February 7, 2020 • 46 mins
What is a digital pet? What was the first digital pet? Why did the digital pet craze fizzle out so quickly in the United States? Learn more about the rise and fall of digital pets in the U.S. with Jonathan and Lauren.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to text Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
iHeart Radio and I love all things tech and it
is time for a classic episode of tech Stuff. That
means it's Friday. Happy Friday, everybody. The episode we're about
(00:27):
to listen to originally published on March eleventh, two thousand thirteen,
and it's titled tech Stuff Cleans Up after Digital Pets.
So let's sit back and listen to this classic episode. Today,
we wanted to talk about digital pets. This actually comes
to us courtesy of a listener suggestion. Uh, and digital pets,
(00:50):
virtual pets, This is an idea that that really kind
of got. It's it's heyday in the nineties, especially in
the United States. But what we want to talk a
little bit about the rise of digital pets and then
the fall of digital pets, and and sort of some
other surrounding topics that that tie into what all of
this digital pet malarchy means. Yeah, exactly, and Uh, Before
(01:14):
we get into specifics, I want to talk a little
bit about some general features that you would expect in
a virtual pet. Now, first of all, it's it's virtual.
It's non actual living thing, right right, and sometimes called
digital pets rather than virtual pets because you know, they
don't necessarily have to be. I mean, there are web
applications that where digital pets live, but some of them
are physical three dimensional objects. Yeah, yea. And so we
(01:37):
kind of we've been very very loose with our definition
in the sense that we feel there are some toys
and uh products out there that have influenced the process
of virtual pets, uh and the evolution of virtual pets.
So some of the stuff we're gonna talk about today
they aren't really a virtual pet in the strictest definition,
(01:58):
but it's important as far as the development goes. In general,
a virtual pet tends to have certain features that uh
that let it seem kind of similar to an actual
real life pet. For instance, it usually will respond to
you calling for it. Uh. There's some sort of command
that you use to call it, whether it's vocal or
(02:20):
it's a button you press on a on a game
controller or on a on a little physical device that
brings it to you. You have to care for it.
You have to feed it and clean up after it.
If it falls sick, you have to you have to
take care of it, right. Usually you can train it
to do various things. It maybe to perform a trick,
or it might be to eviscerate someone else's virtual pet
(02:42):
in the case of certain games that will cover Also,
there's usually some form of way to reward the pet,
either with treats or toys. Sometimes the element that allows
you to give treats or toys is an extra element
within the whole virtual pet where that you pay real
(03:04):
money to get access to virtual treats, right right, Yeah,
you know a lot lots of these virtual pets are
one time purchase kind of thing. You either buy the
hardware or you pay for a subscription for a life subscription,
and you get that thing for you know, as long
as you care to play with it, and others are
ye monthly subscription, or you have to continue buying into
(03:26):
various little accessories and other products in order to continue. Yeah, yeah,
you're you're really building out the pets life. It's very
similar to the way a lot of games are are
running now, where you have an in game purchase to
to give your character either a different look or sometimes
an actual advantage and gameplay. Uh, many of those ideas
(03:46):
really got their start in the virtual pet world. Um. Also,
they usually have some sort of a feature there that
allows you to have your pet meet other pets. Right, yeah, yeah,
that that's a relatively i guess, relatively recent as of
you know, Save two thousand and five. But yeah, but right,
the earliest development exactly, the earliest ones didn't necessarily have
(04:09):
that that feature in them. You couldn't get a a
some pets to meet other pets until we started to
build in that that capability, either in the hardware or
in the software. But it usually meant that you could
have your pet make friends with another person's virtual pet.
Sometimes you could have your virtual pets breed, and then
you would get little tiny versions of your virtual pet
(04:32):
that would have features of both the mommy and the
daddy virtual pet. Jon Strickland explaining how the birds and
the bees virtual birds and the virtual beads bees work. Look,
when a virtual dog and another virtual dog virtually love
one another, it's very special. They trade some code and
then you get virtual puppy. Yeah. Anyway, these are all
(04:56):
basic features that you would find in virtual pets, so
that that's sort of the overall kind of definition. But
to really understand the development, we have to go back
a ways. And and Lauren, you have an interesting place
you wanted to start. Yeah, I want to talk about
pet rocks. I think that that would be a very
early I mean clearly analog not digital versions virtual pet
(05:20):
Those debuted in nineteen seventy five at pop which is
approximately sixteen dollars in the current economy, which is actually
what is say, for example, time go chi cost. So
I thought that was pretty interesting, but so essentially sixteen
dollars in our current currency to buy a rock, to
buy irack. Yeah, and this this was created by Gary Doll,
who was a California ad executive, and brilliant sold more
(05:45):
than five million of these critters in less than six months.
It's like a rock with googly eyes. So, so, Lauren
n you remember those days, right? Oh? Yeah, that was
seven years before I was born, Okay, so I was
around nineteen seventy five was also the year a little
movie called Jaws came out, a fantastic documentary. It's also
(06:08):
when a certain tech stuff podcaster arrived on the scene.
That would be me not not not me, So I
don't really remember I just know I was there anyway. Yeah,
pet rocks. So so there we go. There's there's a
a non living pet, and it was mostly a gag
gift kind of thing, but it lays the groundwork for
(06:30):
this idea of a pet that's not really alive. Yeah.
I also wanted to point out actually that in a
V seven that was when CA nine debut on dr Who,
which I think is also probably an important reference in
the entire I mean, especially if you've seen an eyebo,
I think that they're pretty obviously inspired by the canine
bucket of bolts. So so yeah, so the idea about
(06:53):
this kind of of course in science fiction, stuff like
this has been talked about for you know, since the
days of Asthmov's uh robot and I seen the body
electric stuff like that. Yeah, and do Android stream of
electric sheet. So yeah, these are again the building blocks
(07:14):
that will lead to virtual pets. A company called Worlds
of Wonder introduced a toy that was, depending upon how
you played with it, very entertaining or terrifying. That would
be Teddy Ruxman. I firmly found them terrifying as a child,
sexually Teddy Teddy Rouxman it was an interesting idea. It
(07:35):
was a toy that would read, quote unquote read stories
to children. The stories would be on a cassette tape.
Some of you may not know what a cassette tape is.
I remember them, but a cassette tape, all right, So
it's it's magnetic tape. And usually, like on a regular
audio cassette tape, you have two tracks on either side
(07:56):
of this this tape, and it's usually used for stereo,
one tracks for the left speaker and once for the right.
Now with Teddy Ruxpan instead, one track was audio and
the other track was a series of directions for the
Teddy Bear. Well, it's really just the mouth. The limbs
didn't really move, but the mouth would move in time
(08:19):
with whatever was playing, So that way it would follow
the directions and seemingly talk to you and read out
the story. This meant that if you wanted to do
something a little wacky, like I don't know, put your
Black Sabbath cassette tape in Teddy ruxpen, he would not
suddenly start rocking out because the mouth there was no
(08:41):
directions for the mouth to follow. Okay, so so the
mouth wouldn't move. He would still play. Oh no, you
could play you play Black Sabbath through a teddy Ruxpan.
There's nothing stopping you. You essentially have a teddy Ruxpan
shaped boom box. But but it wouldn't like start screaming out. Okay,
well that's I guess that's I mean, I'm you know,
Ward knows I tried um. But yeah, yeah, that was
(09:04):
again teddy Ruxman not a virtual pet, necessarily, not in
the same sense that we're talking about, but again lays
the groundwork this idea of a a a synthetic creature
providing some form of companionship, and it appears to be autonomous,
right right, and again very loose illusion. In this case.
You you pick up pretty quickly that it's following a
(09:25):
very specific uh script which was based upon whatever was
on that cassette. Um Worlds of Wonder, by the way,
ended up going bankrupt. I think in nine the the
ownership of teddy Ruxman has passed through several hands, including Hasbro.
So it was one of those toys that kept on
going even after the company that launched it went away.
(09:46):
Now the next year, in six we get our first
actual virtual pet, and this was for a computer platform
called the Macintosh. So yeah, two years after the mac
Nintosh launches, Remember they had that amazing nineteen eight four
commercial that was in the Super Bowl. That really amazing,
(10:07):
one of the best commercials ever made. In my opinion.
I never owned a Macintosh, but I love the commercial anyway.
The the Macintosh program Puppy Love debuts in nineteen eighties.
Six is Tom Snyder Productions release, and Puppy Love was
essentially a little a little animated puppy dog that you
could play with on your Macintosh. Very limited uh features
(10:29):
on that, but again was one of the first examples
of a virtual pet. Now we go ahead of year
to nineteen eight seven and the Nintendo Entertainment System gets
a release of a Japanese role playing game, and I'm
going to butcher the pronunciation. I apologize to Lauren, who
actually knows how to pronounce Japanese words. But Macgami Tense
(10:53):
was the RPG, and it included a game play element
where you could capture demons and then you could train
those demons to fight for you so that you could
use the ones that you've captured to help protect you
in other battles. This is a gameplay element that we
would end up seeing used in other types of virtual
(11:14):
pets in the future, and lots of other games as well.
I wouldn't necessarily count something like Pokemon is a virtual
pet application, but but it definitely has that game element. Yeah.
I include Pokemon mostly because, again it has some elements
of a virtual pet. Although if you're mostly looking to
try and maximize your your your group of of Pokemon
(11:36):
so that you can have the best chance of winning
any particular battle, that's not a great message for a
person who wants to own a real pet. Yeah, like
vic message that's no, that's that, it's not that is
not what the SPC I think would would want to write.
