Dogs; they’re good, and we want to pet them. And never before have so many perfect pixelated
plush pups been pettable – for better or for worse.
That quaint memetic phrase, “can you pet the dog?” has become kind-of a force in the video
game industry — but what does it actually take for a game to let you do it? Well it turns out,
it’s not quite as simple as it looks.
(Duck Hunt dog laughing)
Long before “can you pet the dog,” there was this a******, the snickering hound from
Duck Hunt. He’s arguably the most notorious video game dog, the iconic face of an iconic
game, but one that gamers love to hate. You could not pet him, but you could shoot him,
and people did, a lot.
[Duck Hunt dog barks]
There were pettable pooches prior to the pet-the-dog era, but for the most part these hounds haven’t
been objects of affection. Your faithful dog companion in Fable 2 can soak damage for you,
but you can’t scritch its ears. Dogmeat from the Fallout games can take a bullet,
but there’s no way to cuddle this majestic mutt. Until recently, game dogs have been
stalwart companions and deadly enemies – capable of receiving violence but not love.
That exact dichotomy is the origin for the literal game-changing twitter account
"Can You Pet the Dog?” Tristan Cooper, the account’s creator, went from playing dog-petting simulator
Far Cry 5 to... The Division 2.
Tristan: You can't help the dogs, they just run away from you.
You can shoot them, but you can't do anything else. And I found that, like, pretty disturbing.
There are some scenes in the game that make you feel bad for the dogs,
like they're behind the gate. And you see like, a dog who has died, and another dog that's sad.
I'm like, well, you want me to feel empathy for these dogs, but I can't comfort them in any way. That's frustrating to me.
Jenna: It’s worth noting that The Division 2 has since released an expansion where you can, in fact, pet the dog.
Is that because this twitter account has such a huge impact on the game industry that
it can subjugate developers to its will?
Mmm... Not really.
It’s not that developers are courting this account, with its 400-thousand-plus followers, but they are courting those followers.
Like any popular meme, “Can you pet the dog” changes the way we interpret and react to the world around us.
Like convincing yourself a lukewarm opinion is a hot take so you can join a trending hashtag.
Obviously the shiba ending of Silent Hill 2 is the best ending,
it’s the only one that really makes sense.
[a chiptune song with dog barking along to the beat]
Memes create and reinforce thought patterns and expectations that change how we engage
– with the real world or with game worlds.
Tristan: I think that there are certain things that people want to do when they're in a game that they would like to do
that they're disappointed when that doesn't happen.
Jenna: That’s like game theory 101; you create expectations, and then you follow through on payoff.
As a seasoned gamer, if I see a fat crack in a wall, I expect to be able to bomb it or punch it or scold it
into crumbling. And now, people who might never have considered petting a game dog have
a little jingle pre-programmed in their brain.
[song like a chipper jingle] Can you pet the dog?
And the more we make a meme
of Can You Pet The Dog – by, say, making a video about it – the more people will
expect it.
GREG: Make a game with a dog that's not pettable?
It's like the it's like the old um, if there's
a gun on the mantel piece, that gun has to go off in a story like you can't.. I don't
know if you could put a dog in a video game and not have it be pettable, right, in the
current climate.
Jenna: That’s Greg, the Creative Director at Supergiant Games, the developers behind Hades. And he’s
talking about Chekhov’s gun.
For those of you who weren’t beholden to the muses of the theater, Chekhov’s gun is a dramatic
concept that’s all about understanding audience expectations. According to playwright Anton
Chekhov, "one must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off.
It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." Actually, you shouldn’t put loaded
rifles on the stage, Anton. Get yourself a prop gun, buddy!
The “gun” part of this metaphor can refer to anything – Clemetine’s walkie-talkie
in The Walking Dead is a perfect example; set up in the first scene with her, comes
back in full force at the end. On the other hand, you have games that actively refuse
to pay off Chekhov’s Guns unless you buy the DLC.
Pay-off? More like pay-more! Folks!
You should only introduce certain characters or concepts or items into your story
if they have a plot purpose or thematic relevance.
And because of this meme, pettable dogs have become the Chekhov’s gun of video games – a loaded symbol that we expect to have pay off.
If a developer gives us a dog but no option to pet it, it can feel like a promise that wasn’t kept.
GREG: We knew that Cerberus would need to be petted,
basically, from the start. It felt pretty necessary.
