Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Over the past decade, the relationship between human beings and electronic games has become closer and closer, and no one can stop the rapid development of the game industry. However, no one may have thought earlier that there are not only humans but also pets that need games.

Screenshot from Youtube@Pet club2022 year, the scale of China's pet-related industry is expected to reach nearly 500 billion yuan. In the spring tide of pet economy, the Internet of things has become a trend.

But pet digital "three-piece sets" such as automatic feeders, drinking fountains and cameras are not fashionable enough these days. As a result, some merchants have set their minds on video games-maybe it's a new consumer trap, but it's also possible that they can really help breeders solve a lot of key problems.

Recently, Joipaw, a British start-up pet brand, announced that it was already developing a game console for dogs called Joipaw. Officials claimed that the design and testing of the console was in the final stage, so they opened a pre-order on the official website, hoping to win the favor of shoveling officials.

According to the official product page, the product comes with a touch screen and an automatic feeder, and the height of the screen is clearly for pets.

Joipaw doesn't seem to be a "painting cake". The official Youtube channel offers some physical display videos, as well as the use of dogs. In the video, the dog takes the initiative to accurately manipulate the touch screen with his nose and even plays a gopher game, in which case a husky can accurately "catch" every gopher with his nose. On the other hand, the feeding machine rewards its behavior by throwing food every time it successfully touches the gopher on the screen.

Not only that, Joipaw claims that its console can also be equipped with home-made sports wearable devices that allow breeders to monitor their pets through App and even directly associate certain game content for additional game control.

The company claims that it uses video games to solve the psychological problems of dogs, saying that having the console can alleviate the separation anxiety of puppies, and even mentions that game consoles are beneficial to the study of Alzheimer's disease in puppies-of course, this is just a gimmick. today, there is widespread agreement that games can relieve stress in the human brain, but for pets, there are only a handful of studies.

At present, this product is still in the pre-sale stage, and the real effect will not be seen until the product is officially released.

It seems that the biggest highlight of Joipaw is that dogs can actually do slightly complicated operations like hamsters, but using food to stimulate their behavior, such a simple "Pavlov effect" has long been common in the field of smart toys, and many manufacturers have tried it. A more common pet robot divides the toy structure into two parts, one is a machine that signals and attracts pet interaction, and the other rewards food after successful pet interaction.

The owner can define the signal sent by the host through App, or it can operate remotely to attract pets to touch the signal robot in response. This approach sounds boring, but it was once popular overseas, because even if the sound is only used as a signal to start, there are still a lot of artificially designed game interactions.

The game console pictured on PupPod, called PupPod, is one of the pioneers of this kind of play, designed by Erick Eidus, a former Microsoft employee. Erick claims that the key to his thinking when designing is "what it would look like if a dog were to design a computer." So PupPod abandons complex operations and interacts in the simplest way.

However, the goal of PupPod is not to keep cats and dogs in one place for a long time, but to maintain their energy, not to do nothing when the owner is away. Placing the two parts of the machine far away can achieve the effect of getting the pet up and moving-Erick believes that in the long run, the pet's body will adapt to a state of long rest, so that the pet's body will only conserve limited physical strength, making it impossible to regain the bouncing habits of life.

He doesn't seem to think about another need: how to distract naughty kids with games to avoid breaking up their homes-but these consoles are usually designed to be very durable. Designers clearly know that kittens and dogs' teeth and claws are not easy to mess with.

Facts have proved that although shovel officials don't understand what their pets are thinking, it is no longer worth making a fuss about animals playing games.

As far as the side is concerned, in July this year, the game "Stray" once resonated with "masters" in the real world because of its over-vivid interpretation of the protagonist cat. Although shovel officials generally do not know what they communicate across the screen, it is clear that this kind of cross-dimensional feedback does exist.

Well, since it is possible to interact, it is naturally possible to do two things.

Last year the journal Frontiers of Psychology published a study by British scientists in which they domesticated four pigs and successfully taught them to play games. The game is very simple. Use a joystick to manipulate the cursor on the screen and move it to a specified position. As a result, each smart pig completes the operation with a high success rate.

