This phenomenon is much older than virtual pets. Children become attached to their stuffed animals, a toy without the ability to interact with us in anyway. I have several adult friends that still have their childhood stuffed animal friends. They can't bear the idea of parting with these childhood "friends".
+CasanisPlays I disagree with this line of thought. An inanimate object does interact with us all the time, the texture of an object invokes feelings, the spacing of features can invoke pleasure or displeasure. Are you so bold that this energy that is created cannot not be evoked in an object. Energy can be neither created nor be destroyed, but it transforms from one form to another.
I ran a browser-based pet game for many years (PsyPets), and it was always interesting to see how attached people got - and how much complexity people attributed to - the pets in the game. players would imagine that a pet was afraid of vases, when I knew that no such thing was coded into the game (I suspect the pet was reporting feeling scared or sad for some other reason, and the player associated it with the recent addition of a vase to their house). since I knew how these things were coded, I was never fooled (or if something unexpected DID happen, it was probably due to a bug), and never became emotionally attached to the things, BUT: I've seen first-hand how willing people are to fill-in-the-gaps, based on their expectations of how living things behave, at the slightest hint of "aliveness", and become attached. I think there's already a spectrum of "how many human needs a pet fills/how demanding is a pet to care for", depending on the pet (from snakes and hamsters to cats, dogs, and even babies - babies are basically pets :P) and in my mind there's no question that artificial creatures can slot somewhere into that spectrum, depending on the complexity of their programming, what aspects of human psychology they hook into, how physical their form is (web page, tamagotchi, robot), etc.
people get emotionally attached to cars, musical instruments, weapons (as seen in medieval fantasy), you name it. in a sense, it's a lot like parasocial interaction: if we imagine it to be alive, we treat it as if it's alive.
+zoob m i have an emotionmal attachment to my laptop, i kid you not. My laptop and my desktop both have names, both have personalities. Both get postive and nagative reinforcement, and ive felt a pain in my heart when either end up getting "hurt".
Pokemon Amie in XY made me feel a lot closer to my Pokemon party. Especially with my Eevee, having raise it from level 2 all the way to a level 100 Sylveon. I didn't care as much about the Pokemon in the previous games as more than tools for victory. XY made me feel like every Pokemon in my party was my own pet to love and care for.
When I was 5 I had a game called Hey You Pikachu, where you basically just hang out with Pikachu. Whenever I could, I played this game and I had a blast with Pikachu. There were all sorts of things we could do together, like babysit Caterpie, have dinner with Charmander, or search for buried treasure. The game is not considered a classic and I it's mostly due to the crappy microphone, but as a kid I thought it was part of Pikachu's personality. I felt was so connected to Pikeachu that even today I still think of him as my best friend.
Nice! Glad to hear you listened to that RadioLab episode because I was going to draw some comparisons/points made from it. Also, I just noticed the can of Surge. Glad to see Game/Show is supporting the revival.
>Dogmeat was killed >Lone Wanderer was frenzied You could say that was a "real feeling" if by "feeling" you mean the vengeful obliteration of every super mutant in the game.
While I have become attached to virtual pets before, I've never been anywhere near as attached to one as I was to my own dog. So I think it is more of a matter of degrees, with more lifelike things emotionally investing us more than less lifelike things. Also, I think that the amount of time you invest into your pets, whether real or virtual, plays a major role in how emotionally invested in them you become. For example, when I was in middle school, my family raised kittens and sold them off after they proved to be capable of being away from the mother. However, one day, two of the 4 week-old kittens escaped the house in the middle of winter and froze to death. My whole family was sad, but we got over it in less than a month. Contrast that to the death of my 15 year-old dog this past February, which I still haven't gotten over entirely (and probably won't for years). So, there's certainly a time-investment element to this.
This reminds me of Nintendogs an Nintendogs 3ds, I feel like a horrible person if I didn't play the game. Glad and heartbroken for not touching the games for 3 years.
+Gabrielle Barlow Personally, I can't touch Nintendogs ever again. I would be immediately overcome with guilt at seeing my German Shepard and Chihuahua flea-ridden and starving to death from a decade of neglect!
Yeah just having a weekend when I had no school work. I would play and my Nintendogd hungry, thirst and stinky made me fell like the worst person ever.
I used to play Runescape and I loved the stray dog. He would follow you around and be happy if you gave it bones. A whole bunch of people would get a little annoyed by the clingy dog because it was patchy and surrounded by flies, but I never did because it never hindered my abilities. In fact, not only did his appearance make me feel sorry for the poor guy, but he was practical to have around. In some situations he would create a barrier between me and an enemy so that I could practice ranged attacks or magic and the AI pathfinder wouldn't know how to get to me. I doubt that was intended and was just a hiccup in the code but it still made me appreciate the guy.
My family has had many pets over the years, and I've never formed an emotional attachment to any of them. In games, however, I have become very invested in the well-being of the pets (and cubes) under my care.
Just to clarify this: Pokemon has released virtual pets before, they were called the Pokemon Pikachu& Pokemon Pikachu 2 respectively. If you took care of your Pikachu, you could get point which you spend to transfer a mystery gift of your choice to a Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal game via infrared signal
I get emotionally attached to all kinds of virtual pet. Petz, Tamagotchis, Furbys, Neopets, Pokemon, Digimon, Spectrobes, Webkinz, Doodles in ToonTown Online, Chocobos in FFXIV, dragons in that HTTYD MMO, that one handheld Littlest Pet Shop toy they made when I was little...
I love my virtual pets soooo much, sometimes I cry when I have to delete their app, or when my GameBoy loses power so I have to leave Lovie and Woofie behind.
im surprised pokemon wasn't mentioned in this video, I myself have grown attached to stuffed animals even though they dont have arteficial interactions they are still super awesome
I can''t help but wonder what E.T.A. Hofffmann would have thought of this. For those who don't know, E.T.A. Hoffmann (in addition to writing the children's story that inspired The Nutcracker) wrote a bunch of stories about how bizarre and horrifying it would be to mistaken an automaton (self-operating machine) for a human being and get attached. One of the more notable is a story entitled "The Sandman", which also served as inspiration for a ballet, though with a completely different tone.
If we're counting them as a form of virtual pet - a digital life form that you feed, nurture and direct - then the Sims must hold the record for emotional attachment (when you're not deliberately killing them off, of course). Not only do you see them live, you get to actually create their life. You match their parents up, name them, later pick a mate for them and carry on through their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren... Check out the player challenges like Legacy, where your have to keep a sim's family going for 13 generations. When I had to upgrade laptops all the way back in 2009 and lost all my save files, I lost my favorite sim. I was so invested in him and his family, I wrote short fiction about him to keep the character alive. I even thought his name might be good one day for a baby (Why not? My friend named her children after Earthbound, and another after Sailor Moon characters) I still remember him even now, and I go out of my way not to make him again or make another sim close to him in appearance - it wouldn't be right.
