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