But then again, virtual pets let us do these sort
(11:56):
of things. I mean, these are all cartoony, like the
Pokemon or the cartoony creatures that don't necessarily have a
a counterpart in real life. Some of them are obviously
modeled after real animals, but others, if it's modeled after
a real animal, I have not seen it. Yeah, I
don't think I want to see some of the real
animals that those things are modeled on. Right. Well, then
(12:19):
in two we had the game Dragon Quest five Hand
of the Heavenly Bride, and that also allowed players to
capture monsters and use them to fight in their battles.
So again that same sort of gameplay element, it's starting
to starting to become pretty popular. It was an interesting idea, um,
but it's still not really a virtual pet in the
(12:40):
sense that we think of, where it's just really the
whole purpose is to take care of an artificial creature. Uh.
But in a company called p F Magic hits the
scene and releases a program called Dogs that's d O
g Z. They would year later release Cats see a
(13:02):
t Z and then eventually release Pets p E t
Z and uh. And this was really where the virtual
pet idea started to blossom, where we started to see
some of those elements we talked about the top of
the show, the things that really make a virtual pet,
what it is, what kind of platform with Windows Originally
(13:23):
it was originally a Windows based thing. So if you
for those of you who remember Windows back in there,
there were people who would have like this little dog
would wander onto your screen and start to play with
your cursor and things like that. It was very cute
and um, but this was an actual full program where
you would be able to adopt a puppy or later
(13:46):
on a kitten, and after a few days of real time,
so you know, you check on your little puppy eer
kitten each day. After a few days, maybe three or
four days, the puppy your kitten would grow into a
fully four adult version of whatever animal it was, and
you would continue taking care of it, so you would
(14:06):
play with it, you could train it, and you could
even breed your animal with other animals. Starting with I
think it was Pets three, because you know, they released
updates as they as they built out the game locally
on your own computer asum or was this over email email?
You could email a copy of your pet to someone
(14:28):
else and you would still keep yours. This is like
you suddenly cloned your pet. But you could email a
copy of your pet to someone else and then they
could say, oh, this dog, he's very cute, FIEFI is
gonna love him, and see if Fife and the other
dog would, you know, have a little puppy love going on,
and then you end up with a litter of virtual puppies. Yeah,
(14:51):
like like you do. That's like like it happens. Um Yeah,
So originally these were all designed on hand drawn uh
kind of designs like like that's the line drawing style. Uh.
So they weren't photo realistic or anything like that, but cartoony.
But it meant that if you wanted to, you could
(15:11):
actually really tweak the look of your pet, because it
wasn't outside the realm of most people's abilities to go
and draw in a new shape for their pets body
or a different coloration. But eventually, as that as time
went on, and we'll get back into the timeline in
a minute, but by two thousand and six, uh, the
(15:33):
the company had abandoned the line drawing approach and went
for a more quote unquote realistic look where you could
end up changing textures, but you couldn't remodel your pet.
It was going to always be the same basic shape,
but you could tweak it a little bit, just not
as much as you could in earlier versions of the program.
(15:55):
But this is where we see the idea of the
virtual pet really take off, and it ended up being
fairly popular, a few million copies sold, so not not
like a crazy success, but it showed that there was
a market there that people were interested in getting a
virtual companion kind of a weird idea at the time.
(16:18):
Some would say a weird idea today that it's not
necessarily something that has has gained widespread acceptance. I don't know,
but there's yeah, there's there's, As we will talk about later,
there are certainly enough different models of this kind of
thing out there that there's you know, and and they've
they've done medical research about stuff. You know, people who
are perhaps lonely and don't have so much access to
(16:39):
as much human interaction as they as they need. There
are lots of robots meant for keeping people companion. Yeah.
In fact, we'll talk a little bit about them. I
have some information about one of those robots, but we'll
we'll save that for towards the end of the discussion
because that that really it ends up building on a
lot of these concepts we're talking about early on, and
we're about to tackle the biggest name I think as
(17:03):
far as virtual pets go. It's the name I always
think of whenever I think of virtual or digital pets.
But before we get into that, let's take a quick
moment to thank our sponsor. Okay, now, Lauren, when I
say digital pet, is there a particular brand name that
(17:26):
leaps to mind. Tom there you go, Tomagchi launched by
Bandai in Japan. That is correct, and from what I understand,
tomagochi is the correct spelling. I always heard it as
tom gachi when I was a kid, but I think
that that's probably just because we had no idea what
we were talking about. It's an Americanized pronunciation. Sure, sure,
(17:47):
the word does come from from a much McAll partmanteau. Okay,
of the words tomago, which means egg in Japanese and
the English were I'm familiar with it from sushi. From sushi, yes, well,
and in sushi it's usually meant to um, meant as
a shortened form of tamaga yucky, which is that sweet
(18:07):
egg omelet. But look at the brain on Lauren. Wow,
she did not know I was going to say sushi either.
All right, Okay, so tamago what's the other one? And
the English word watch, which when you kind of translate
into the Japanese foreign loan word alphabet katakana, it sounds
a lot more like oachi. Alright, So it's egg watch,
(18:30):
which I would immediately assume would be an egg timer,
not a digital pet, not at all. But it is
a digital pet. But but they but they were egg
shaped and they did the origin of these little creatures
would be would look like a little egg, right, So,
so so you would go out and you would buy
this essentially look like a key chain that had an
egg shaped plastic case there with a little screen on it. Yeah,
(18:54):
and that would allow you to hatch your virtual your
digital pet it. So you have a little egg on
there that you would have to uh, you know, press
a button which essentially started a timer that would let
the the Toma gauchi. No, hey, there's a player. It's
time to start creating a pet for this person to
(19:16):
interact with. And then um, you would end up using
I think it was like three buttons. Yeah, it's a
little three button interaction. So you would use those three
buttons to do various commands depending upon what your pet
needed and whether or not you were a good person,
because it would be things like, you know, feed your
pet or clean up after your pack, because they would
leave little digital poos, get very upset if you if
(19:39):
you didn't. And I say all this hypothetically because I
never actually owned when did you ever? Actually I did
not own. I didn't own one. Did you mistreat someone
else's Tomaguchi. I'm taking the fifth mostly because I can't
remember excellent. Now, I'm not the kind of guy who
(20:00):
whatever I can't, I can't mistreat creatures in a video game, right,
like if there's a video game, all right, tangential. I
I apologize for the tangent. But this is an example
of how I think the game Red Dead Redemption. You're
you're playing a cowboy in the waning era of the
(20:22):
cowboy era, right this is the days the train is
taking over, the cars are starting to happen, so the
day of the Cowboys. At an end um, there's an
achievement you could get for killing all the buffalo in
the game. There was a certain number of buffalo, and
after you killed a certain number, you would get this achievement.
(20:42):
That was the last achievement I got because I could
not bring myself buffalo. But we'll get into the discussion
about that about actually, uh developing an emotional attachment to
a digital creation, which is kind of crazy when you
think about it, like just from a like crazy from
the sense of that's so like I would never have
(21:04):
imagined it until it happened. Sure, I don't know, I
mean you know as a kid. I mean I had
I had a whole stable full of my Little Ponies, Okay,
I was. I was that guy when I was like
six and um, and they all had very individual personalities,
and I was extraordinarily attached to these toys. So you know,
I mean, I mean, just building on that if if,
if and those things. Those things didn't move except my imaginations, right,
(21:27):
I can see how something that does move to a
certain extent, does I mean that? That being said in fable,
I'm the guy who kicks all the chickens, so well, okay,
I've been there, annoying, I've kicked the chicken or two.
You know. Also, also, it's very possible, Lauren, that some
of our listeners out there could be Brownies, and maybe
they also have their own collections that could rival your
own childhood one. They probably could. By the way, I'm
(21:50):
not speaking down to anyone who likes My Little Pony
that was created. The latest version My Little Pony Friendship
is Magic, was created by the same people who create
power Puff Girls, which I love, which is yeah, so
no judgment here, yeah yeah, getting back to yeah, yeah,
so you could you could feed them, you could clean
up after them. If you didn't clean up after them,
they could actually get sick, and then you would have
to really take care of them. And also Tomagotchi, unlike
(22:14):
a lot of other other digital pets, the digital pet
and tomagotchis could die. Yeah, you didn't take care of them,
or I think in the American version it was they
sort of turned into the little digital angels and kind
of flew back to their home planet because they were aliens.
Or yeah, they went into a little digital ufo and
flew away. But but the point was that if you
didn't take care of them, they would leave. And and
(22:36):
in fact that became something of a problem because it
took you had to take care of him about twice
a day, sure, and in the early stages way more
often than that, about once every six hours or so.