The closest emotional connection I had in a game was Agro in Shadow of the Colossus. It was the only character that I could interact with and show emotions toward without having to kill it or be killed by it.
The Monster Rancher 2 for Playstation is a game I still play because of this attachment. You basically raise your monsters and based on diet, breed, and how you train them each monster is a little unique. Each monster only has a set life span, so instead of letting them pass on you can freeze them and later use it in combination with another frozen monster to create another one. That new monster then has inherited the stronger stats of their parents, along with a chance to have some similar personality traits. It's such a hard game to leave, because I have generations of monsters that I have loved and cared for individually. I will morn when the outdated hardware fails and I can no longer continue caring for them.
i had an emotional attachment to the spike drone from cod advance warfare, mostly due to the fact that it came back, if i lost it and couldn't get it to come back to me would literally be upset and alway end up running in the line of fire just to save my little buddy, I even gave him a name, his name was 'Jeff'
I had a digi-pet thing on my memory card that came with the dreamcast. And I had a digipet thing that was released around the same time on a tiny device. They felt like real pets. The fact that my memory card broke and that digipet thing stopped working crushed me. Not like losing a pet, but relatively close. Though in games where your "pet" can die like Fallout I just kill the pet or avoid getting one altogether if I know it can die easily. Better then loving it and getting hurt later on when a random nade kills it. The reason why we love them (didn't watch the video yet) is for one they are easier to maintain to some degree. And we know they will live forever if its virtual. We can change them around easier. No clean up. Doesn't really cost us anything. I've had virtual pets from cats all the way up to ugly creatures. In some games I even consider a pet something like lets say a golem you summon. Though in other cases like the portal cube (what was its name)... I had less attachment.
While playing through Borderlands, my brother and I shared genuine sadness after the fight with Bloodwing. Probably because he played Mordecai the first time around, but still.
I got kinda attached to Wander's horse Argo from Shadow of the Colossus. Apart from the Colossi, Totally Not Sinister Voice from the Sky and some lizards, Argo's the only other thing you interact with. With the vast stretches of land between each Colossus and the fact Argo's almost required for some Colossi you kind of naturally grow attached. I didn't even realize it until a certain, late-game event majorly bummed me out.
I /have/ to share on this one. I had a chao in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. My friend gave it to me before I had my own game cube and when I got it we transferred it over. I loved it but when it went to die, it was just going to die, not regenerate, not be reborn. I desperately restarted over and over trying to save its life when I finally made the mistake of turning off my console mid save by mistake. All the chao's died that day... I entered a period of mourning and guilt after that... I had nightmares. I wish I was exaggerating but I wasn't in the slightest.
I think this can also be applied to any video game character, especially one that is supposed to be your child, such as Morgan from Fire Emblem Awakening.
I think that the "Pokemon Amie" feature in pokemonX,Y, and ORAS is a great example of emotional bonding with digital creatures. This feature is ment to help the player bond with thier pokemon through minigames, feeding and petting. Pokemon react happily when being fed, played with, or petted in the right area, but react angrily when petted in the wrong area. This application also helps boost the pokemons happiness and friendship levels.
i had a really special relationship to the pet they give you at the 1st of summer in stardew valley like i would not let a day go by that the water bowl was not filled
In Pakka Pets I got so attached to my Rex that even when it didn't evolve into a Hazel I couldn't bare to release the Robbit I got instead. I eventually fulfilled my dream of growing that Rex into a perfect pet, just a little later than expected. When it was time to get a new pet I kept procrastinating and keeping the Marlie that Rex had become to "get me just a few more hearts."
I've had hundreds and hundreds of emotional connections to digital "beings" that I've forced to fight other digital beings until they faint and then stick them in a box for years without contact.
I remember when i bought pokemon X and picked up my charmander when i got to Sycamore, a few minutes later i was in pokemon amie playin with it, that charmander felt diferent from other starters, the others were like partners/soilders, this one was like a friend or a pet, and i felt so happy when it eventually evolved into charizard and i got it to mega evolve, and i hadn't felt so happy for a program since i was playing FireRed when i was like seven years old and my charmeleon evolved into charizard, so yeah, i'd say that it really made me feel something for a creature that doesn't exist.
Things to think about: Reading I, Robot (READING not the movie with Will Smith), Watching AI (Remember, it ends at the blue fairy, there is nothing after that. Turn it off and don't bother with the credits), Or Bicentennial Man.
+For The Wynne I also recommend reading The Stories of Ibis by Hiroshi Yamamoto. A BRILLIANT read which touches on a lot of things Jamin was getting at here, and even more. I recommend it to anyone!
The Creatures from Black & White were the best virtual pet for me. Peter Molyneux is a genius. I don't know how the algorithm behind the Creature's behaviour learning ability worked. Maybe it was somehow predefined, a cheap trick. I was astonished at its competence and life-like behaviour, every time I played the game. This is the only game that I've kept installed on my hard drive consistently since 2005 and replay it every now and then, because of the strong emotion, that the Creatures create in me, every time when they behave like a sentient being.
I'm surprised you didn't mention pokemon at all. I have such an emotional attachment to my party by the end of the game that I can never erase the only save file in order to play again
Humans are emotional animals so it only makes sense that we see the world thru our emotions right. I think people get too catch up on the things not being alive/"real".
+Casey Jewels Your dog is millions of times more complex, you can perceive it more directly (touch, smell, etc.), and you are socially conditioned to care about live animals, so that's not surprising.
Can't beleive went a whole episode on this without talking about some of Nintendo's best creations namely: Pokemon, Nintendogs and even more: Animal Crossing!! Though technically not pets, animal Crossing is amazing at tapping into people's feelings and attachments to villagers. The differing personalities have something to do with this. But also the consistency between games, being able to see your fave villager from Wild World in New Leaf =
an emotional attachment to a "maid" partner thing in Mabinogi before they stopped giving story updates or bug fixes then went on from it but it took a lot of time to do so as I got that attached to her even though she is just a programmed bit of modifiable code
In a couple Harvest Moon games(now called Story of Seasons) I had to many animals butI couldn't bare to part with them. When one dies of old age I'm bummed. Speaking of Tamagotchi: I stopped writing this comment to find out why my Tamagotchi mix was beeping. He was dreaming about ghosts.
It's not just virtual pets. when I was younger I got emotionally attached to dolls and stuffed animals and they weren't exactly interactive outside of my imagination.
Empathy is one of humanity's strongest tools for survival, it allow us to internally model what other entities are thinking/feeling and plan actions accordingly. However, our ability developed in a world where things were either animal, plant, or mineral. We can push our brains to fiddle with that basic taxonomy, but it will generally default back.
