What was the most ahead of its time bestselling game of 1996? The one that most looks like it belongs in a later world? Tomb Raider? Super Mario 64 (not that that one was even 1996 here)? No, from all the games I’ve encountered it can only be PF. Magic’s Dogz, for good or bad.
Before getting onto its cutting edge elements, Dogz is another reminder, like I went into with Trivial Pursuit a decade earlier, that people playing more ‘casual’ games were not only around already in the past, but in big numbers. Enough to put those games at the top of the charts even when at a disadvantage in sales measures. Alongside sports and TV tie-ins and fighting games, a Windows-based pet simulator had its equal place. The idea that there was even any more significant a divide between the people playing Dogz and the people playing Doom than between either and the people playing, say, Panzer Dragoon is a questionable one.
Dogz is a triumph of the simple. People like dogs. People like petting dogs. People like playing with dogs. People like looking after dogs. Put all of that in a cartoon package with a straightforward interface, and you have an appealing desktop distraction. You can pick up your new pet with a click and place them somewhere else, you can give them a ball to play with and they might chase it, or do something unexpected and charming like balance on it. There is not a lot required of you as a player to start getting something enjoyable back. Add a bit of a learning and training mechanism and Dogz was set up to get tech coverage as “a baby step towards PC-based life”, too.
(As an aside, it’s amusing to me how Susan Kuchinskas in Wired there goes out of her way to avoid talking about any one of the pet characters in isolation even though you can only play with one at a time. This is a decision I can relate to, because within the game PF. Magic decided that the plural should be Dogz and the singular should be… Dogz. “I just got a Dogz.” “My new Dogz is brown.” As if the ‘z’ wasn’t bad enough already.)
It’s not the artificial intelligence that makes Dogz so ahead of its time. Things start to get clever with the fact that you can do all of the playing with a ball for free, in an ‘adoption kit’ which is rather more than a demo and provides a good proportion of the full game’s features. You have to upgrade to get some more different options, such as a shoe to have a tug-of-war with, and a paintbrush to paint your pet in, plus the option to let them out of their window into your desktop at large. The adoption kit gives you five different breeds to play with and choose from, and doesn’t quite tell you that they’ve been rescued from terrible lives and are going to be put down if you don’t save them, but definitely leans on emotional manipulation to get you to pay out.
Another feature in Dogz is a built in screenshot mode for taking photos. And there’s an expectation that this isn’t just for your own amusement but to allow you to share stories from it. By 1996 standards, Dogz is extremely online. No other game I’ve played so far constantly directs you to its website in the same way. There is an obvious offset against its limited features. Painting your pet green and teaching it to do a trick takes on a new element if you can take a picture and share it with the Petz community. Dogz isn’t just a personal experience, or even an experience to share with those you are with, but something that gives you a chance to network, socially.
When I started Dogz, I took a quiz to determine which of the five characters loosely based on different breeds of dog I should opt for. Alongside a lot of ‘90s humour that vaguely reminded me of Dilbert, delivered with static icons of Dogz’s 2D tutorial woman, I got more reminders to go to the website. When I typed in pfmagic.com, I expected not to find anything. Instead, it is the site of a poignant gravestone in the early Internet graveyard. There is a message about how the website isn’t going to be fully maintained any more, but the community will go on, complete with a 2-frame animated gif and some spam links to summer dresses and wide calf boots. After a few seconds, it redirects to Ubisoft’s site.
I can’t get the online Dogz experience, but thanks to the Wayback Machine I can take a look at what was on the site when the game was going strong. In 1997, there is a poll about whether virtual pets should include death as one of their functions. It’s written with a veneer of third-party neutrality, despite being on the website of PF. Magic, who clearly have a Dogz in the fight. There is a strong set of impassioned responses to what is essentially a bit of advertorial, piggybacking on the runaway success of Tamagotchis (which die) to proselytise for Dogz (which don’t). From decades away, its approach to community engagement by trying to generate conflict feels remarkably familiar.
While we’re there, the website’s mention of Tamagotchis is a pertinent reminder: Dogz beat one of the biggest crazes of the next couple of years to the punch, just without the physical form. And on the full version, as your chosen familiar breaks free of its window and gambols its way across your Windows desktop, it manages to predict Bonzi Buddy and years of irritating malware to come, too.
Even elements which exist in a previous age manage to point to the future. Floppy disks weren’t exactly the new thing even in 1996, but Dogz has a cunning plan for them. It gives you an option to create free versions of its ‘adoption kit’ demo on floppy, ready to hand out to your friends and family to let them be subtly guilted into signing up for the full thing, whether that be online or by buying the boxed version at retail. Giving that out as a gift is another thing pushed over the course of the quiz. Dogz is not quite Farmville, but it begins to sketch out a space for all sorts of future approaches.
The collective effect of all of PF Magic’s decisions is that Dogz is a freemium game in which one of the key things you get for paying money is different skins, built on an online social approach with particular emphasis on people you know. The way that Dogz climbed to the top of the sales charts might even be an indication of how well this worked (if not just a slow sales week). Look at its big cartoon eyes and simple pleasures and it’s too innocent a game to land the entire future on, but puppies grow up fast in ways you can’t always predict.