I think, so, yeah, you've got this thing, and it
could make noise, it would beat at you when it
was really not doing so well or not happy. Happy
being a weird term, because we're talking about following a
(22:57):
certain protocol, which meant that kids would to have to
whip these things out and take care of them throughout
the day. And then if they were in school, which
became a problem in the United States certainly. Yeah, And
so in the US you had stories of schools that
would ban these things outright and say, don't bring them
to school because they are a distraction. You're not learning,
(23:18):
you are instead paying attention to a little digital pet,
and you need to have your attention directed toward your
schoolwork and um. And in fact, a lot of sources
that I've read have essentially credited the fact that the
United States school systems often outright banned these things for
the downfall of the virtual pet industry in the US,
(23:39):
that that virtual pets, digital pets didn't really become as
big a deal as they could have because the school
systems banned them. So, uh, there you go. I Toma
Gotchi what not only was the genesis of the digital
pet craze, but in the United States at least, was
also the death of it. But going on their arm,
(24:00):
other ones to talk about besides Tamagotchi. Also in two
thousand five, they updated the line because it had pretty
much gone forgotten. But there were a lot of people
who had nostalgic fondness for the Tamagotchi line. Well, it
never really went away. Actually, there there there have been
a several several generation updates here and there. I mean,
they were still pretty big in Japan from what I understand,
(24:21):
so um but but yeah, they came back with with
an infrared yes connector port. Yeah, the Tamagotchi connection. This
this is what allowed the Tomagotchi version to have interactions
with other people's tamagotchis. Because before it was pretty much
just you know, your pet was confined to its own egg,
to its own egg, that was the extent of its universe.
(24:45):
But then with the infrared uh feature, it would allow
your pet to visit other pets and they could get
out of the egg once in a while. And eventually
around two thousand and eleven, two thousand twelve U Tama
Go which introduced these little separate figures that you can
plug into here Tamagotchi, uh, those those were introduced, and
also Toma Town, which was a website thing which as
(25:07):
of February six has shut down. Uh So, so again
the struggle for the digital pet continues. I just want
to mention some of the characters that you could have
in Tomagotchi. Keeping mind, uh, your your digital pet would
go through stages in its life, so there'd be uh
(25:28):
a young stage, teen stage, and then an adult stage.
So these kind of apply to different stages. But you
could have Madoruchi, which was a spoiled brat who would
like to roll around a lot. There was Kinakamachi, which
like to jump around a lot, and the picture I
saw that had a giant bump on its head with
a little bruise marks, so apparently that not very safe
(25:51):
when he jumps around. There was Itchy Gotchi, who was
a dancing maniac. There was Mimici, which was apparently the
most popular of all the Tamagotchis supposedly had a genius
i Q of two hundred, loved math and writing. Uh.
There was Takachi, who was naughty, impatient and chatty, and
(26:12):
Golza Rucci, who wants to be in ninja. I like
your Japanese pronunciation. But yeah, so you know, as as
of the height of their popularity, um, they're supposed to
have sold one per second in Japan and over seventy
eight million sold as so so certainly think also also
(26:35):
recent news for for Tamaguchi um as a Valentine's Day
this year to celebrate sixteen years of business. The company
announced a free Android app called Tamagochi Life, which stands
for Love is Fun Everywhere. Of course it's an acronym
can life. No, No, that would be ridiculous. That don't
be silly. Um so yeah, so so so Tamagochi lives on. Wow. Alright, well,
(26:59):
moving on to some of the other virtual pets, right, yeah,
because because around the same time, you know, everyone was,
I mean, this was such a craze that everyone had
to jump on. Yeah. There were some people who criticized Banda,
saying that the Tomagotchi really catered more to a female
audience to boys, which is where Dimon digital monsters released
(27:21):
by Bandai Digimon uh similar life cycle to Tomagotchi, but
they were also designed so that you would raise them,
train them, and battle them with other other people's digimon.
So there you go, there's the boy, right the So
apparently girls want to nurture and raise a pet and
boys want to train a killer monster. I don't know
(27:43):
if I could, if I could get a really cute
little little tomagouchi and and fight it with other really
cute tomagouchi, that sounds like the best game to me, person,
really really cute, deadly fights. I have nothing to say
about that would be that would be great. We see
the introduction of a toy that made people go bonkers
when it came out, the Ferbi. Now, um, Ferbie is
(28:06):
not not a digital pet in the sense of these
other ones that are software. This is a This is
more like a kind of a robot, so closer to
the Teddy Ruxpin model than the Tamagotchi model. And the
original one would speak in this language called Furbish and
would gradually learn quote unquote learn English. It would really
(28:29):
just incorporate English into its vocabulary over a set amount
of time. But later models introduced in like two thousand
five and two thousand and eleven had uh more features
that would let it converse with people. There was some
voice recognition stuff that was introduced um and they had
they had motion sensors. They could tell when you were
(28:49):
touching them or when you picked them up and moved
them around. Right, Yeah, yeah, there were I remember when
they came out because I remember how people went went
really bonkers over them. Like there's certain toys that I
can remember people really going crazy for the first one
I can remember with that happening would be Catch Patch Kids.
(29:10):
So that's the classic from my childhood was Catch Patch Kids.
And then you had things like uh, Furby Teddy Ruxman
actually was really popular when it first came out. Furby
another great example. Um, and of course there's always Beanie babies, right,
But getting back to virtual pets, that's when we get
to a web based virtual pet. That's pets, right, yes,
(29:32):
neo pets. There's a virtual pet website. So you would
go and you would create an account, you would adopt
a virtual pet, and you could buy virtual items for
your pet using virtual currency, and you could earn currency
through participating in various things on the website, whether it
was a game like a quest or something, or you
(29:53):
could actually purchase virtual currency using real, cold, hard cash,
as many thirteen to seventeen year old certainly certainly have
on the internet. In Yeah, and this this was actually
created by two British students, originally just for other students,
and it was picked up by a market research expert
(30:13):
who then sold it to MTV Viacom for a hundred
and sixty million dollars. Not a bad turn. Yeah, and
it was they originally thought it up in n but
it took about two years of research and development to
really build out the capabilities of the site, which launched
in ninety nine. Um and it let you customize pets.
You could choose you had like up to I think
(30:34):
there was something like fifty four different pet types you
could choose from, and then once you chose the type,
you could actually customize the pet further. You could compete
in the battle dome if that was your desire, or
you could do little quests and games. Um and Neo
Pets still going. Yeah. Yeah, The last numbers I have
out it were from two thousand six, at which point
(30:55):
it claimed over a hundred million users and a hundred
and fifty million individual pet Yeah. Kind of crazy. Um
and uh. I think that neopets was also one of
the first ones that really incorporated advertising. Since it was
web based. It could have you know, a McDonald's quest
or or you know, or you could you could purchase
branded food or or toy items for your digital toy
(31:16):
items for your digital pet. Yeah. Originally they used banner
ads on their website, but then they were That was
one of the first instances of in game advertising where
the advertisements were worked. Like you said, into the virtual
world Neiopia. As I recall, yes, yes, and uh and yeah,
you could end up encountering stuff that was specifically branded
(31:39):
for a particular company. You could even purchase stuff like
you were saying, um, yeah, and as I recall, Neo
Pets even got some flak for that, about the fact
that they were using branded stuff within the world of
Neo Pets. But the response was, everything that is branded
is clearly marked as an AD. It's not being uh,
(32:01):
it's not being presented as just an element of the game.
All right, Well, I don't know. I think the part
of the controversy was that for for a while, you know,
it would have this this little tag at the bottom
of a page like this page contains advertarial content, but
every page had that morning So, you know, especially when
you're dealing with young kids who don't know the differences
between an AD and content, it's that's not a problem
(32:24):
just with kids, you are, You're very correct. I yes,
I'm not going to say any more sentences on that.
Hey guy, guys, my tamagotchi died. I need to go
flush it down a digital toilet while I'm in the
morning process. We're going to take a quick break. Let's
(32:50):
move on to nineteen. Another thing that happened in my
favorite virtual pet of all time. I didn't own this
virtual pet, but holy Kell, what a weird concept. The
Saga Dreamcast releases a special game called c Man. Extremely
special this this game and I don't have any notes
on this, so I'm I'm just speaking from the kindness
(33:12):
of my heart. Um. This game was narrated by Leonard Nimoi. Um.
Uh you know a k A. Spock and um it
was a classic spot Zachary Quinto Spock right right, Zy
Quinto is an entirely separate human person um. But so
so you would you would have this little fish thing
larva egg and it would it would spawn and kind
(33:34):
of developed this weirdly human face, and it would talk
back to you like it was. It was like a
little fish teenager. It would it would stay really very angry.
Leonard Nemore things are you? And and and The Dreamcast,
if you don't remember, had a little port that you
could plug various things into on the controller, like, for example,
in this case, a microphone, so you could talk to
to your C Man, right, yeah, you could, you could. Uh,
(33:57):
it would actually ask you when your birthday was, and
you would tell it when your birthday was, and it
would give you information about other things that happened on
that day in history. So you get a little trivia
with your ce man, and you would you were supposed
to interact with your ceman at least once a day,
or else it would die. And if you continue to
interact with it, it would possibly like you. But it
(34:21):
always was a little snarky. It was pretty sark um. Yeah, there,
even even if the c man wasn't outright hostile, it
would still be a little Most of mine were hostile.
But but I don't think that I took care of
mine nearly as opposition, because they remind me of terrifying
love crafty and horror. I think you've established what your
your your your capacity to care is already in this podcast.
(34:44):
It's no surprise that your seaman went bad. But yeah,
as you would care for the seaman, it could meet
other seamen. That's a terrible thing to say, and then
they would end up spawning and you would have evolving
sea man where eventually it would turn into like this
(35:04):
frog like thing and be still with the creepy human face. Yeah,
it's fantastic. Um. Yeah, The Seaman Too was actually released
in Japan in two thousand seven. Can't imagine why it
didn't make its way over here. That was for the
PlayStation two. Obviously, the Dreamcast was long different, so sad
(35:24):
about that. We will have to do a full episode
about the Dreamcast at one point, but yeah, it would.