Actually come to think of it, I don't think I was ever really all that attached to tamagatchi, and I'm a lot more empathetic than most people(I do grow attached to characters when they have _actual_ character). I was a lot more naive as a kid, but I think even then my cynical nature that's more prominent as an adult was at least a bit already in place, like Tamagachi was more of a time waster and back then I was more prone to wasting my time on what are now such seemingly trivial things.
I think the line between Virtual Pets and Real Pets and will for the most part remain blurred by the uncanny valley effect. Although I imagine that future generations might not see it this way. For example look at Tamagotchi, sure it was marketed to kids anyway but I think a large part of its effect came from the fact that children playing with their Tamagotchi where most likely at an early age when they were less likely to be disturbed by something like that since it wasn't so alien to them. I think this is backed up by the fact that generally the older someone is the more they might be disturbed by the uncanny valley effect whenever they see a robot try to imitate a human however if a youth grew up in that environment I imagine it would seem natural to them. I've studied robots, the history of robotics and build my own robots. I'm a young man but still I think this makes me less effected by uncanny valley than most would be and personally the thing that bothers me about it now is not seeing something I find a little off-putting like "Pepper's" constant smile, but rather seeing others go past it oblivious, with seemingly no effect on them and seeing someone develop an emotional connection to a machine is far more haunting for me.
I feel like Cortana fits more into the realm of tv and movie characters. She's a sentient program, which makes her a person, not just lines of code. Think Data vs laptop. The dynamic there is very different. Also, I have this deep concern at this point that these technologies are moving forward possibly too fast. Emotional, learning androids... The development of thinking, learning cars... It's only a short matter of time before something sparks and we've GOT a REALLY Data. And what's going to happen then? Will we lock him up in some lab for study? Will he languish robbed of personal rights and liberties for decades? We need to be looking at Star Trek and things like Ex Machina and other scifi efforts to explore these issues and actually address them BEFORE it becomes a problem. Something we historically suck at.
It's fascinating how there's this sheer love for virtual pets coupled with this mutual fear of sentient AI. I've gotten back in to Animal Crossing recently and I have remembered some of the feelings I've had towards different neighbours. Overall the AI is quite simple, but the addition of appealing or unappealing personalities gave me particular disdain for some of my town's citizens, most notably ones who acted passive aggressive. Perhaps there is an uncanny valley for AI personality as well, where cute, simplistic reactions are endearing while the further you go, the more human they act, the more questionable it becomes. I have had discussions with friends who are of faith, most notably Christian, and one thing I've found is some of them honestly don't think that animals can or do have personalities. Perhaps it stems from the concept that only humans have souls according to their religion, but perhaps that's how people look at Artificial Intelligence. Animals' emotions are more simplistic to some extent, which gives you the affection you crave without any other real meaning behind it besides just attention and love. I'm kind of curious to see how far virtual pets will go.
I remember being horrified while watching my brother catch Nugs to feed to someone in Dragon Age. And although I never finished Assassin's Creed 3, I racked up hours of gameplay because I simply could not stop petting every cat, dog, chicken, and cow that crossed my path. I also hated(HATED) fighting wolves, etc. Oddly enough, I had no issue with my character desynchronizing or other humans dying in the game... The same goes for humans in movies, come to think of it. If someone runs upstairs in a horror movie, I'm like "LOL IDIOT" but I can't stand when movies kill animals for shock value. I guess I feel attachment and a sense of responsibility toward representations of things I care for in real life. I can see myself feeling similarly towards anything that shared characteristics with those things.
I will admit there is little to no difference in the way we react to real and to simulated emotion. BUT there is a huge difference between simulation and real feelings. I personally feel the big step however will not be better simulated thought, it will be daily assistance. right now these virtual pets are not very capable of providing much to our lives, but when they are capable of performing a wide range of dynamic tasks (Fold laundry, get a drink, answer the door, call for help) and even improving the proficiency of those tasks there will be a much deeper attachment.
I developed a much stronger connection to the characters of Undertale than any digital pet. Idk, making me have to take care of a pet in a game, or even just having one follow me around never did anything, but put in a personality and I'll act like they're a friend I knew my whole life.
I haven't played Undertale yet (though from what I've heard it's sounds really cool) but, in a similar vein to what you are saying I tend to form a strong emotional connection to the character I am controlling in a 3rd person game, not always as "my avatar" and by extension me, but as this little person or "friend" that I am leading through this adventure that has a personality completely separate from my own :)
I don't think this is solely an effect of software and technology. In the '70s, millions of people literally bought a box with strips of paper in it as a "nest" that held their very own _pet rock_, some of which didn't even have googly eyes glued to them. Before that, things like cars and planes were given pet names, and of course for centuries before that all manner of ships and galleons had better lives than most humans and were absolutely mourned like dead family when they were wrecked. It's just so much more deep and complex because now we can make them talk back to us.
No! In Mario the metal blocks aren't suspended in mid-air, they're connected to something behind the picture plane, i.e. we are only seeing a cross section of the structure. Well, that's what I used to think, a statement I would passionately profess to my playmates... until I played a 3D Mario game :) Now I just suppose they're connected to something in an unseen fourth dimension, but that's tantamount to saying "they're floating" so I guess I lose.
until recently I didn't get a opportunities going out to play with a lot of virtual pets cuz my mom didn't really like video games and hated Tamagotchis. about a year or two ago I finally bought myself a used 3ds XL I'm one of the first games I'm up for it was Pokemon X and I got so attached to my pokemon in that game especially my sylveon name Emma. unfortunately I ended up losing the game when it fell out of my game bag. I looked everywhere I could but I never found it. who was so distraught I cried all weekend and taking Monday off of work. I know that sounds a little crazy but I really got emotionally attached to my pokemon and if I thought I was never going to see them again was like losing and actual pet to me.
I think "emotional" responses and actions made (or not made) by things is one strong and leading cause of emotional attachment to those things, cut at the same time i think it's not the only phenomenon that makes attachment grow strong. Lemme explain. I thought about my first pokemon nuzlocke playthrough (that was a total failure. Misty got me. Oh, Igni, you were a fine charmander), the challange in which you can have a limited amount of pokemons, you have to name them all, and if it faints, it DIES and you have to release it. During that playthrough i clearly couldn't see any of my pokemon reactions, feelings, actions, moves and dances. They were literally a bad-drawn ill-sounding splashes on a little screen, but goddamn if i was attached to them. I didn't have to pet them, feed them, clean them like with a tamagotchi but still, i mourned a lot. Same thing goes with the companion cube from portal! Every other cube in there is just a cube, but THAT one, oh my, has a little heart and it's CALLED "companion cube", that's different! So it's natural to project some of your emotions and feelings into that cube. So i'm starting to believe that names have a powerful meaning in this, and i'm pretty sure about it when..well, i have an emotional attachment to a particular beer. That beer has no name, it's a beer, and when i drink it, well, it's not there anymore. So why am i feeling this way when i have that beer in my hand? Well i thought about that for quite some times (too much) and i came to a conclusion: in my head that beer has history. I remember when i drank it the first time, and how pale, fresh and hoppy it was. That beer was and is with me whenever i feel like it and slowly became something with meaning. So, yeah. I think history does it. Pokemons, the companion cube, the first car you buy, the sword you used to slain countless orcs, the stuffed animal you had for your 5th birthday, that book you thought was a bad one but than you read it anyway and changed your mind, all with history. And that's powerful. Oh gawd i always end up talking too much Bye!