It is remarkable the influence that the Can you pet the dog account has had, it seems
like a pretty direct influence on some games.
Jenma: On some games, but not on Hades. The studio’s approach to Cerberus wasn’t necessarily
influenced by player expectations. It grew out of the game’s roguelike structure:
GREG: So we really wanted to have the moment after
you die, feel like more forgiving, and in fact, almost be something to look forward
to. So you, you kind of have your little walk of shame through the house of Hades, but right
there is Cerberus waiting for you. And you can just kind of, you know, give Cerberus
a pat.
Jenna: Even though the team at Hades knew from the start that Cerberus was a good boy, only one of
the three heads is pettable. The in-game reason is that the other two just don’t like to be petted,
but there’s a mechanical reason too.
GREG: In our case, it's 2d sprites, they can't like,
layer over each other, you know, you can't have like, a hand of a character appear behind
the back of another character, because they're just separate 2d objects, and all these kinda
technical reasons.
Jenna: That makes it difficult for characters to interact with each other’s bodies. They
can fight, and talk at a distance, but it’s basically impossible to make them hug or hold
hands or show any kind of physical affection.
Sad, but that’s hell for you.
Petting the rightmost head gets around that overlap issue, but it still took a lot of work.
What appears to us as an off-hand, 5-second animation still took time and effort for a developer to complete.
That can actually be a real burden, forcing them to choose between this one superfluous mechanic
and something that has meaningful gameplay implications.
GREG: Yes we could, in theory have, you know, 10 or however many different Cerberus petting
animations, but it would come at the direct expense of other stuff in the game.
Jenna: Supergiant is a small team that is absolutely opposed to crunch; and with only one animator
on staff, they have to make hard decisions about what to include. Flourishes are hard
to justify when the thing players want from a game they like is... just more of that game.
But the thing is… I wish more games did choose to spend time on “petting the dog”
style mechanics, even at the expense of a another enemy varieties or having another special
move. I don’t just mean literally petting dogs,
but also, petting cats.
[cat meow!]
Or thanking the bus driver. Or just sitting down and enjoying the sights in an otherwise broken game.
Tristan: Can you sit down, my new Twitter account, coming soon.
[strong laughter]
Jenna: Tristan believes that people follow his account for a break from doom-scrolling, a brief,
soft respite from the crunching anxiety of a Twitter feed. I think that same oasis desire
is part of why people want to pet dogs in games.
A joy mechanic provides you with a moment of purposeless pleasure, with no productive
motivation – that’s hard to come by, everywhere but especially in games.
TRISTAN: It's not asking anything of you. It's very
simple. The numbers are not going up. But that's okay.
Jenna: Most games are, for lack of a better word, gamified down to the most minute aspect; often
every single thing you do is in service of leveling up. Which plays into this really
unfortunate capitalist idea that any activity has to have some kind of quantifiable reward
to be valuable.
And that is doubly especially weird when it comes to affectionate gestures like dog-petting.
A lot of games have mechanics surrounding friendship or romance that I find fun and
uncomfortable. Give a character the right gift and they’ll boost your attack damage.
Talk to them a lot to unlock additional content. I force fed Elliot artisanal mayonnaise until
he “loved” me, as he was programmed to do. Don’t get me wrong, I would die for
my Stardew Valley husband. But this is a weird, transactional approach to the warmth of human
relationships. One you might be familiar with if you’ve ever gone a date with someone
who paid for dinner and then expected to be repaid.
You know??
They want sex from you!
Healthy relationships are complex and difficult and warm and that’s the beauty of them.
Reducing them to simple, workable statistics is fun, and it plays to game’s strengths, and
is the main form of human contact I have right now, but I worry about what kind of thought
patterns that’s reinforcing.
Dogs are the perfect recipient for totally unrewarded in-game affection. Because you
can’t make a dog love you. It’s a dog! It already loves you!
A game mechanic without a reward dares to ask you: What if we took joy in things that
were not productive? It suggests that playing a game is innately valuable, not something
that has to be conditioned or coerced, rewarded and punished.
So when I pet a game dog and get no reward other than a cute little animation,
maybe a sweet little puppy sound, that's a relief.
Petting the dog proves there’s value in intrinsic joy and wagging tail.
[light jazzy music]
Greg: If only it were easy to make good stuff fast, but it turns out...
um, making stuff that's good usually takes kind of a long time, and requires a ton of iteration.
I'm glad there is more dog-petting now than there use to be, I'll say that.