You know, that's kind of a crazy virtual pet thing.
It was weird because it had an attitude. I mean,
it wasn't like cute and cuddley. It was weird to
look at and it acted in a very bizarre way.
So it was like, how do you nurture something that
(35:45):
is that unusual? Unusually? Uh, the appearance is unusual and
then its behavior is inexplicable. Also, none of I mean
not you know, I don't have any children, but I
suspect that if I do, none of them will sound
quite so much like Leonard Nimoy right off the bat.
Probably not. You have to really train them for that,
so the next I have. I mean, there are other
virtual pets that that came out around that that era,
(36:08):
But two thousand five was the next fairly big success.
I was when Nintendo releasing in ten dogs, right, Yeah,
it was that originally for the DS. It was for
the d S. Yeah, nintendose. As I know, I butchered
that one. I was so confident going in and then
it just fell apart as it was leaving my lips anyway.
So yeah, you use the touch screen interface and the
(36:29):
actual built in microphone on the DS to interact with
your virtual dog, So you could give it commands of
verbally and it would follow them. Well, if if it
was a well behaved dog, it would follow them, well
trained dog it would follow. You would have to scold
it if it did not right, And you could link
the DS with other other ds is, so if other
people hadn't intin dogs, you could you know, have your
(36:51):
dog visit other dogs. So again it really went back
into this whole model that we were talking about. And
there are other examples as well. You had one that
was an upcoming example. Yeah, there's well, you know, there's
still a lot of a lot of web application virtual
pets out there. Webkins are tremendously popular. These are stuffed
(37:11):
animals that have little access codes, so you go online
and you interact with a digital version of your stuffed animal,
um and it's it's pretty ingenious and evil actually because
it sells um not only virtual accessories for this thing,
but when you buy physical accessories for your physical toy,
you can plug the codes into the Internet and get
virtual stuff too. So it's it's terrific marketing actually. UM.
(37:36):
Stuff like that Foo Pets Sue beta in back in
two thousand six was a big thing. UM. I may
or may not come back to that later because we
have an awesome note about virtual pet zombies uh um.
But the interesting one that I had what Hatch, Hatch,
Thank you Hatch. Yes, this is this is an upcoming
(37:58):
iPhone app. UM. You can sign up for the beta.
It's it's it's supposed to come out spring sometime. We
are recording this in February and as of right now,
it doesn't have a date. And as of now, if
you go to the Hatch website, you can just pick
which little egg you want and and it'll send you
an email with a with a certificate of adoption. I
(38:18):
know this because I've done this, okay, so I don't
have an iOS device that I could use with this,
Otherwise I would hope secretly that mine would turn into
the clover Field Monster, because I love that documentary that
that is a terrific documentary. I'm not sure that I
want to hang out with you anymore and I want
to control that. That makes two A Brooms documentaries that
I've I've I've mentioned in one podcast. Pretty soon, it's
(38:41):
gonna be hard not to mention a documentaries. He will
rule the Key universe. And I actually, out of all
these virtual pets, the only thing that I ever owned
that was similar to this, there there are these toys
called the Cube World Digital stick people, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there are these plastic cubes. They have magnetic contacts
on on four so it's the cube. The forward facing
(39:02):
side is a screen that has a little digital stick
figure in it that behaves a certain way depending upon
that that figures occupation or main hobby. So for example,
you might have one that has a dog, and so
all the activities of stick figure does involves a dog
in some way. You might have one that's an office
worker or a janitor or whatever. And the interesting thing
(39:25):
was not only would they behave a particular way within
their cube, and you could pick the cube up and
shake it and that would actually make the figure fall
over like there was an earthquake. Or you could turn
it on its side that make the figure slide because
gravity had changed. Ter You could also put two of
these cubes together with their magnetic context, and then the
two different stick figures could visit would interact. Yeah, more
(39:50):
often than not they would fight, but sometimes I get
along and you could actually stick I think it was
up to it was three or four. It might be four.
I think you could stuck up four together, uh, and
how in either horizontally or vertically and have them interact
with each other. And then you could even make blocks
of these cubes like grab a whole bunch, and then
you'd have like essentially an apartment of these little stick figures,
(40:12):
all behaving in various ways. They were pretty limited in
what they would do, and you could play games with
them as well. The games were usually pretty limited, but
it was a cute idea. And so yeah, I had
four of those, and they they're a little wacky, not
not terribly sophisticated compared to some of the other virtual
pets we talked about. But this this has kind of
(40:32):
led to this um this uh market of creating virtual
creatures for people to have real companionship, things like the
Ludo bots, which are play robots that's artificial human companions
like Ibo or Pleio, the little robotic dinosaur. We have
an article about how Pleio works on how stuff works
(40:54):
dot com. It includes pictures of a Pleio that has
been slightly taking apart. I believe it was kind of
traumatic for all of us. Tracy actually wrote that. Our
our site director, Tracy Wilson wrote that article, and I
remember hearing gleeful cackles and seeing lightning and hearing thunder
(41:16):
all from her office as she was working on that article.
True story. Uh. Then there's also Pero, which is a
therapeutic seal robot. I saw this at I want to
say it was a c e S several years ago,
and I also saw it at Japan Fest in UH
in Atlanta, Georgia one year. But it's a robotic seal
(41:37):
that's meant as a companion for senior citizens because in
Japan in particular, they have a rising problem of an
aging population. People are having fewer children, which means that
the population is growing older. The percentage of population entering
their their senior years is growing each year. And uh,
and there's a very real problem of how do you
(41:58):
provide companionship for those people so that they have a
positive outlook. And the Pero Therapeutic Seal robot is kind
of a way of doing that, and it builds within
it a lot of these concepts of the virtual pet
that so it responds to you. It uh, it purrs
or moves in very nice little ways, and it's it's
(42:20):
it's an absolutely adorable robot. I mean, you look at
this thing and you can't help but then yeah, that
looks cuddly. But yeah, before we sign off, I want
to talk about this zombie thing. I want to hear
more about the zombie thing, right right, so so on,
I have no idea how to pronounce this, either sue
beta or soap beta. Yeah, it's it's. It's a website thing. Um.
(42:41):
They had back in two thousand nine. It was on
Valentine's Day. They had a love epidemic and when players
signed on on on this particular Valentine Today, they found
out that every every little critter in this universe had
been infected by some kind of love virus. Which if
anyone else here seeing the documentary Stacy, which is a
Japanese horror film, um, you will you will perhaps have
(43:02):
have already ideas about this. But yeah, uh, and and
this virus would slowly turn these creatures into into these
kind of gory, undead zombie things, and and people wound
up really digging it. They they wound up keeping their
characters as zombies. You could you could eventually cure it
by by applying something called La Morris syllium, which which
(43:26):
I am I am enchanted by. I think that is
terrific um. But but yeah, so you know, there's there's
a little bit of a darkness to a little little
dark corner there, which again I think that I don't know,
you know, you know, some of the stuff is so cute.
While I was doing research, I ran across um a
couple of pages for the current Tamaguchi line, and I
(43:46):
was honestly terrified by the sheer cute level. And I
know that I'm not in the demographic anymore, so, so
I get that it's not aimed at me, but but
just the amount of giant eyes with sparkles in them,
I was why why did they barkle? So it's at
that's what it is. It's and look it up, kids,
it's it's all. It's all very strange to me. You know,
(44:08):
it's there's when when they were doing some initial research
with ferbies, um up at M I T. I think
that M I T helped develop the ferbies, or kids
at might helped develop it, and so so a lot
of the research around it was done by those folks.
But you know, kids kids said that they realized that
the ferbie wasn't alive, but but that it was a
little bit alive in a furby kind of way, not
(44:29):
in a human way, not an animal way, but in
a ferbie way. So it was like a new definition
for life in the sense of well, it's it's more
than something that's inert, but it's not something that's organically living,
right right. And one of the Frederick Kaplan, who's worked
with the IBOW team at Sony in Paris, was saying that, uh,
(44:49):
you know, these creatures, paradoxically are not designed to respect
Asimov's second law of robotics, which is that a robot
must obey human beings orders. They're designed to be autonomous
and to have their own goals, their own wants, their
own needs, and to disobey you sometimes because pet, like
a real pet would yeah, yeah, because I mean with
those behaviors, you end up developing this relationship. If it
(45:11):
always did everything you said, that would probably become fairly
boring fairly quickly. You know. It's it's that that process
of teaching your pet and nurturing your pet that ends
up being so rewarding from UH an owner perspective. Sure,
there has to be a positive feedback loop of you
doing something that has an impact on the pets life
(45:32):
and the pet therefore having an impact on yours. It's
it's it's interesting, and you know, they're like we said,
there's a lot of scholarship on the matter, although to
be fair, the scholarship did kind of died down simply
because the trend didn't really you know, sustain itself in
the United States anyway. But I expect we'll probably see
more of that. I mean, especially as you talk about
the development of things like artificial intelligence. We're going to
(45:55):
see more toys that are incorporating some form of AI
in them, and they'll probably follow a lot of the
same features that digital pets established. And so yeah, it's
an interesting, interesting subject. And that wraps up this classic
episode of tex stuff and all the silliness that ensued.
(46:16):
I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any
suggestions for topics for future tech Stuff episodes, why not
get in touch with me. Use the social media outlets
that we have all been forced to join, Twitter and Facebook.
