Sentimental Objects

Children, Youth and Social Media, ed. Stephen Gennaro and Blair Miller, Vernon Press, 2021, 2021

Before there was Angry Birds, Grumpy Cat, or Aibo the robot dog, there was sweet little Tamagotchi, a pendant-sized, handheld digital pet. “It did not look like an animal at all”, notes one account, suggesting that “an animal” must possess four legs, two ears, and a face. It did not act like an animal, either: the only thing this moody little egg-shaped machine could do was live or die, depending on the choices of its owner. For millions of children, the attraction of a simulated animal bore no relation to the accuracy of the simulation. This chapter investigates the global popularity and influence of these digital pets, focusing on their mimicry or appropriation of companion-species-like behaviour. This article identifies two main types of digital companions, plush toys and robotics, that separate and intermingle through online games. “Playing with Pets” draws together research on animals in children’s culture, the development of social robots, and the role of algorithms, to offer some insight into digital toys as portals into digital and social media for children and youth.

Game love: Essays on play and affection, 2015

Apperley, T. & Heber, N. Capitalizing on emotions: Virtual pets and the natural user interface. In J. Enevold & E. McCallum-Stewart (eds.). Game love: Essays on play and affection (pp. 149-162). Jefferson: MacFarland.

Teaching and Learning, 2011

This paper functions as both a reflection on the promotion of digital technologies to children, and as an investigation into the commodification of children's culture, using NeoPets as the primary focus of the exploration. Specifically, the development of the child/user to targeted consumer is analyzed, with a focus on website's marketing techniques. While NeoPets provides a virtual "fun" world that caters to children, another reason to ponder the significance of this on-line community is to better understand how its technological and marketing savvy function as exploitive tools. Moreover, it is imperative to address the lack of policies, in Canada and the United States, in order to affect eventual progressive changes in both countries.

British Journal of Educational Technology, 2011

Virtual character is a significant application in the research field of technology-enhanced learning. In this study, the concept of animal companions, 'non-smart' virtual characters, is proposed as a way to encourage students to promote effort-making learning behaviours. The two underpinning design rationales are first discussed followed by the description of the development of a practical application, the My-Pet v2 system. A preliminary experiment was conducted to examine the system usability in terms of cognitive, affective and time-on-task characteristics. The results reveal that participants in the group using a complete version of My-Pet v2 showed better quality of effort-making learning behaviours. Some implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 2015

ICBBR Working Papers, 2010

The Comfort from Companion Animals Scale was translated into Japanese and a survey conducted of virtual pet users in the UK and in Japan. Data were used to test the notion that Japanese users have a stronger bond of affection with virtual pets than users in the West. Our findings support this position.

Cognitive Development, 2015

Virtual characters are programmed to simulate relationship partners, yet little is known about how children conceptualize the social affordances of these characters, despite their growing presence in children's lives. In two studies (combined N = 49), we investigated the extent to which preschool children differentiate the social affordances of a virtual character that simulates social behaviors and those of a stuffed animal of the sort that children often use in pretend play. Children guessed whether a child in a video was referring to a stuffed dog or a virtual dog in a series of statements. The stuffed dog was associated with items rated by adults as relevant to friendship, whereas the virtual dog was associated with items rated as relevant to entertainment. These results suggest that despite their sophisticated programming, virtual characters might not be superior to simple stuffed animals as relationship partners.

2023

The concepts of what a toy is and what play as a phenomenon represents, evolve. This paper examines how play is affected by digital toys and toy robotics, conceptualized here as play machines. The position paper offers pluralistic perspectives on play machines in an era heading towards a post-digital state by combining earlier research on the historical trajectory of mobile toys with current developments in interactive toys. The paper reconceptualizes toys as interactive media connecting with thingness, transmedia, and technology as perspectives on the toy medium. Finally, the paper illustrates the connections between an emerging category of toys, Internet-connected character toys, and companion robotics, which in speculative toy fiction emerge as future 'toy friends' or Artificial Friends, offering enriched possibilities for motion and emotion in player engagement.

Proceedings of the 1st edutainment robotics workshop, 2000

In less than five years, artificial pets have achieved a real commercial success. These apparently useless toys have been massively adopted, in Japan first, and progressively in the rest of the world. Children, and also adults to a large extent (see ) have started to spend a significant part of their leisure time engaging in relationship with these artificial creatures. It is remarkable to note that this is not due to the realism of the artificial pets. The Tamagotchi and its successor were merely crude animated figures presented on low-tech displays. More recently, the AIBO, being designed as a robot with no fur, does not mimick a real dog . We will argue in this paper that the success of the existing artificial pets relies on some clever design principles. Among these principles is the fact that they are useless in the sense that they do not perform any service task. We will then discuss why we should follow this 'uselessness principle' when we design artificial pets that are able to learn and adapt themselves.

2018