Digimon, short for "Digital Monsters", is a Japanese media franchise, which encompasses virtual pet toys, anime, manga, video games, films, and a trading card game. The franchise focuses on the eponymous creatures that inhabit a "Digital World", which is a parallel universe that originated from Earth's various communication networks.
The Tamagotchi is a handheld digital pet that was created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai. It was released by Bandai on November 23, 1996 in Japan and in the United States on May 1, 1997, quickly becoming one of the biggest toy fads of the late 1990s and the early 2000s. As of June 2023, over 91 million units have been sold worldwide. Most Tamagotchi are housed in a small egg-shaped handheld video game with an interface consisting of three buttons, with the Tamagotchi Pix adding a shutter on the top to activate the camera.
Artificial human companions may be any kind of hardware or software creation designed to give companionship to a person. These can include digital pets, such as the popular Tamagotchi, or robots, such as the Sony AIBO. Virtual companions can be used as a form of entertainment, or they can be medical or functional, to assist the elderly in maintaining an acceptable standard of life.
Interactive storytelling is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. The architecture of an interactive storytelling program includes a drama manager, user model, and agent model to control, respectively, aspects of narrative production, player uniqueness, and character knowledge and behavior. Together, these systems generate characters that act "human," alter the world in real-time reactions to the player, and ensure that new narrative events unfold comprehensibly.
Petz is a series of single-player video games dating back to 1995, in which the player can adopt, raise, care for and breed their own virtual pets. The original Petz has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide and the brand has grown to over 22 million copies since coming under Ubisoft.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to video games:
An entertainment robot is, as the name indicates, a robot that is not made for utilitarian use, as in production or domestic services, but for the sole subjective pleasure of the human. It serves, usually the owner or his housemates, guests, or clients. Robotic technologies are applied in many areas of culture and entertainment.
Façade is an artificial intelligence-based interactive story created in 2005 by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. Upon release, the game received attention from mainstream news publications for its innovative design, and prompted speculation about the potential use of artificial intelligence in video games. Following release, Façade has received a generally positive reception, with praise directed at its technical innovation and wide cultural appeal, particularly in online streaming, and mixed views directed to the verisimilitude of its representation of interpersonal interaction.
Life simulation games form a subgenre of simulation video games in which the player lives or controls one or more virtual characters. Such a game can revolve around "individuals and relationships, or it could be a simulation of an ecosystem". Other terms include artificial life game and simulated life game (SLG).
Pixel Chix was a handheld life simulation game released in 2005 by Mattel that was aimed at young children. The game was set in a plastic dollhouse and was similar to Tamagotchi in that they have a LCD screen and control buttons, although they are larger. The game is centered around interacting with a digital girl and doing activities with her, which includes feeding her, playing games, dressing her up, going out, sending her to bed and more. As you played, you would unlock new items and activities.
The Digital Monster is a digital pet created by WiZ and Bandai that spawned the Digimon franchise. It was released by Bandai on June 26, 1997, in Japan and on December 5, 1997 in North America. This pet was a masculine counterpart to the Tamagotchi, which was deemed more appropriate for girls. It was similar to earlier virtual pets with the distinctions of being a fighting pet that could connect with others like it.
Diva Starz was a series of talking fashion dolls created and released by Mattel in October 2000. They are similar in design to MGA's Bratz and Tiger Electronics' Furby. Alexa, Nikki, Summer—later replaced by Miranda—and Tia were offered in the original debut. Originally produced as robotic dolls, Mattel would also release miniature and fashion doll versions in response to their initial success. The line was discontinued in 2004.
The Tamagotchi effect is the development of emotional attachment with machines, robots or software agents. It has been noticed that humans tend to attach emotionally to inanimate objects devoid of emotions of their own. For example, there are instances when people feel emotional about using their car keys, or with virtual pets. It is more prominent in applications which simulate or reflect some aspects of human behavior or characteristics, especially levels of artificial intelligence and automated knowledge processing.
Petz: Catz 2 and Petz: Dogz 2 are video games for the PC, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2 and Wii, the latter two are similar to The Dog Island. Players can choose from 40 breeds of dogs or cats; in Dogz most breeds have a choice of two fur colours. In Europe, these games are titled Dogz and Catz.
Artificial life is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American theoretical biologist, in 1986. In 1987, Langton organized the first conference on the field, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life researchers study traditional biology by trying to recreate aspects of biological phenomena.
Physically based animation is an area of interest within computer graphics concerned with the simulation of physically plausible behaviors at interactive rates. Advances in physically based animation are often motivated by the need to include complex, physically inspired behaviors in video games, interactive simulations, and movies. Although off-line simulation methods exist to solve most all of the problems studied in physically-based animation, these methods are intended for applications that necessitate physical accuracy and slow, detailed computations. In contrast to methods common in offline simulation, techniques in physically based animation are concerned with physical plausibility, numerical stability, and visual appeal over physical accuracy. Physically based animation is often limited to loose approximations of physical behaviors because of the strict time constraints imposed by interactive applications. The target frame rate for interactive applications such as games and simulations is often 25-60 hertz, with only a small fraction of the time allotted to an individual frame remaining for physical simulation. Simplified models of physical behaviors are generally preferred if they are more efficient, easier to accelerate, or satisfy desirable mathematical properties. Fine details are not important when the overriding goal of a visualization is aesthetic appeal or the maintenance of player immersion since these details are often difficult for humans to notice or are otherwise impossible to distinguish at human scales.
Technoself studies, commonly referred to as TSS, is an emerging, interdisciplinary domain of scholarly research dealing with all aspects of human identity in a technological society focusing on the changing nature of relationships between the human and technology. As new and constantly changing experiences of human identity emerge due to constant technological change, technoself studies seeks to map and analyze these mutually influential developments with a focus on identity, rather than technical developments. Therefore, the self is a key concept of TSS. The term "technoself", advanced by Luppicini (2013), broadly denotes evolving human identity as a result of the adoption of new technology, while avoiding ideological or philosophical biases inherent in other related terms including cyborg, posthuman, transhuman, techno-human, beman, digital identity, avatar, and homotechnicus though Luppicini acknowledges that these categories "capture important aspects of human identity". Technoself is further elaborated and explored in Luppicini's "Handbook of Research on Technoself: Identity in a Technological Environment".
Giga Pets are digital pet toys that were first released by Tiger Electronics in the United States in 1997 in the midst of a virtual-pet toy fad. Available in a variety of different characters, each Giga Pet is a palm-sized unit with an LCD screen and attached key ring. To ensure a happy, healthy pet, its owner has to take care of it similar to how one might care for a real animal, including feeding, cleaning, and playing with their Giga Pet.
The depiction of animals in video games has echoed the wider symbolism of animals in culture. Games feature animals in roles ranging from NPC to companion and even protagonist. Animals are depicted with varying degrees of intelligence, from realistic to possessing human levels of self-awareness. They are considered crucial to worldbuilding. However, there are unique aspects and challenges to depicting animals within a game. The behavior and appearance of animals must be digitally recreated rather than simply recorded, a difficult task that may detract from other aspects of the game, leading to discussion on whether interactivity with animals should be prioritized. At the same time, many video game developers specifically seek to include animals in their games despite the additional work involved, sometimes due to personal interest in them.