The handle for both of those is text stuff hs
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
(46:41):
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to text Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
iHeart Radio and I love all things tech and it
is time for a classic episode of tech Stuff. That
means it's Friday. Happy Friday, everybody. The episode we're about
(00:27):
to listen to originally published on March eleventh, two thousand thirteen,
and it's titled tech Stuff Cleans Up after Digital Pets.
So let's sit back and listen to this classic episode. Today,
we wanted to talk about digital pets. This actually comes
to us courtesy of a listener suggestion. Uh, and digital pets,
(00:50):
virtual pets, This is an idea that that really kind
of got. It's it's heyday in the nineties, especially in
the United States. But what we want to talk a
little bit about the rise of digital pets and then
the fall of digital pets, and and sort of some
other surrounding topics that that tie into what all of
this digital pet malarchy means. Yeah, exactly, and Uh, Before
(01:14):
we get into specifics, I want to talk a little
bit about some general features that you would expect in
a virtual pet. Now, first of all, it's it's virtual.
It's non actual living thing, right right, and sometimes called
digital pets rather than virtual pets because you know, they
don't necessarily have to be. I mean, there are web
applications that where digital pets live, but some of them
are physical three dimensional objects. Yeah, yea. And so we
(01:37):
kind of we've been very very loose with our definition
in the sense that we feel there are some toys
and uh products out there that have influenced the process
of virtual pets, uh and the evolution of virtual pets.
So some of the stuff we're gonna talk about today
they aren't really a virtual pet in the strictest definition,
(01:58):
but it's important as far as the development goes. In general,
a virtual pet tends to have certain features that uh
that let it seem kind of similar to an actual
real life pet. For instance, it usually will respond to
you calling for it. Uh. There's some sort of command
that you use to call it, whether it's vocal or
(02:20):
it's a button you press on a on a game
controller or on a on a little physical device that
brings it to you. You have to care for it.
You have to feed it and clean up after it.
If it falls sick, you have to you have to
take care of it, right. Usually you can train it
to do various things. It maybe to perform a trick,
or it might be to eviscerate someone else's virtual pet
(02:42):
in the case of certain games that will cover Also,
there's usually some form of way to reward the pet,
either with treats or toys. Sometimes the element that allows
you to give treats or toys is an extra element
within the whole virtual pet where that you pay real
(03:04):
money to get access to virtual treats, right right, Yeah,
you know a lot lots of these virtual pets are
one time purchase kind of thing. You either buy the
hardware or you pay for a subscription for a life subscription,
and you get that thing for you know, as long
as you care to play with it, and others are
ye monthly subscription, or you have to continue buying into
(03:26):
various little accessories and other products in order to continue. Yeah, yeah,
you're you're really building out the pets life. It's very
similar to the way a lot of games are are
running now, where you have an in game purchase to
to give your character either a different look or sometimes
an actual advantage and gameplay. Uh, many of those ideas
(03:46):
really got their start in the virtual pet world. Um. Also,
they usually have some sort of a feature there that
allows you to have your pet meet other pets. Right, yeah, yeah,
that that's a relatively i guess, relatively recent as of
you know, Save two thousand and five. But yeah, but right,
the earliest development exactly, the earliest ones didn't necessarily have
(04:09):
that that feature in them. You couldn't get a a
some pets to meet other pets until we started to
build in that that capability, either in the hardware or
in the software. But it usually meant that you could
have your pet make friends with another person's virtual pet.
Sometimes you could have your virtual pets breed, and then
you would get little tiny versions of your virtual pet
(04:32):
that would have features of both the mommy and the
daddy virtual pet. Jon Strickland explaining how the birds and
the bees virtual birds and the virtual beads bees work. Look,
when a virtual dog and another virtual dog virtually love
one another, it's very special. They trade some code and
then you get virtual puppy. Yeah. Anyway, these are all
(04:56):
basic features that you would find in virtual pets, so
that that's sort of the overall kind of definition. But
to really understand the development, we have to go back
a ways. And and Lauren, you have an interesting place
you wanted to start. Yeah, I want to talk about
pet rocks. I think that that would be a very
early I mean clearly analog not digital versions virtual pet
(05:20):
Those debuted in nineteen seventy five at pop which is
approximately sixteen dollars in the current economy, which is actually
what is say, for example, time go chi cost. So
I thought that was pretty interesting, but so essentially sixteen
dollars in our current currency to buy a rock, to
buy irack. Yeah, and this this was created by Gary Doll,
who was a California ad executive, and brilliant sold more
(05:45):
than five million of these critters in less than six months.
It's like a rock with googly eyes. So, so, Lauren
n you remember those days, right? Oh? Yeah, that was
seven years before I was born, Okay, so I was
around nineteen seventy five was also the year a little
movie called Jaws came out, a fantastic documentary. It's also
(06:08):
when a certain tech stuff podcaster arrived on the scene.
That would be me not not not me, So I
don't really remember I just know I was there anyway. Yeah,
pet rocks. So so there we go. There's there's a
a non living pet, and it was mostly a gag
gift kind of thing, but it lays the groundwork for
(06:30):
this idea of a pet that's not really alive. Yeah.
I also wanted to point out actually that in a
V seven that was when CA nine debut on dr Who,
which I think is also probably an important reference in
the entire I mean, especially if you've seen an eyebo,
I think that they're pretty obviously inspired by the canine
bucket of bolts. So so yeah, so the idea about
(06:53):
this kind of of course in science fiction, stuff like
this has been talked about for you know, since the
days of Asthmov's uh robot and I seen the body
electric stuff like that. Yeah, and do Android stream of
electric sheet. So yeah, these are again the building blocks
(07:14):
that will lead to virtual pets. A company called Worlds
of Wonder introduced a toy that was, depending upon how
you played with it, very entertaining or terrifying. That would
be Teddy Ruxman. I firmly found them terrifying as a child,
sexually Teddy Teddy Rouxman it was an interesting idea. It
(07:35):
was a toy that would read, quote unquote read stories
to children. The stories would be on a cassette tape.
Some of you may not know what a cassette tape is.
I remember them, but a cassette tape, all right, So
it's it's magnetic tape. And usually, like on a regular
audio cassette tape, you have two tracks on either side
(07:56):
of this this tape, and it's usually used for stereo,
one tracks for the left speaker and once for the right.
Now with Teddy Ruxpan instead, one track was audio and
the other track was a series of directions for the
Teddy Bear. Well, it's really just the mouth. The limbs
didn't really move, but the mouth would move in time
(08:19):
with whatever was playing, So that way it would follow
the directions and seemingly talk to you and read out
the story. This meant that if you wanted to do
something a little wacky, like I don't know, put your
Black Sabbath cassette tape in Teddy ruxpen, he would not
suddenly start rocking out because the mouth there was no
(08:41):
directions for the mouth to follow. Okay, so so the
mouth wouldn't move. He would still play. Oh no, you
could play you play Black Sabbath through a teddy Ruxpan.
There's nothing stopping you. You essentially have a teddy Ruxpan
shaped boom box. But but it wouldn't like start screaming out. Okay,
well that's I guess that's I mean, I'm you know,
Ward knows I tried um. But yeah, yeah, that was
(09:04):
again teddy Ruxman not a virtual pet, necessarily, not in
the same sense that we're talking about, but again lays
the groundwork this idea of a a a synthetic creature
providing some form of companionship, and it appears to be autonomous,
right right, and again very loose illusion. In this case.
You you pick up pretty quickly that it's following a
(09:25):
very specific uh script which was based upon whatever was
on that cassette. Um Worlds of Wonder, by the way,
ended up going bankrupt. I think in nine the the
ownership of teddy Ruxman has passed through several hands, including Hasbro.
So it was one of those toys that kept on
going even after the company that launched it went away.
(09:46):
Now the next year, in six we get our first
actual virtual pet, and this was for a computer platform
called the Macintosh. So yeah, two years after the mac
Nintosh launches, Remember they had that amazing nineteen eight four
commercial that was in the Super Bowl. That really amazing,
(10:07):
one of the best commercials ever made. In my opinion.
I never owned a Macintosh, but I love the commercial anyway.
The the Macintosh program Puppy Love debuts in nineteen eighties.
Six is Tom Snyder Productions release, and Puppy Love was
essentially a little a little animated puppy dog that you
could play with on your Macintosh. Very limited uh features
(10:29):
on that, but again was one of the first examples
of a virtual pet. Now we go ahead of year
to nineteen eight seven and the Nintendo Entertainment System gets
a release of a Japanese role playing game, and I'm
going to butcher the pronunciation. I apologize to Lauren, who
actually knows how to pronounce Japanese words. But Macgami Tense
(10:53):
was the RPG, and it included a game play element
where you could capture demons and then you could train
those demons to fight for you so that you could
use the ones that you've captured to help protect you
in other battles. This is a gameplay element that we
would end up seeing used in other types of virtual
(11:14):
pets in the future, and lots of other games as well.
I wouldn't necessarily count something like Pokemon is a virtual
pet application, but but it definitely has that game element. Yeah.
I include Pokemon mostly because, again it has some elements
of a virtual pet. Although if you're mostly looking to
try and maximize your your your group of of Pokemon
(11:36):
so that you can have the best chance of winning
any particular battle, that's not a great message for a
person who wants to own a real pet. Yeah, like
vic message that's no, that's that, it's not that is
not what the SPC I think would would want to write.