Our tendency to project on inanimate objects will likely get us in trouble as robots become more and more "intelligent. " What worries me is whether we can ever program robots to feel real emotions or if they will just learn to make movements and sounds as a reaction to ours.
Have I ever had an emotional attachment to an animal in a game? Fallout 3's Dogmeat and Fallout New Vegas's Rex. I used mods to make them essential because I was TERRIFIED they would die in my game and I'd be HEARTBROKEN!
In Fable 2 you had this dog, and during the game you really grow attached to it. I had this so much that at the end of the game (Spoiler allert) When your family and dog die i just couldn't chose ANY other option then bringing them back to life, just for the dog...I was emotionally incapable, even in multiple play-throughs to chose one of the other two options....totally weird...
+Klaas Land I chose the Sacrifice ending, and immediately regretted it. Wandering the world suddenly felt pointless without the dog and knowing there was no family to bring gifts back to at the end of my adventures. I took one last world tour to see if there were any changes to the cities. There were no changes; just townsfolk living their normal lives. I was ready to delete this gamesave forever, until I noticed a new statue. It was built and dedicated to the Hero who returned the children, friends, and parents slain by Lucien. Their families. It was like a hit straight to the gut. I had felt sad and alone about losing my virtual family, and this was like shoving my head in a bucket of ice. These villagers went through exactly what I was going through, and I had seriously considered deleting the save and leaving those families destroyed, just to keep mine. It still hurt...but I didn't regret the choice anymore.
+Alan Sherrill Know the feeling of loosing someone you are attached to (even if they are not "real"), it sucks and hurts because it feels like a real loss, it is often that the most meaningful actions are the saddest also. Nice going buddy.
Have you heard of the Pleo controversy? There's a robotic dinosaur pet named Pleo who, it turns out, has programmed responses for being tortured. Some people demonstrated this, and... well, the video was likened to animal cruelty.
I wish there were links to the sources that are cited so we could read on our own. The washington post article was easy to find but the legal precedences to be set up against companies using virtual pets against consumers and such I would love to find for myself and read.
I'm surprised that Philip K. Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep (the inspiration for Blade Runner) didn't come up in this episode - that seems to me to be the ultimate depiction of virtual pets. Ironically, in that world, a virtual or android pet means you can't afford a real one and thus has larger socio-economic implications for the individual.
When I played Half Life 2, I only used my shotgun. I would shoot guys I should be sniping with it and everything. I named it Francisco. When I lost my weapons for the powered up gravity gun, Francisco floated in front of my face as if he was saying goodbye before being disintegrated. I literally screamed at my TV. The rest of the game was a quest to avenge my fallen friend.
I think it also sometimes has to do (at least for me) with the projection of emotion and personality when it comes to connecting with less responsive virtual beings or inanimate objects (ie the Companion Cube) when you are carrying it around, it can display virtually any emotion and this feed any sort of social need. With things like virtual pets that have programmed responses, for me that takes a bit of the fun and imagination out of it which is why in most games I play I tend to get more attached to objects than team mates 😆
"How are their emotions any less legitimate than our own?" Because we consciously feel things. You can't even call what they do "having emotions". They only act. They do not experience. The robot feels emotions as much as a rock with a smiley face drawn on it does. Why is that even a question? Yes, at the route of both of our "emotions" we are machines, and the difference /is/ complexity, but the complexity of our own minds is what allows for a very important and defining quality of emotions, the fact the we actually consciously experience those things as apposed to only acting or performing. That's what actually makes our emotions important, it's what makes empathy and decreasing shitty things in the world important. A mosquito might dodge your hand because it's wired to, but it doesn't feel fear for it's life. It might try to escape from a situation where it's body is being damaged, but it doesn't feel pain, /because they are not conscious/. And that's how they are different, because they don't actually experience emotions. Once they reach the level of complexity where they are able to, then yes, they are legitimate, but they have not reached that point. At this point they are imitations.
This phenomenon is much older than virtual pets. Children become attached to their stuffed animals, a toy without the ability to interact with us in anyway. I have several adult friends that still have their childhood stuffed animal friends. They can't bear the idea of parting with these childhood "friends".
+CasanisPlays that's a great angle to bring up~!
+CasanisPlays Good point! -jj
+CasanisPlays I disagree with this line of thought. An inanimate object does interact with us all the time, the texture of an object invokes feelings, the spacing of features can invoke pleasure or displeasure. Are you so bold that this energy that is created cannot not be evoked in an object. Energy can be neither created nor be destroyed, but it transforms from one form to another.
I ran a browser-based pet game for many years (PsyPets), and it was always interesting to see how attached people got - and how much complexity people attributed to - the pets in the game. players would imagine that a pet was afraid of vases, when I knew that no such thing was coded into the game (I suspect the pet was reporting feeling scared or sad for some other reason, and the player associated it with the recent addition of a vase to their house).
since I knew how these things were coded, I was never fooled (or if something unexpected DID happen, it was probably due to a bug), and never became emotionally attached to the things, BUT: I've seen first-hand how willing people are to fill-in-the-gaps, based on their expectations of how living things behave, at the slightest hint of "aliveness", and become attached.
I think there's already a spectrum of "how many human needs a pet fills/how demanding is a pet to care for", depending on the pet (from snakes and hamsters to cats, dogs, and even babies - babies are basically pets :P) and in my mind there's no question that artificial creatures can slot somewhere into that spectrum, depending on the complexity of their programming, what aspects of human psychology they hook into, how physical their form is (web page, tamagotchi, robot), etc.
people get emotionally attached to cars, musical instruments, weapons (as seen in medieval fantasy), you name it. in a sense, it's a lot like parasocial interaction: if we imagine it to be alive, we treat it as if it's alive.
+zoob m i have an emotionmal attachment to my laptop, i kid you not. My laptop and my desktop both have names, both have personalities. Both get postive and nagative reinforcement, and ive felt a pain in my heart when either end up getting "hurt".
***** who in what?
+Fighter_jet210 Gaming I feel your pain. -jj
Virtual Pets --all the love and affection of a real pet but _without_ the poop cleaning.
