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I made a decision to do a retrospective of notable online game pets in 2022, as a result of, frankly, I adopted an actual one this 12 months. A easy motivation and a easy, simple article to place together–right? However whereas brainstorming, actually existential questions on what counts as a pet in a online game began manifesting.
Do pets must don’t have any utilitarian use and be purely aesthetic animal-like creatures that gamers get to often feed and provides pats to? In all probability not. In the event that they’re additionally tied to a recreation mechanic, can they be thought-about pets? Positive. Have they got to be a historically domesticated animal–as against a mechanical and even ghostly existence–to be thought-about a pet? Maybe?
How a lot intelligence ought to they’ve? As a result of in the event that they’re too good, then they’re similar to an everyday NPC or social gathering member, proper? Do you need to shovel their poop like in Tamagotchi for them to register as pets? I really feel just like the final level is basically integral to pet-owning.
With all these questions in thoughts, the web forged right here is fairly wide–a nod to the nebulous line between conventional real-life notions of pets, mechanics, and unbiased sentient characters. From Elden Ring’s Torrent to pet administration sims, there’s just a little little bit of all the things right here.