But then again, virtual pets let us do these sort
(11:56):
of things. I mean, these are all cartoony, like the
Pokemon or the cartoony creatures that don't necessarily have a
a counterpart in real life. Some of them are obviously
modeled after real animals, but others, if it's modeled after
a real animal, I have not seen it. Yeah, I
don't think I want to see some of the real
animals that those things are modeled on. Right. Well, then
(12:19):
in two we had the game Dragon Quest five Hand
of the Heavenly Bride, and that also allowed players to
capture monsters and use them to fight in their battles.
So again that same sort of gameplay element, it's starting
to starting to become pretty popular. It was an interesting idea, um,
but it's still not really a virtual pet in the
(12:40):
sense that we think of, where it's just really the
whole purpose is to take care of an artificial creature. Uh.
But in a company called p F Magic hits the
scene and releases a program called Dogs that's d O
g Z. They would year later release Cats see a
(13:02):
t Z and then eventually release Pets p E t
Z and uh. And this was really where the virtual
pet idea started to blossom, where we started to see
some of those elements we talked about the top of
the show, the things that really make a virtual pet,
what it is, what kind of platform with Windows Originally
(13:23):
it was originally a Windows based thing. So if you
for those of you who remember Windows back in there,
there were people who would have like this little dog
would wander onto your screen and start to play with
your cursor and things like that. It was very cute
and um, but this was an actual full program where
you would be able to adopt a puppy or later
(13:46):
on a kitten, and after a few days of real time,
so you know, you check on your little puppy eer
kitten each day. After a few days, maybe three or
four days, the puppy your kitten would grow into a
fully four adult version of whatever animal it was, and
you would continue taking care of it, so you would
(14:06):
play with it, you could train it, and you could
even breed your animal with other animals. Starting with I
think it was Pets three, because you know, they released
updates as they as they built out the game locally
on your own computer asum or was this over email email?
You could email a copy of your pet to someone
(14:28):
else and you would still keep yours. This is like
you suddenly cloned your pet. But you could email a
copy of your pet to someone else and then they
could say, oh, this dog, he's very cute, FIEFI is
gonna love him, and see if Fife and the other
dog would, you know, have a little puppy love going on,
and then you end up with a litter of virtual puppies. Yeah,
(14:51):
like like you do. That's like like it happens. Um Yeah,
So originally these were all designed on hand drawn uh
kind of designs like like that's the line drawing style. Uh.
So they weren't photo realistic or anything like that, but cartoony.
But it meant that if you wanted to, you could
(15:11):
actually really tweak the look of your pet, because it
wasn't outside the realm of most people's abilities to go
and draw in a new shape for their pets body
or a different coloration. But eventually, as that as time
went on, and we'll get back into the timeline in
a minute, but by two thousand and six, uh, the
(15:33):
the company had abandoned the line drawing approach and went
for a more quote unquote realistic look where you could
end up changing textures, but you couldn't remodel your pet.
It was going to always be the same basic shape,
but you could tweak it a little bit, just not
as much as you could in earlier versions of the program.
(15:55):
But this is where we see the idea of the
virtual pet really take off, and it ended up being
fairly popular, a few million copies sold, so not not
like a crazy success, but it showed that there was
a market there that people were interested in getting a
virtual companion kind of a weird idea at the time.
(16:18):
Some would say a weird idea today that it's not
necessarily something that has has gained widespread acceptance. I don't know,
but there's yeah, there's there's, As we will talk about later,
there are certainly enough different models of this kind of
thing out there that there's you know, and and they've
they've done medical research about stuff. You know, people who
are perhaps lonely and don't have so much access to
(16:39):
as much human interaction as they as they need. There
are lots of robots meant for keeping people companion. Yeah.
In fact, we'll talk a little bit about them. I
have some information about one of those robots, but we'll
we'll save that for towards the end of the discussion
because that that really it ends up building on a
lot of these concepts we're talking about early on, and
we're about to tackle the biggest name I think as
(17:03):
far as virtual pets go. It's the name I always
think of whenever I think of virtual or digital pets.
But before we get into that, let's take a quick
moment to thank our sponsor. Okay, now, Lauren, when I
say digital pet, is there a particular brand name that
(17:26):
leaps to mind. Tom there you go, Tomagchi launched by
Bandai in Japan. That is correct, and from what I understand,
tomagochi is the correct spelling. I always heard it as
tom gachi when I was a kid, but I think
that that's probably just because we had no idea what
we were talking about. It's an Americanized pronunciation. Sure, sure,
(17:47):
the word does come from from a much McAll partmanteau. Okay,
of the words tomago, which means egg in Japanese and
the English were I'm familiar with it from sushi. From sushi, yes, well,
and in sushi it's usually meant to um, meant as
a shortened form of tamaga yucky, which is that sweet
(18:07):
egg omelet. But look at the brain on Lauren. Wow,
she did not know I was going to say sushi either.
All right, Okay, so tamago what's the other one? And
the English word watch, which when you kind of translate
into the Japanese foreign loan word alphabet katakana, it sounds
a lot more like oachi. Alright, So it's egg watch,
(18:30):
which I would immediately assume would be an egg timer,
not a digital pet, not at all. But it is
a digital pet. But but they but they were egg
shaped and they did the origin of these little creatures
would be would look like a little egg, right, So,
so so you would go out and you would buy
this essentially look like a key chain that had an
egg shaped plastic case there with a little screen on it. Yeah,
(18:54):
and that would allow you to hatch your virtual your
digital pet it. So you have a little egg on
there that you would have to uh, you know, press
a button which essentially started a timer that would let
the the Toma gauchi. No, hey, there's a player. It's
time to start creating a pet for this person to
(19:16):
interact with. And then um, you would end up using
I think it was like three buttons. Yeah, it's a
little three button interaction. So you would use those three
buttons to do various commands depending upon what your pet
needed and whether or not you were a good person,
because it would be things like, you know, feed your
pet or clean up after your pack, because they would
leave little digital poos, get very upset if you if
(19:39):
you didn't. And I say all this hypothetically because I
never actually owned when did you ever? Actually I did
not own. I didn't own one. Did you mistreat someone
else's Tomaguchi. I'm taking the fifth mostly because I can't
remember excellent. Now, I'm not the kind of guy who
(20:00):
whatever I can't, I can't mistreat creatures in a video game, right,
like if there's a video game, all right, tangential. I
I apologize for the tangent. But this is an example
of how I think the game Red Dead Redemption. You're
you're playing a cowboy in the waning era of the
(20:22):
cowboy era, right this is the days the train is
taking over, the cars are starting to happen, so the
day of the Cowboys. At an end um, there's an
achievement you could get for killing all the buffalo in
the game. There was a certain number of buffalo, and
after you killed a certain number, you would get this achievement.
(20:42):
That was the last achievement I got because I could
not bring myself buffalo. But we'll get into the discussion
about that about actually, uh developing an emotional attachment to
a digital creation, which is kind of crazy when you
think about it, like just from a like crazy from
the sense of that's so like I would never have
(21:04):
imagined it until it happened. Sure, I don't know, I
mean you know as a kid. I mean I had
I had a whole stable full of my Little Ponies, Okay,
I was. I was that guy when I was like
six and um, and they all had very individual personalities,
and I was extraordinarily attached to these toys. So you know,
I mean, I mean, just building on that if if,
if and those things. Those things didn't move except my imaginations, right,
(21:27):
I can see how something that does move to a
certain extent, does I mean that? That being said in fable,
I'm the guy who kicks all the chickens, so well, okay,
I've been there, annoying, I've kicked the chicken or two.
You know. Also, also, it's very possible, Lauren, that some
of our listeners out there could be Brownies, and maybe
they also have their own collections that could rival your
own childhood one. They probably could. By the way, I'm
(21:50):
not speaking down to anyone who likes My Little Pony
that was created. The latest version My Little Pony Friendship
is Magic, was created by the same people who create
power Puff Girls, which I love, which is yeah, so
no judgment here, yeah yeah, getting back to yeah, yeah,
so you could you could feed them, you could clean
up after them. If you didn't clean up after them,
they could actually get sick, and then you would have
to really take care of them. And also Tomagotchi, unlike
(22:14):
a lot of other other digital pets, the digital pet
and tomagotchis could die. Yeah, you didn't take care of them,
or I think in the American version it was they
sort of turned into the little digital angels and kind
of flew back to their home planet because they were aliens.
Or yeah, they went into a little digital ufo and
flew away. But but the point was that if you
didn't take care of them, they would leave. And and
(22:36):
in fact that became something of a problem because it
took you had to take care of him about twice
a day, sure, and in the early stages way more
often than that, about once every six hours or so.
