The Tamagotchi development model is very, very simple. This
became clear to me very early on and it certainly doesn't take much thinking to work it out. Here's a few examples. If anyone disagrees with any of these, please say - I'm not claiming them as fact.
- When you feed it, it gains one point on the "hunger" scale. When the
scale is full, it won't eat any more food. It also gains an ounce of
weight.
- When you feed it a snack, it gets one happiness point and two ounces of weight (thanks to Ed Toton for the correction).
- When you play with it, it loses one ounce of weight and, if it wins
the game, gains a happiness point.
- When it is ill you have to administer it a random number of medicine dosages,
between one and four
The whole calculation system behind the pet is really very simple indeed.
All this stuff you read about Japanese people getting terribly attached to
them I find increasingly hard to believe. Sure, it's a novel idea, but it
really isn't all that complicated. There are no hidden personality facets.
The whole computer revolves around these variables:
- Weight (5-99 oz)
- Happiness (0-4)
- Hunger (0-4)
- Discipline
That's it. Everything you do to it simply has a modifier on one of these
variables. Which means that very rapidly you get really bored of the thing
because it doesn't develop a personality at all.
My final grumble is with the shape. A number of the people whose messages
I read on web sites were implying that because their Tamagotchi was
overweight, it was actually fat. Now after we'd had ours for three
days, my friend's weighed 20oz and mine weighed 45. Any difference in
size? None at all. I've checked this since with a number of others. My
brother's weighed 99oz and looked quite eerily similar.
So contrary to what quite a lot of people suggest, Tamagotchi do not
change shape depending on their physical characteristics. They are defined
as one of the pre-set shapes -baby, slightly older, one of two young
adult shapes or one of the six final shapes. I was hoping to see changes
in shape or activity depending on its health but they weren't forthcoming.
To conclude, Tamagotchi is grossly over-hyped. If you're a big
Tamagotchi fan (which I know a lot of people reading this are, judging by
some of the mail I've been getting) then I'm sorry. Don't get me wrong, I
don't altogether regret buying it, if just from an interested computer
programmer's perspective. I certainly never developed any sort of
attachment for it and I just see it as a rather simple input-output
process - as a pet it is a pretty simple and rather unrewarding one.
Incidentally, I am not against the concept of virtual pets. On the
contrary, I think they are a great idea and it's looking like there are a
few good ones coming onto the market. But Tamagotchi ain't one of them.
Before I bought mine I looked at a lot of web sites which were full of
people talking about how their Tamagotchi had developed cute little
personalities and were doing quirky little idiosyncratic things. As far
as I can see that's bunkem. They get ill, sleep and poop at totally
predefined times (I hasten to add again, in my experience) and
function purely as a very simple computer model. Given the bitmaps
for the shapes a programmer could write a Tamagotchi simulator very easily
indeed. Here, incidentally, are a couple of the myths I can quite happily
knock down:
- Tamagotchi do not get physically fatter when they're overweight, as
I've mentioned
- Tamagotchi (and I can't believe someone asked this) do not "drown"
on the screen when you put them underwater. Strangely enough, like a lot
of electrical devices, they just break. But feel free to try it
- Tamagotchi do not get sympathy pains. I read on one site about someone
who went on a roller coaster, and her Tamagotchi was so frightened it
pooped
- Tamagotchi do not "get mad and die" when you drop them. They might reset, but that's an electrical fault, not a personality
On a slightly more serious note, I'm not convinced by the argument that
Tamagotchi is restricted by attempts to minimise the cost of the computer power behind it. While enhancing the graphics would undoubtably be power-hungry, changing the mathematical model behind Tamagotchi would not. The calculations that
need to be performed to animate graphics far outweight any required for
the other additions I've suggested and the ones I've suggested use very,
very minimal amounts of CPU. To have a look-see at exactly what I'm suggesting, hit the right arrow. Hey, I'm really beginning to like this navigation bar thing.
These pages are copyright 1997 Chris Rae; please don't read them without the express permission of the author.