+Paradox Acres You have to clean up Tomagachi poop
+Brook T You don't have to touch it though. You just press a button, a little animation happens, and it disappears.
Brook T Virtual poop doesn't count.
+Paradox Acres Virtual pets don't count :P
+mattwo7 This needs to be a real-world pet innovation. -jj
Pokemon Amie in XY made me feel a lot closer to my Pokemon party. Especially with my Eevee, having raise it from level 2 all the way to a level 100 Sylveon. I didn't care as much about the Pokemon in the previous games as more than tools for victory. XY made me feel like every Pokemon in my party was my own pet to love and care for.
I can re-call two virtual pets in games that I got attached to! The dog in Fable 2 and the dog in the second season of Telltale's The Walking Dead!
+Jake A Oh! And, Agro in Shadow of the Colossus!
When I was 5 I had a game called Hey You Pikachu, where you basically just hang out with Pikachu. Whenever I could, I played this game and I had a blast with Pikachu. There were all sorts of things we could do together, like babysit Caterpie, have dinner with Charmander, or search for buried treasure. The game is not considered a classic and I it's mostly due to the crappy microphone, but as a kid I thought it was part of Pikachu's personality. I felt was so connected to Pikeachu that even today I still think of him as my best friend.
Nice! Glad to hear you listened to that RadioLab episode because I was going to draw some comparisons/points made from it.
Also, I just noticed the can of Surge. Glad to see Game/Show is supporting the revival.
>Dogmeat was killed
>Lone Wanderer was frenzied
You could say that was a "real feeling" if by "feeling" you mean the vengeful obliteration of every super mutant in the game.
LOL
>trying to greentext on youtube
While I have become attached to virtual pets before, I've never been anywhere near as attached to one as I was to my own dog. So I think it is more of a matter of degrees, with more lifelike things emotionally investing us more than less lifelike things.
Also, I think that the amount of time you invest into your pets, whether real or virtual, plays a major role in how emotionally invested in them you become. For example, when I was in middle school, my family raised kittens and sold them off after they proved to be capable of being away from the mother. However, one day, two of the 4 week-old kittens escaped the house in the middle of winter and froze to death. My whole family was sad, but we got over it in less than a month. Contrast that to the death of my 15 year-old dog this past February, which I still haven't gotten over entirely (and probably won't for years).
So, there's certainly a time-investment element to this.
This reminds me of Nintendogs an Nintendogs 3ds, I feel like a horrible person if I didn't play the game. Glad and heartbroken for not touching the games for 3 years.
+Gabrielle Barlow Personally, I can't touch Nintendogs ever again. I would be immediately overcome with guilt at seeing my German Shepard and Chihuahua flea-ridden and starving to death from a decade of neglect!
Ikw
Yeah just having a weekend when I had no school work. I would play and my Nintendogd hungry, thirst and stinky made me fell like the worst person ever.
My mom found my Tamagotchi a couple months ago and sent it to me. I haven't decided whether to change out the batteries and take it out for a spin.
Just do it!
do itt :D
I used to play Runescape and I loved the stray dog. He would follow you around and be happy if you gave it bones. A whole bunch of people would get a little annoyed by the clingy dog because it was patchy and surrounded by flies, but I never did because it never hindered my abilities. In fact, not only did his appearance make me feel sorry for the poor guy, but he was practical to have around. In some situations he would create a barrier between me and an enemy so that I could practice ranged attacks or magic and the AI pathfinder wouldn't know how to get to me. I doubt that was intended and was just a hiccup in the code but it still made me appreciate the guy.
Haha - that final "totally nuts" pun was great. Thanks!
I used to cry when my monsters in Monster Rancher died...
Speaking of cool dogs in games Secret of Evermore was the virtual pet that meant the most to me.
My family has had many pets over the years, and I've never formed an emotional attachment to any of them. In games, however, I have become very invested in the well-being of the pets (and cubes) under my care.
*before watching the video*
Pokemon counts as a vertical pet right?
+Type Masters maybe a horizontal one :p
+Wednesday's Serial I prefer diagonal pets honestly.
+JoJoXGamer i prefer 4th dimensional pets myself
Just to clarify this: Pokemon has released virtual pets before, they were called the Pokemon Pikachu& Pokemon Pikachu 2 respectively. If you took care of your Pikachu, you could get point which you spend to transfer a mystery gift of your choice to a Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal game via infrared signal
no, only a horizontal
That explains why I loved my Chao in SA2(B) so much as well as all of my Pokemon
I don't know about emotional connections to animals in games, but I sure as hell grieved for Thane in Mass Effect.
I get emotionally attached to all kinds of virtual pet. Petz, Tamagotchis, Furbys, Neopets, Pokemon, Digimon, Spectrobes, Webkinz, Doodles in ToonTown Online, Chocobos in FFXIV, dragons in that HTTYD MMO, that one handheld Littlest Pet Shop toy they made when I was little...
The Tamagotchi Effect is the perfect way to describe the way I feel for the wifi.
I love my virtual pets soooo much, sometimes I cry when I have to delete their app, or when my GameBoy loses power so I have to leave Lovie and Woofie behind.
Every time I have an emotional attachment to a game character, I try to suppress that feeling that I know it's fake.
im surprised pokemon wasn't mentioned in this video, I myself have grown attached to stuffed animals even though they dont have arteficial interactions they are still super awesome
I can''t help but wonder what E.T.A. Hofffmann would have thought of this. For those who don't know, E.T.A. Hoffmann (in addition to writing the children's story that inspired The Nutcracker) wrote a bunch of stories about how bizarre and horrifying it would be to mistaken an automaton (self-operating machine) for a human being and get attached. One of the more notable is a story entitled "The Sandman", which also served as inspiration for a ballet, though with a completely different tone.
If we're counting them as a form of virtual pet - a digital life form that you feed, nurture and direct - then the Sims must hold the record for emotional attachment (when you're not deliberately killing them off, of course). Not only do you see them live, you get to actually create their life. You match their parents up, name them, later pick a mate for them and carry on through their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren... Check out the player challenges like Legacy, where your have to keep a sim's family going for 13 generations.
When I had to upgrade laptops all the way back in 2009 and lost all my save files, I lost my favorite sim. I was so invested in him and his family, I wrote short fiction about him to keep the character alive. I even thought his name might be good one day for a baby (Why not? My friend named her children after Earthbound, and another after Sailor Moon characters)
I still remember him even now, and I go out of my way not to make him again or make another sim close to him in appearance - it wouldn't be right.
Yeah, furby's make my heart flutter alright... in fear.
The closest emotional connection I had in a game was Agro in Shadow of the Colossus. It was the only character that I could interact with and show emotions toward without having to kill it or be killed by it.