I think, so, yeah, you've got this thing, and it
could make noise, it would beat at you when it
was really not doing so well or not happy. Happy
being a weird term, because we're talking about following a
(22:57):
certain protocol, which meant that kids would to have to
whip these things out and take care of them throughout
the day. And then if they were in school, which
became a problem in the United States certainly. Yeah, And
so in the US you had stories of schools that
would ban these things outright and say, don't bring them
to school because they are a distraction. You're not learning,
(23:18):
you are instead paying attention to a little digital pet,
and you need to have your attention directed toward your
schoolwork and um. And in fact, a lot of sources
that I've read have essentially credited the fact that the
United States school systems often outright banned these things for
the downfall of the virtual pet industry in the US,
(23:39):
that that virtual pets, digital pets didn't really become as
big a deal as they could have because the school
systems banned them. So, uh, there you go. I Toma
Gotchi what not only was the genesis of the digital
pet craze, but in the United States at least, was
also the death of it. But going on their arm,
(24:00):
other ones to talk about besides Tamagotchi. Also in two
thousand five, they updated the line because it had pretty
much gone forgotten. But there were a lot of people
who had nostalgic fondness for the Tamagotchi line. Well, it
never really went away. Actually, there there there have been
a several several generation updates here and there. I mean,
they were still pretty big in Japan from what I understand,
(24:21):
so um but but yeah, they came back with with
an infrared yes connector port. Yeah, the Tamagotchi connection. This
this is what allowed the Tomagotchi version to have interactions
with other people's tamagotchis. Because before it was pretty much
just you know, your pet was confined to its own egg,
to its own egg, that was the extent of its universe.
(24:45):
But then with the infrared uh feature, it would allow
your pet to visit other pets and they could get
out of the egg once in a while. And eventually
around two thousand and eleven, two thousand twelve U Tama
Go which introduced these little separate figures that you can
plug into here Tamagotchi, uh, those those were introduced, and
also Toma Town, which was a website thing which as
(25:07):
of February six has shut down. Uh So, so again
the struggle for the digital pet continues. I just want
to mention some of the characters that you could have
in Tomagotchi. Keeping mind, uh, your your digital pet would
go through stages in its life, so there'd be uh
(25:28):
a young stage, teen stage, and then an adult stage.
So these kind of apply to different stages. But you
could have Madoruchi, which was a spoiled brat who would
like to roll around a lot. There was Kinakamachi, which
like to jump around a lot, and the picture I
saw that had a giant bump on its head with
a little bruise marks, so apparently that not very safe
(25:51):
when he jumps around. There was Itchy Gotchi, who was
a dancing maniac. There was Mimici, which was apparently the
most popular of all the Tamagotchis supposedly had a genius
i Q of two hundred, loved math and writing. Uh.
There was Takachi, who was naughty, impatient and chatty, and
(26:12):
Golza Rucci, who wants to be in ninja. I like
your Japanese pronunciation. But yeah, so you know, as as
of the height of their popularity, um, they're supposed to
have sold one per second in Japan and over seventy
eight million sold as so so certainly think also also
(26:35):
recent news for for Tamaguchi um as a Valentine's Day
this year to celebrate sixteen years of business. The company
announced a free Android app called Tamagochi Life, which stands
for Love is Fun Everywhere. Of course it's an acronym
can life. No, No, that would be ridiculous. That don't
be silly. Um so yeah, so so so Tamagochi lives on. Wow. Alright, well,
(26:59):
moving on to some of the other virtual pets, right, yeah,
because because around the same time, you know, everyone was,
I mean, this was such a craze that everyone had
to jump on. Yeah. There were some people who criticized Banda,
saying that the Tomagotchi really catered more to a female
audience to boys, which is where Dimon digital monsters released
(27:21):
by Bandai Digimon uh similar life cycle to Tomagotchi, but
they were also designed so that you would raise them,
train them, and battle them with other other people's digimon.
So there you go, there's the boy, right the So
apparently girls want to nurture and raise a pet and
boys want to train a killer monster. I don't know
(27:43):
if I could, if I could get a really cute
little little tomagouchi and and fight it with other really
cute tomagouchi, that sounds like the best game to me, person,
really really cute, deadly fights. I have nothing to say
about that would be that would be great. We see
the introduction of a toy that made people go bonkers
when it came out, the Ferbi. Now, um, Ferbie is
(28:06):
not not a digital pet in the sense of these
other ones that are software. This is a This is
more like a kind of a robot, so closer to
the Teddy Ruxpin model than the Tamagotchi model. And the
original one would speak in this language called Furbish and
would gradually learn quote unquote learn English. It would really
(28:29):
just incorporate English into its vocabulary over a set amount
of time. But later models introduced in like two thousand
five and two thousand and eleven had uh more features
that would let it converse with people. There was some
voice recognition stuff that was introduced um and they had
they had motion sensors. They could tell when you were
(28:49):
touching them or when you picked them up and moved
them around. Right, Yeah, yeah, there were I remember when
they came out because I remember how people went went
really bonkers over them. Like there's certain toys that I
can remember people really going crazy for the first one
I can remember with that happening would be Catch Patch Kids.
(29:10):
So that's the classic from my childhood was Catch Patch Kids.
And then you had things like uh, Furby Teddy Ruxman
actually was really popular when it first came out. Furby
another great example. Um, and of course there's always Beanie babies, right,
But getting back to virtual pets, that's when we get
to a web based virtual pet. That's pets, right, yes,
(29:32):
neo pets. There's a virtual pet website. So you would
go and you would create an account, you would adopt
a virtual pet, and you could buy virtual items for
your pet using virtual currency, and you could earn currency
through participating in various things on the website, whether it
was a game like a quest or something, or you
(29:53):
could actually purchase virtual currency using real, cold, hard cash,
as many thirteen to seventeen year old certainly certainly have
on the internet. In Yeah, and this this was actually
created by two British students, originally just for other students,
and it was picked up by a market research expert
(30:13):
who then sold it to MTV Viacom for a hundred
and sixty million dollars. Not a bad turn. Yeah, and
it was they originally thought it up in n but
it took about two years of research and development to
really build out the capabilities of the site, which launched
in ninety nine. Um and it let you customize pets.
You could choose you had like up to I think
(30:34):
there was something like fifty four different pet types you
could choose from, and then once you chose the type,
you could actually customize the pet further. You could compete
in the battle dome if that was your desire, or
you could do little quests and games. Um and Neo
Pets still going. Yeah. Yeah, The last numbers I have
out it were from two thousand six, at which point
(30:55):
it claimed over a hundred million users and a hundred
and fifty million individual pet Yeah. Kind of crazy. Um
and uh. I think that neopets was also one of
the first ones that really incorporated advertising. Since it was
web based. It could have you know, a McDonald's quest
or or you know, or you could you could purchase
branded food or or toy items for your digital toy
(31:16):
items for your digital pet. Yeah. Originally they used banner
ads on their website, but then they were That was
one of the first instances of in game advertising where
the advertisements were worked. Like you said, into the virtual
world Neiopia. As I recall, yes, yes, and uh and yeah,
you could end up encountering stuff that was specifically branded
(31:39):
for a particular company. You could even purchase stuff like
you were saying, um, yeah, and as I recall, Neo
Pets even got some flak for that, about the fact
that they were using branded stuff within the world of
Neo Pets. But the response was, everything that is branded
is clearly marked as an AD. It's not being uh,
(32:01):
it's not being presented as just an element of the game.
All right, Well, I don't know. I think the part
of the controversy was that for for a while, you know,
it would have this this little tag at the bottom
of a page like this page contains advertarial content, but
every page had that morning So, you know, especially when
you're dealing with young kids who don't know the differences
between an AD and content, it's that's not a problem
(32:24):
just with kids, you are, You're very correct. I yes,
I'm not going to say any more sentences on that.
Hey guy, guys, my tamagotchi died. I need to go
flush it down a digital toilet while I'm in the
morning process. We're going to take a quick break. Let's
(32:50):
move on to nineteen. Another thing that happened in my
favorite virtual pet of all time. I didn't own this
virtual pet, but holy Kell, what a weird concept. The
Saga Dreamcast releases a special game called c Man. Extremely
special this this game and I don't have any notes
on this, so I'm I'm just speaking from the kindness
(33:12):
of my heart. Um. This game was narrated by Leonard Nimoi. Um.
Uh you know a k A. Spock and um it
was a classic spot Zachary Quinto Spock right right, Zy
Quinto is an entirely separate human person um. But so
so you would you would have this little fish thing
larva egg and it would it would spawn and kind
(33:34):
of developed this weirdly human face, and it would talk
back to you like it was. It was like a
little fish teenager. It would it would stay really very angry.
Leonard Nemore things are you? And and and The Dreamcast,
if you don't remember, had a little port that you
could plug various things into on the controller, like, for example,
in this case, a microphone, so you could talk to
to your C Man, right, yeah, you could, you could. Uh,
(33:57):
it would actually ask you when your birthday was, and
you would tell it when your birthday was, and it
would give you information about other things that happened on
that day in history. So you get a little trivia
with your ce man, and you would you were supposed
to interact with your ceman at least once a day,
or else it would die. And if you continue to
interact with it, it would possibly like you. But it
(34:21):
always was a little snarky. It was pretty sark um. Yeah, there,
even even if the c man wasn't outright hostile, it
would still be a little Most of mine were hostile.
But but I don't think that I took care of
mine nearly as opposition, because they remind me of terrifying
love crafty and horror. I think you've established what your
your your your capacity to care is already in this podcast.
(34:44):
It's no surprise that your seaman went bad. But yeah,
as you would care for the seaman, it could meet
other seamen. That's a terrible thing to say, and then
they would end up spawning and you would have evolving
sea man where eventually it would turn into like this
(35:04):
frog like thing and be still with the creepy human face. Yeah,
it's fantastic. Um. Yeah, The Seaman Too was actually released
in Japan in two thousand seven. Can't imagine why it
didn't make its way over here. That was for the
PlayStation two. Obviously, the Dreamcast was long different, so sad
(35:24):
about that. We will have to do a full episode
about the Dreamcast at one point, but yeah, it would.
