they're selling more games than you, MAYBE you should try some of ther sales strategies. Ever think of that?!
:(

Comment from Nintendogs forever on August 13, 2006

Nintendogs is the best game i've ever played! Its not meant to rip off dogz, but its newer, graphics are better, and the artifical inteligence is almost perfect!

Comment from Krmd on August 25, 2006

I think that was a very good conception of the games. I personnally own both and they are similar but not alike so, it's good.

Comment from Carolyn Horn on September 9, 2006

I'm delighted to read this -- and to see that you guys still have positive memories of the games you created.

I've been a fan of the games since that first wonderful day when Dogz was obtainable from the P.F.Magic site. One of the things which makes the Petz, Babyz and Oddballz stable of games so continually fascinating is the fact that almost everything can be edited or customised for the individual player. This isn't something that the creators would mention, since you didn't produce tools for editing the games until the petz 4 playscene editor, but it does contribute directly to the longevity and fascination of the games. Do I want a rat, horse or dragon for my game? No problem, I can make one!

Nowadays we have the amazing Nicholas' tools to use, but "hexing" was a thriving fan-base passion even before Nicholas turned up about a year ago. We had to use basic tools -- hex editors and notepad, for instance -- but the games, although complex in petbehaviour and interaction, have always had a delightful simplicity of construction which has made hexing fun.

The only thing which we have not been able to change for ourselves has been behaviours, which rather charmingly means that, for instance, horses flollop around like dogz. They can make horsey noises of course, and many of the actions can work well with clever editing.

The difference with the Nintendogs, as I understand it, is that this aspect of game-enjoyment is totally lacking. Consoles are not designed to make such personalisation of a game easy, so you are stuck with the kind of dogs provided -- or cats, when they produce a cat version.

The petz games remain pretty much the best series for virtual life pet fans. The Sims series and the Creatures series are also superb and moddable, but each has a completely different ethos.

Comment from andrew stern on September 26, 2006

Carolyn, thanks for all your hard work and enthusiasm in helping building a Petz modding community. It's true us original developers didn't do the work to make it "easy" for such modding, but you all figured out how to do it quite proficiently. Great job.

Comment from andrewstern on April 16, 2007

See newly posted videos of Petz and Babyz on our public YouTube page.
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=proceduralarts

Comment from andrewstern on March 6, 2008

For the record -- I just came across a great analysis from almost 3 years ago of Nintendogs, from Dan Cook at Lost Garden, with a bit of discussion comparing it to Petz. I generally agree with the analysis.

http://lostgarden.com/2005/06/nintendogs-case-of-non-game-that.html

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