The Monster Rancher 2 for Playstation is a game I still play because of this attachment. You basically raise your monsters and based on diet, breed, and how you train them each monster is a little unique. Each monster only has a set life span, so instead of letting them pass on you can freeze them and later use it in combination with another frozen monster to create another one. That new monster then has inherited the stronger stats of their parents, along with a chance to have some similar personality traits. It's such a hard game to leave, because I have generations of monsters that I have loved and cared for individually. I will morn when the outdated hardware fails and I can no longer continue caring for them.
eventually, we'll reach "Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep" territory...
i had an emotional attachment to the spike drone from cod advance warfare, mostly due to the fact that it came back, if i lost it and couldn't get it to come back to me would literally be upset and alway end up running in the line of fire just to save my little buddy, I even gave him a name, his name was 'Jeff'
I had a digi-pet thing on my memory card that came with the dreamcast. And I had a digipet thing that was released around the same time on a tiny device. They felt like real pets. The fact that my memory card broke and that digipet thing stopped working crushed me. Not like losing a pet, but relatively close. Though in games where your "pet" can die like Fallout I just kill the pet or avoid getting one altogether if I know it can die easily. Better then loving it and getting hurt later on when a random nade kills it.
The reason why we love them (didn't watch the video yet) is for one they are easier to maintain to some degree. And we know they will live forever if its virtual. We can change them around easier. No clean up. Doesn't really cost us anything. I've had virtual pets from cats all the way up to ugly creatures. In some games I even consider a pet something like lets say a golem you summon. Though in other cases like the portal cube (what was its name)... I had less attachment.
While playing through Borderlands, my brother and I shared genuine sadness after the fight with Bloodwing. Probably because he played Mordecai the first time around, but still.
I just kept thinking about roombas throughout this entire video. I love my roomba, her name is Raleigh.
I got kinda attached to Wander's horse Argo from Shadow of the Colossus. Apart from the Colossi, Totally Not Sinister Voice from the Sky and some lizards, Argo's the only other thing you interact with. With the vast stretches of land between each Colossus and the fact Argo's almost required for some Colossi you kind of naturally grow attached. I didn't even realize it until a certain, late-game event majorly bummed me out.
Also, one should play Lifeline. It brings out an emotional relationship with you and Taylor, and I cried when I felt I had driven him to suicide.
I /have/ to share on this one. I had a chao in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. My friend gave it to me before I had my own game cube and when I got it we transferred it over. I loved it but when it went to die, it was just going to die, not regenerate, not be reborn. I desperately restarted over and over trying to save its life when I finally made the mistake of turning off my console mid save by mistake. All the chao's died that day... I entered a period of mourning and guilt after that... I had nightmares. I wish I was exaggerating but I wasn't in the slightest.
I think this can also be applied to any video game character, especially one that is supposed to be your child, such as Morgan from Fire Emblem Awakening.
I think that the "Pokemon Amie" feature in pokemonX,Y, and ORAS is a great example of emotional bonding with digital creatures. This feature is ment to help the player bond with thier pokemon through minigames, feeding and petting. Pokemon react happily when being fed, played with, or petted in the right area, but react angrily when petted in the wrong area. This application also helps boost the pokemons happiness and friendship levels.
i had a really special relationship to the pet they give you at the 1st of summer in stardew valley like i would not let a day go by that the water bowl was not filled
In Pakka Pets I got so attached to my Rex that even when it didn't evolve into a Hazel I couldn't bare to release the Robbit I got instead. I eventually fulfilled my dream of growing that Rex into a perfect pet, just a little later than expected. When it was time to get a new pet I kept procrastinating and keeping the Marlie that Rex had become to "get me just a few more hearts."
We're one magical apocalypse away from Shadowrun.
The tamagotchi effect is basically me playing pokemon. Seriously, though, people who have watched or played nuzlockes know.
I've had hundreds and hundreds of emotional connections to digital "beings" that I've forced to fight other digital beings until they faint and then stick them in a box for years without contact.
I remember when i bought pokemon X and picked up my charmander when i got to Sycamore, a few minutes later i was in pokemon amie playin with it, that charmander felt diferent from other starters, the others were like partners/soilders, this one was like a friend or a pet, and i felt so happy when it eventually evolved into charizard and i got it to mega evolve, and i hadn't felt so happy for a program since i was playing FireRed when i was like seven years old and my charmeleon evolved into charizard, so yeah, i'd say that it really made me feel something for a creature that doesn't exist.
Things to think about: Reading I, Robot (READING not the movie with Will Smith), Watching AI (Remember, it ends at the blue fairy, there is nothing after that. Turn it off and don't bother with the credits), Or Bicentennial Man.
+For The Wynne I also recommend reading The Stories of Ibis by Hiroshi Yamamoto. A BRILLIANT read which touches on a lot of things Jamin was getting at here, and even more. I recommend it to anyone!
If anybody hasn't seen Monica Ray's comic, My Friend Tamagotchi, look it up. It's fantastic (and relevant)
The Creatures from Black & White were the best virtual pet for me. Peter Molyneux is a genius. I don't know how the algorithm behind the Creature's behaviour learning ability worked. Maybe it was somehow predefined, a cheap trick. I was astonished at its competence and life-like behaviour, every time I played the game. This is the only game that I've kept installed on my hard drive consistently since 2005 and replay it every now and then, because of the strong emotion, that the Creatures create in me, every time when they behave like a sentient being.
I'm surprised you didn't mention pokemon at all. I have such an emotional attachment to my party by the end of the game that I can never erase the only save file in order to play again
Interestingly, Cortana is the only virtual NPC to actually come into our real lives in the form of Windows 10.
in a similar vein I grew pretty attached to Nick Valentine in Fallout 4
I can always nickname my virtual Arcanine after Lassie~
Humans are emotional animals so it only makes sense that we see the world thru our emotions right. I think people get too catch up on the things not being alive/"real".
I'm emotionally attached to my Pokemon, but I'll always love my flesh-and-blood dog more.
+Casey Jewels Your dog is millions of times more complex, you can perceive it more directly (touch, smell, etc.), and you are socially conditioned to care about live animals, so that's not surprising.
Led Zeppelin's All Of My Love was cathartic to me only because of my Heart Gold Chikorita, loved that gal. :(
I'll admit I find my self often personifying my car.
Can't beleive went a whole episode on this without talking about some of Nintendo's best creations
namely: Pokemon, Nintendogs
and even more: Animal Crossing!!
Though technically not pets, animal Crossing is amazing at tapping into people's feelings and attachments to villagers. The differing personalities have something to do with this. But also the consistency between games, being able to see your fave villager from Wild World in New Leaf =
when i was a kid i used to play neopets. haha...hah....fun times.
...
