For my Research report I am looking into the way collecting and virtual pets have been implemented into video games. The report will be in the form of an Extended Essay and will be the 5,000 word option for this year.
Titles in the works
How have collecting and Virtual Pets become important elements in games?
Virtual pets and collection: What drives one to collect them all?
How have games exploited the urge to collect?
The essay will contain the following:
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Collection
Chapter 2 – Virtual Pets
Chapter 3 – Pokémon
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
This report will explore how
the hobby of collecting and the love of virtual pets have become important in
video games with the main focus on the game series Pokémon. I will look at the
meaning of collecting and its place in people’s daily lives, as well as how
virtual pets have captured the attention and love of people worldwide.
Chapter
1 – Collecting
“Collection is a constant reminder of the very
reality it has been created to stave off. The greater the value … the greater
the risk of loss that it represents. …” (Blom, 2005)
The known hobby of Collecting
often involves searching, acquiring and displaying items or objects of interest
to a single person known as the collector. There are different types of
collectable items which range from personal interest to age old objects.
Antiques are collectible
items that are 100 years or older, more often than not showing insight to past
human eras, such as furniture, vehicles or clothing. Most antiques show an
intricate design and often the older they are, the higher value they have to
the collector.
Collecting once living things
like butterflies and insects are often referred to as Natural Objects. Some
collections involve objects intended for other uses, stamps and dolls being
quite common.
A recent example of collector
value is of a set of dolls called The Dionne Quints Alexander Doll Set. The
dolls were modelled after the real Dionne quintuplets who were born in 1934.
Born two months premature at birth during the Great Depression, the five
altogether only weighed around 14 pounds. They quickly became a symbol of
courage in Canada and the dolls were only the start. The children ended up in
campaigns for advertising, all of which were related to the quintuplets in some
way, which is why they’re considered valuable.
The dolls were modelled in
great detail, composed with wigs of human hair. These near perfect condition
dolls were sold as a set in October of 2013 for $2,400 during the Morphy
Auctions Doll Sale.
Chapter
2 – Virtual Pets
"Children behave as if practically
everything is alive when they're engaged in pretend play. That in itself
doesn't mean they're confused about what's alive and what isn't." Gopnik
(2000)
Virtual pets made
its first impact with the Tamagotchi in 1996 by Bandai, selling more than 40
million units around the world. The birth of the Tamagotchi brought in the new
genre of Virtual pet imitators. The toy itself is a round egg shaped toy in
which the player feeds, plays with and cares for the pet Tamagotchi. Using the
connection features players could interact with other Tamagotchi to become
friends, fall in love, get married and have a second generation of pets.
Since the
Tamagotchi’s success, virtual pets have made more of an impact, especially with
the release of physical toys such as the well-known Furby, who sold more than
40 million, and robotic dogs known as Puppy and Rover. Other robotic animals
included FurReal Cat, Paro the Seal and RoboRaptor.
People could
interact with these toys as if they had a mind of their own, like that of a
real pet, but without the need to feed it or clean up after the pet. This also
meant that the pet could not get sick or die.
Chapter
3 – Pokemon
“So you were collecting Pokémon a long time
ago! Did you make the insects fight against each other?”
“No, but sometimes they would eat each other.”
TIME interviewing Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri (1999)
Pokémon first came to Japan
in 1996 in the forms of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, coming to the rest of
the world as Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue in 1998 on the Game Boy.
The prime objectives of these
games was to collect all 151 Pokémon in the game and to become the greatest
Pokémon Master by assembling a strong team of Pokémon. To catch all 151 Pokémon
however was not easy, as some Pokémon were only found in one version, while
others were obtained by choosing one of two or three.
Some powerful Pokémon would
only appear once in the game at a certain fixed point, known as Legendaries,
while one of these was only legibly accessible by a Nintendo event (the other
method involved glitching the game to encounter it).
Its success brought forth a
second generation of games known as Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver in 1999 on
the Game Boy Color. These games introduced more Pokémon, bringing up the total
to 251. It also introduced inside game time, roaming Legendaries, gendered
Pokémon and the rare shiny Pokémon (Pokémon of a different colour than their
usual counterparts). A third game of the second generation known as Pokémon
Crystal was released in 2000 and introduced a deeper story to the Legendaries,
something that all future Pokémon games took up, and was the first Pokémon game
to let the player choose to play as a boy or a girl.
Since then, more Pokémon
games have been released, taking the world by storm. Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and
Emerald for the third generation, Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum for the
fourth generation, Pokémon Black, White, Black 2 and White 2 summed up the
fifth generation and the most recent sixth generation of Pokémon X and Y which
were released October 2013. Each generation has introduced more Pokémon and
game mechanics, including Pokémon-Amie, a way if bonding with your Pokémon
further by feeding and playing with them – much like that of a virtual pet.
Conclusion
The series of Pokémon was at
first a mere collecting game with the secondary objective of being the best,
but since has evolved into much more than that. The Pokémon-Amie function has
you bond with your Pokémon as if it was alive on the other side of the screen,
loving you as you love it. By building up the affection metre on your Pokémon,
they will do better in battle for you by landing more powerful attacks,
avoiding enemy moves, curing itself of status effects and surviving knock out
moves to impress you.
Pokémon has made bonding with
your Pokémon a stronger factor than it’s ever been and, despite its several
generations and basic gameplay, will still keep introducing newer mechanics and
more Pokémon, always telling the player that they’ve “Gotta catch ‘em all”.
Bibliography
Philipp
Blom (2005) To Have and To Hold: an intimate History of collectors and
collecting.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/collectable
http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48439
http://antiques.about.com/od/toys/ss/Dionne-Quints-Alexander-Doll-Set-Sells-at-Auction.htm
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/05/circuits/articles/25pets.html
http://www.mimitchi.com/tamaplus/tama_history.shtml
http://www.webvet.com/main/2008/08/04/brief-history-robotic-pets-rags-pleo
http://web.archive.org/web/20050314021722/http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/99/1122/pokemon6.fullinterview1.html