You know, that's kind of a crazy virtual pet thing.
It was weird because it had an attitude. I mean,
it wasn't like cute and cuddley. It was weird to
look at and it acted in a very bizarre way.
So it was like, how do you nurture something that
(35:45):
is that unusual? Unusually? Uh, the appearance is unusual and
then its behavior is inexplicable. Also, none of I mean
not you know, I don't have any children, but I
suspect that if I do, none of them will sound
quite so much like Leonard Nimoy right off the bat.
Probably not. You have to really train them for that,
so the next I have. I mean, there are other
virtual pets that that came out around that that era,
(36:08):
But two thousand five was the next fairly big success.
I was when Nintendo releasing in ten dogs, right, Yeah,
it was that originally for the DS. It was for
the d S. Yeah, nintendose. As I know, I butchered
that one. I was so confident going in and then
it just fell apart as it was leaving my lips anyway.
So yeah, you use the touch screen interface and the
(36:29):
actual built in microphone on the DS to interact with
your virtual dog, So you could give it commands of
verbally and it would follow them. Well, if if it
was a well behaved dog, it would follow them, well
trained dog it would follow. You would have to scold
it if it did not right, And you could link
the DS with other other ds is, so if other
people hadn't intin dogs, you could you know, have your
(36:51):
dog visit other dogs. So again it really went back
into this whole model that we were talking about. And
there are other examples as well. You had one that
was an upcoming example. Yeah, there's well, you know, there's
still a lot of a lot of web application virtual
pets out there. Webkins are tremendously popular. These are stuffed
(37:11):
animals that have little access codes, so you go online
and you interact with a digital version of your stuffed animal,
um and it's it's pretty ingenious and evil actually because
it sells um not only virtual accessories for this thing,
but when you buy physical accessories for your physical toy,
you can plug the codes into the Internet and get
virtual stuff too. So it's it's terrific marketing actually. UM.
(37:36):
Stuff like that Foo Pets Sue beta in back in
two thousand six was a big thing. UM. I may
or may not come back to that later because we
have an awesome note about virtual pet zombies uh um.
But the interesting one that I had what Hatch, Hatch,
Thank you Hatch. Yes, this is this is an upcoming
(37:58):
iPhone app. UM. You can sign up for the beta.
It's it's it's supposed to come out spring sometime. We
are recording this in February and as of right now,
it doesn't have a date. And as of now, if
you go to the Hatch website, you can just pick
which little egg you want and and it'll send you
an email with a with a certificate of adoption. I
(38:18):
know this because I've done this, okay, so I don't
have an iOS device that I could use with this,
Otherwise I would hope secretly that mine would turn into
the clover Field Monster, because I love that documentary that
that is a terrific documentary. I'm not sure that I
want to hang out with you anymore and I want
to control that. That makes two A Brooms documentaries that
I've I've I've mentioned in one podcast. Pretty soon, it's
(38:41):
gonna be hard not to mention a documentaries. He will
rule the Key universe. And I actually, out of all
these virtual pets, the only thing that I ever owned
that was similar to this, there there are these toys
called the Cube World Digital stick people, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there are these plastic cubes. They have magnetic contacts
on on four so it's the cube. The forward facing
(39:02):
side is a screen that has a little digital stick
figure in it that behaves a certain way depending upon
that that figures occupation or main hobby. So for example,
you might have one that has a dog, and so
all the activities of stick figure does involves a dog
in some way. You might have one that's an office
worker or a janitor or whatever. And the interesting thing
(39:25):
was not only would they behave a particular way within
their cube, and you could pick the cube up and
shake it and that would actually make the figure fall
over like there was an earthquake. Or you could turn
it on its side that make the figure slide because
gravity had changed. Ter You could also put two of
these cubes together with their magnetic context, and then the
two different stick figures could visit would interact. Yeah, more
(39:50):
often than not they would fight, but sometimes I get
along and you could actually stick I think it was
up to it was three or four. It might be four.
I think you could stuck up four together, uh, and
how in either horizontally or vertically and have them interact
with each other. And then you could even make blocks
of these cubes like grab a whole bunch, and then
you'd have like essentially an apartment of these little stick figures,
(40:12):
all behaving in various ways. They were pretty limited in
what they would do, and you could play games with
them as well. The games were usually pretty limited, but
it was a cute idea. And so yeah, I had
four of those, and they they're a little wacky, not
not terribly sophisticated compared to some of the other virtual
pets we talked about. But this this has kind of
(40:32):
led to this um this uh market of creating virtual
creatures for people to have real companionship, things like the
Ludo bots, which are play robots that's artificial human companions
like Ibo or Pleio, the little robotic dinosaur. We have
an article about how Pleio works on how stuff works
(40:54):
dot com. It includes pictures of a Pleio that has
been slightly taking apart. I believe it was kind of
traumatic for all of us. Tracy actually wrote that. Our
our site director, Tracy Wilson wrote that article, and I
remember hearing gleeful cackles and seeing lightning and hearing thunder
(41:16):
all from her office as she was working on that article.
True story. Uh. Then there's also Pero, which is a
therapeutic seal robot. I saw this at I want to
say it was a c e S several years ago,
and I also saw it at Japan Fest in UH
in Atlanta, Georgia one year. But it's a robotic seal
(41:37):
that's meant as a companion for senior citizens because in
Japan in particular, they have a rising problem of an
aging population. People are having fewer children, which means that
the population is growing older. The percentage of population entering
their their senior years is growing each year. And uh,
and there's a very real problem of how do you
(41:58):
provide companionship for those people so that they have a
positive outlook. And the Pero Therapeutic Seal robot is kind
of a way of doing that, and it builds within
it a lot of these concepts of the virtual pet
that so it responds to you. It uh, it purrs
or moves in very nice little ways, and it's it's
(42:20):
it's an absolutely adorable robot. I mean, you look at
this thing and you can't help but then yeah, that
looks cuddly. But yeah, before we sign off, I want
to talk about this zombie thing. I want to hear
more about the zombie thing, right right, so so on,
I have no idea how to pronounce this, either sue
beta or soap beta. Yeah, it's it's. It's a website thing. Um.
(42:41):
They had back in two thousand nine. It was on
Valentine's Day. They had a love epidemic and when players
signed on on on this particular Valentine Today, they found
out that every every little critter in this universe had
been infected by some kind of love virus. Which if
anyone else here seeing the documentary Stacy, which is a
Japanese horror film, um, you will you will perhaps have
(43:02):
have already ideas about this. But yeah, uh, and and
this virus would slowly turn these creatures into into these
kind of gory, undead zombie things, and and people wound
up really digging it. They they wound up keeping their
characters as zombies. You could you could eventually cure it
by by applying something called La Morris syllium, which which
(43:26):
I am I am enchanted by. I think that is
terrific um. But but yeah, so you know, there's there's
a little bit of a darkness to a little little
dark corner there, which again I think that I don't know,
you know, you know, some of the stuff is so cute.
While I was doing research, I ran across um a
couple of pages for the current Tamaguchi line, and I
(43:46):
was honestly terrified by the sheer cute level. And I
know that I'm not in the demographic anymore, so, so
I get that it's not aimed at me, but but
just the amount of giant eyes with sparkles in them,
I was why why did they barkle? So it's at
that's what it is. It's and look it up, kids,
it's it's all. It's all very strange to me. You know,
(44:08):
it's there's when when they were doing some initial research
with ferbies, um up at M I T. I think
that M I T helped develop the ferbies, or kids
at might helped develop it, and so so a lot
of the research around it was done by those folks.
But you know, kids kids said that they realized that
the ferbie wasn't alive, but but that it was a
little bit alive in a furby kind of way, not
(44:29):
in a human way, not an animal way, but in
a ferbie way. So it was like a new definition
for life in the sense of well, it's it's more
than something that's inert, but it's not something that's organically living,
right right. And one of the Frederick Kaplan, who's worked
with the IBOW team at Sony in Paris, was saying that, uh,
(44:49):
you know, these creatures, paradoxically are not designed to respect
Asimov's second law of robotics, which is that a robot
must obey human beings orders. They're designed to be autonomous
and to have their own goals, their own wants, their
own needs, and to disobey you sometimes because pet, like
a real pet would yeah, yeah, because I mean with
those behaviors, you end up developing this relationship. If it
(45:11):
always did everything you said, that would probably become fairly
boring fairly quickly. You know. It's it's that that process
of teaching your pet and nurturing your pet that ends
up being so rewarding from UH an owner perspective. Sure,
there has to be a positive feedback loop of you
doing something that has an impact on the pets life
(45:32):
and the pet therefore having an impact on yours. It's
it's it's interesting, and you know, they're like we said,
there's a lot of scholarship on the matter, although to
be fair, the scholarship did kind of died down simply
because the trend didn't really you know, sustain itself in
the United States anyway. But I expect we'll probably see
more of that. I mean, especially as you talk about
the development of things like artificial intelligence. We're going to
(45:55):
see more toys that are incorporating some form of AI
in them, and they'll probably follow a lot of the
same features that digital pets established. And so yeah, it's
an interesting, interesting subject. And that wraps up this classic
episode of tex stuff and all the silliness that ensued.
(46:16):
I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any
suggestions for topics for future tech Stuff episodes, why not
get in touch with me. Use the social media outlets
that we have all been forced to join, Twitter and Facebook.
The handle for both of those is text stuff hs
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
(46:41):
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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