..
i still play neopets. ;~;
Barkspawn (the mabari) and Dogmeat....they are just awesome...
an emotional attachment to a "maid" partner thing in Mabinogi before they stopped giving story updates or bug fixes then went on from it but it took a lot of time to do so as I got that attached to her even though she is just a programmed bit of modifiable code
In a couple Harvest Moon games(now called Story of Seasons) I had to many animals butI couldn't bare to part with them. When one dies of old age I'm bummed.
Speaking of Tamagotchi: I stopped writing this comment to find out why my Tamagotchi mix was beeping. He was dreaming about ghosts.
It's not just virtual pets. when I was younger I got emotionally attached to dolls and stuffed animals and they weren't exactly interactive outside of my imagination.
Empathy is one of humanity's strongest tools for survival, it allow us to internally model what other entities are thinking/feeling and plan actions accordingly. However, our ability developed in a world where things were either animal, plant, or mineral. We can push our brains to fiddle with that basic taxonomy, but it will generally default back.
Actually come to think of it, I don't think I was ever really all that attached to tamagatchi, and I'm a lot more empathetic than most people(I do grow attached to characters when they have _actual_ character). I was a lot more naive as a kid, but I think even then my cynical nature that's more prominent as an adult was at least a bit already in place, like Tamagachi was more of a time waster and back then I was more prone to wasting my time on what are now such seemingly trivial things.
I think the line between Virtual Pets and Real Pets and will for the most part remain blurred by the uncanny valley effect.
Although I imagine that future generations might not see it this way. For example look at Tamagotchi, sure it was marketed to kids anyway but I think a large part of its effect came from the fact that children playing with their Tamagotchi where most likely at an early age when they were less likely to be disturbed by something like that since it wasn't so alien to them. I think this is backed up by the fact that generally the older someone is the more they might be disturbed by the uncanny valley effect whenever they see a robot try to imitate a human however if a youth grew up in that environment I imagine it would seem natural to them.
I've studied robots, the history of robotics and build my own robots. I'm a young man but still I think this makes me less effected by uncanny valley than most would be and personally the thing that bothers me about it now is not seeing something I find a little off-putting like "Pepper's" constant smile, but rather seeing others go past it oblivious, with seemingly no effect on them and seeing someone develop an emotional connection to a machine is far more haunting for me.
I feel like Cortana fits more into the realm of tv and movie characters. She's a sentient program, which makes her a person, not just lines of code. Think Data vs laptop. The dynamic there is very different.
Also, I have this deep concern at this point that these technologies are moving forward possibly too fast. Emotional, learning androids... The development of thinking, learning cars... It's only a short matter of time before something sparks and we've GOT a REALLY Data. And what's going to happen then? Will we lock him up in some lab for study? Will he languish robbed of personal rights and liberties for decades?
We need to be looking at Star Trek and things like Ex Machina and other scifi efforts to explore these issues and actually address them BEFORE it becomes a problem. Something we historically suck at.
Everything I ever raised in Monster Rancher 2
That final pun.
I love my Minecraft wolves and named my Axton's turrets In Borderlands 2. It would upset me a little when my enemies killed the turrets.
I loved my tamagoty so much that when it died I liked my self I'm my room for 3 days
It's fascinating how there's this sheer love for virtual pets coupled with this mutual fear of sentient AI.
I've gotten back in to Animal Crossing recently and I have remembered some of the feelings I've had towards different neighbours. Overall the AI is quite simple, but the addition of appealing or unappealing personalities gave me particular disdain for some of my town's citizens, most notably ones who acted passive aggressive. Perhaps there is an uncanny valley for AI personality as well, where cute, simplistic reactions are endearing while the further you go, the more human they act, the more questionable it becomes.
I have had discussions with friends who are of faith, most notably Christian, and one thing I've found is some of them honestly don't think that animals can or do have personalities. Perhaps it stems from the concept that only humans have souls according to their religion, but perhaps that's how people look at Artificial Intelligence. Animals' emotions are more simplistic to some extent, which gives you the affection you crave without any other real meaning behind it besides just attention and love. I'm kind of curious to see how far virtual pets will go.
I remember being horrified while watching my brother catch Nugs to feed to someone in Dragon Age. And although I never finished Assassin's Creed 3, I racked up hours of gameplay because I simply could not stop petting every cat, dog, chicken, and cow that crossed my path. I also hated(HATED) fighting wolves, etc. Oddly enough, I had no issue with my character desynchronizing or other humans dying in the game...
The same goes for humans in movies, come to think of it. If someone runs upstairs in a horror movie, I'm like "LOL IDIOT" but I can't stand when movies kill animals for shock value.
I guess I feel attachment and a sense of responsibility toward representations of things I care for in real life. I can see myself feeling similarly towards anything that shared characteristics with those things.
Oh god I used to get so attached to the norns in Creatures.
I will admit there is little to no difference in the way we react to real and to simulated emotion. BUT there is a huge difference between simulation and real feelings.
I personally feel the big step however will not be better simulated thought, it will be daily assistance. right now these virtual pets are not very capable of providing much to our lives, but when they are capable of performing a wide range of dynamic tasks (Fold laundry, get a drink, answer the door, call for help) and even improving the proficiency of those tasks there will be a much deeper attachment.
I developed a much stronger connection to the characters of Undertale than any digital pet. Idk, making me have to take care of a pet in a game, or even just having one follow me around never did anything, but put in a personality and I'll act like they're a friend I knew my whole life.
I haven't played Undertale yet (though from what I've heard it's sounds really cool) but, in a similar vein to what you are saying I tend to form a strong emotional connection to the character I am controlling in a 3rd person game, not always as "my avatar" and by extension me, but as this little person or "friend" that I am leading through this adventure that has a personality completely separate from my own :)
I don't think this is solely an effect of software and technology. In the '70s, millions of people literally bought a box with strips of paper in it as a "nest" that held their very own _pet rock_, some of which didn't even have googly eyes glued to them. Before that, things like cars and planes were given pet names, and of course for centuries before that all manner of ships and galleons had better lives than most humans and were absolutely mourned like dead family when they were wrecked. It's just so much more deep and complex because now we can make them talk back to us.
No! In Mario the metal blocks aren't suspended in mid-air, they're connected to something behind the picture plane, i.e. we are only seeing a cross section of the structure. Well, that's what I used to think, a statement I would passionately profess to my playmates... until I played a 3D Mario game :) Now I just suppose they're connected to something in an unseen fourth dimension, but that's tantamount to saying "they're floating" so I guess I lose.
i played so much portal that i knew what glados was going to say before she said it
until recently I didn't get a opportunities going out to play with a lot of virtual pets cuz my mom didn't really like video games and hated Tamagotchis. about a year or two ago I finally bought myself a used 3ds XL I'm one of the first games I'm up for it was Pokemon X and I got so attached to my pokemon in that game especially my sylveon name Emma. unfortunately I ended up losing the game when it fell out of my game bag. I looked everywhere I could but I never found it. who was so distraught I cried all weekend and taking Monday off of work. I know that sounds a little crazy but I really got emotionally attached to my pokemon and if I thought I was never going to see them again was like losing and actual pet to me.