And humans rely on animals to study the brain and AI, and often rely on games to complete. A research paper entitled "hierarchical combination Strategies of Rhesus Monkeys in Pac-Man" published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences this year uses the method written in the title.

Obviously, many animals have challenged the human level in the field of scientific research. But human pets don't seem to have much brain capacity to figure this out-Youtube blogger Will Archer tried to teach his dog to play call of Duty, simplified keyboards and food-induced training, but in the end the dog actually "killed" a few AI.

The grades are real, but people look much happier than dogs. It's hard to say that Will Archer's dogs are playing games, but more often they are obeying their owners' instructions. Maybe getting the owner is also a way for pets to be happy, but there are also games closer to "play" in the game field.

When it comes to pets playing video games, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is a picture of a naughty kitten or dog interacting with something active on a tablet.

What often appears in such videos are some popular pet games on the market, such as Game for Cats, which has millions of downloads overseas.

"Game for Cats" was developed by a two-person team called Hiccup, which consists of only one artist and one programmer. The content of the game is not difficult, it is nothing more than using some active objects on the screen to guide the "player" to capture. However, the game, which sounds unskilled, actually needs some key tricks, which makes it successfully impress the masters and shovel officials.

The trick is that the game's emphasis on feedback is crude but eye-catching. There are many different kinds of interaction, such as simulated laser pen, simulated fish, insects, etc., and restore their different dynamic speeds and postures to a certain extent. In addition, it is not clear whether cats can distinguish between color, hue and saturation, but they can react to light and dark, so game pictures often show high contrast between dynamic things and the background.

In order to stimulate the animal's response to the picture, the game also rewards sound effects. For example, when the paw clicks on the active mouse, it will make a "squeak" sound, which, to some extent, gives effective feedback to the response of small animals.

So the shabby-looking Mini Game, despite ruining the tablet screens of shit shoveling officials, proved to be worth playing, and "Game for Cats" was often used to test pets, including birds and reptiles.

However, there is an interesting and traditional problem in front of people-in-game purchasing. "Game for Cats" is free to download, but you have to pay to unlock more scenes later, when the kittens and dogs will not hesitate to press "pay" (or just scratching), leaving the owner who receives the payment text message helpless, and the development team will naturally become the person at the forefront of the storm.

"it's too easy to pay by mistake!" Perhaps because the content is not difficult, there are many imitators of "Game for Cats". These pet games are still played mainly with simulated laser pens, but with a change of background and activity image. There are also pets who click successfully, and the difficulty increases with the increase of points, and even many games can be related to the owner's social account. Of course, the purpose of the game is to make the player's brain produce dopamine, in the final analysis, or "players" like it.

In this respect, games like "Game for Cats" are similar to what we call "addictive" games. In a short period of time, they are very effective in attracting the attention of "masters" and have some entertainment value-- as long as shovel officials remember to protect their tablets.

As to whether pets really need video games, no one can tell unless your "master" speaks.

But it is true that the scale of the pet economy has been increasing over the years, and new demand continues to emerge. In terms of pet toys alone, more and more smart home appliances have been born, which not only achieve the effect of monitoring, but also can run around and play with pets, more or less to make up for their guilt in the absence of their breeders.

Even VR has dabbled in animals-a US company launched cat VR as early as 2018, claiming to ease the threat of domestic cats going to the wild. Of course, there are cases where Turkish herdsmen put VR devices on their cattle in an attempt to make them feel like they are in an outdoor ranch. As a result, the milk yield of dairy cows increased from 22 litres per day to 27 litres per day. Considering that the environment does have an impact on milk production, it seems that VR does please it.

Of course, no matter what kind of high-tech toys, they all face some problems: most of them are naturally aimed at the owner who is responsible for paying. On the other hand, these pet-related video games always focus on the virtual substitution of several common things in reality, or continue the most basic "Pavlov effect", and do not achieve a key breakthrough in technology. So far, there are no video games that really make them "addictive", and persuading pets to take the initiative to play games when no one is around is a key problem.

It can be seen that pet video games still have a long way to go-until one day "masters" can release their exuberant energy through video games and prolong the service life of some shovel sofas. Then pet video games can be regarded as a historic step.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: platinum Isia

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.