+Suzanne kelsey An argument for cloud saves if I ever heard one. -jj
I think "emotional" responses and actions made (or not made) by things is one strong and leading cause of emotional attachment to those things, cut at the same time i think it's not the only phenomenon that makes attachment grow strong. Lemme explain.
I thought about my first pokemon nuzlocke playthrough (that was a total failure. Misty got me. Oh, Igni, you were a fine charmander), the challange in which you can have a limited amount of pokemons, you have to name them all, and if it faints, it DIES and you have to release it.
During that playthrough i clearly couldn't see any of my pokemon reactions, feelings, actions, moves and dances. They were literally a bad-drawn ill-sounding splashes on a little screen, but goddamn if i was attached to them. I didn't have to pet them, feed them, clean them like with a tamagotchi but still, i mourned a lot.
Same thing goes with the companion cube from portal! Every other cube in there is just a cube, but THAT one, oh my, has a little heart and it's CALLED "companion cube", that's different! So it's natural to project some of your emotions and feelings into that cube.
So i'm starting to believe that names have a powerful meaning in this, and i'm pretty sure about it when..well, i have an emotional attachment to a particular beer. That beer has no name, it's a beer, and when i drink it, well, it's not there anymore. So why am i feeling this way when i have that beer in my hand?
Well i thought about that for quite some times (too much) and i came to a conclusion: in my head that beer has history. I remember when i drank it the first time, and how pale, fresh and hoppy it was. That beer was and is with me whenever i feel like it and slowly became something with meaning.
So, yeah. I think history does it. Pokemons, the companion cube, the first car you buy, the sword you used to slain countless orcs, the stuffed animal you had for your 5th birthday, that book you thought was a bad one but than you read it anyway and changed your mind, all with history. And that's powerful.
Oh gawd i always end up talking too much
Bye!
I would argue that really all an emotional is, is a more complex programed response.
Our tendency to project on inanimate objects will likely get us in trouble as robots become more and more "intelligent. " What worries me is whether we can ever program robots to feel real emotions or if they will just learn to make movements and sounds as a reaction to ours.
Have I ever had an emotional attachment to an animal in a game? Fallout 3's Dogmeat and Fallout New Vegas's Rex. I used mods to make them essential because I was TERRIFIED they would die in my game and I'd be HEARTBROKEN!
+Megan Rivera Better get the tissue box ready for Fallout 4. -jj
Wait, people actually got attached to the companion cube UNironically?
In Fable 2 you had this dog, and during the game you really grow attached to it. I had this so much that at the end of the game (Spoiler allert) When your family and dog die i just couldn't chose ANY other option then bringing them back to life, just for the dog...I was emotionally incapable, even in multiple play-throughs to chose one of the other two options....totally weird...
+Klaas Land I chose the Sacrifice ending, and immediately regretted it. Wandering the world suddenly felt pointless without the dog and knowing there was no family to bring gifts back to at the end of my adventures. I took one last world tour to see if there were any changes to the cities. There were no changes; just townsfolk living their normal lives. I was ready to delete this gamesave forever, until I noticed a new statue. It was built and dedicated to the Hero who returned the children, friends, and parents slain by Lucien. Their families.
It was like a hit straight to the gut. I had felt sad and alone about losing my virtual family, and this was like shoving my head in a bucket of ice. These villagers went through exactly what I was going through, and I had seriously considered deleting the save and leaving those families destroyed, just to keep mine. It still hurt...but I didn't regret the choice anymore.
+Alan Sherrill Know the feeling of loosing someone you are attached to (even if they are not "real"), it sucks and hurts because it feels like a real loss, it is often that the most meaningful actions are the saddest also. Nice going buddy.
Blabdroid is a robot that make feel emotion too
Hell I even got pissed all those times the pokemon from twitch plays pokemon fainted and those werent even mine. It was like watching animal cruelty.
it's a trophy for the hours of effort you put into the game.
What about Pokemon? I'll never forget my first Squirtle.
Have you heard of the Pleo controversy? There's a robotic dinosaur pet named Pleo who, it turns out, has programmed responses for being tortured. Some people demonstrated this, and... well, the video was likened to animal cruelty.
I wish there were links to the sources that are cited so we could read on our own. The washington post article was easy to find but the legal precedences to be set up against companies using virtual pets against consumers and such I would love to find for myself and read.
I'm surprised that Philip K. Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep (the inspiration for Blade Runner) didn't come up in this episode - that seems to me to be the ultimate depiction of virtual pets. Ironically, in that world, a virtual or android pet means you can't afford a real one and thus has larger socio-economic implications for the individual.
When I played Half Life 2, I only used my shotgun. I would shoot guys I should be sniping with it and everything. I named it Francisco. When I lost my weapons for the powered up gravity gun, Francisco floated in front of my face as if he was saying goodbye before being disintegrated. I literally screamed at my TV. The rest of the game was a quest to avenge my fallen friend.
I think it also sometimes has to do (at least for me) with the projection of emotion and personality when it comes to connecting with less responsive virtual beings or inanimate objects (ie the Companion Cube) when you are carrying it around, it can display virtually any emotion and this feed any sort of social need. With things like virtual pets that have programmed responses, for me that takes a bit of the fun and imagination out of it which is why in most games I play I tend to get more attached to objects than team mates 😆
+stitchsixtwosix Very interesting thought! -jj
My Shiny Lopunny cost me 781 eggs. I'm not going to say that I love her, but I'm really attached to her.
Chaos ( not water monster) in sonic adventure and pokemon ( for example in amie in XY)
Oh hey! That's the SoftBank store in Ginza!
dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat dogmeat
also does Amaterasu count, even though she's the main character?
"How are their emotions any less legitimate than our own?" Because we consciously feel things. You can't even call what they do "having emotions". They only act. They do not experience. The robot feels emotions as much as a rock with a smiley face drawn on it does. Why is that even a question? Yes, at the route of both of our "emotions" we are machines, and the difference /is/ complexity, but the complexity of our own minds is what allows for a very important and defining quality of emotions, the fact the we actually consciously experience those things as apposed to only acting or performing. That's what actually makes our emotions important, it's what makes empathy and decreasing shitty things in the world important. A mosquito might dodge your hand because it's wired to, but it doesn't feel fear for it's life. It might try to escape from a situation where it's body is being damaged, but it doesn't feel pain, /because they are not conscious/. And that's how they are different, because they don't actually experience emotions. Once they reach the level of complexity where they are able to, then yes, they are legitimate, but they have not reached that point. At this point they are imitations.