Article published In:
Interaction StudiesVol. 8:2 (2007) ► pp.337–342
The illusion of love
Does a virtual pet provide the same companionship as a real one?
The purpose of this short paper is to examine whether a screen based virtual pet, specifically Nintendogs, gives any form of companionship comparable to a real pet. Nintendogs runs on a Nintendo DS, a mobile games console. The unit has a full colour screen showing an animated puppy which users must feed, water, walk, play with and train. An abundance of literature exists examining the benefits of owning a real pet yet very little has been written about human attachment to virtual pets. Six hundred five Nintendog users were contacted by email with a request to complete a questionnaire about their interaction, 80 (13%) responded. Nine hundred requests were made to a similar group who were asked to respond about their real pet, if they had one. One hundred sixteen responses were received. Results indicate that a Nintendog does give companionship, but companionship which is significantly less than that given by a real dog or cat.
Keywords: virtual pet, companionship, mobile games console
Cited by
Cited by 19 other publications
Berney, Manon, Abdessalam Ouaazki, Vladimir Macko, Bruno Kocher & Adrian Holzer
2024. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ► pp. 1 ff. 
Brandstätter, Patrick, Sarah Hagmann, Daniela Krückl, Martina Maurer & Michael Lankes
2021. Extended Abstracts of the 2021 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, ► pp. 5 ff.
Bylieva, Daria, Nadezhda Almazova, Victoria Lobatyuk & Anna Rubtsova
2020. Virtual Pet: Trends of Development. In Digital Science 2019 [Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 1114], ► pp. 545 ff.
Cheklin, Marianna, Florian 'Floyd' Mueller & Stefan Greuter
2016. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems, ► pp. 153 ff.
Coghlan, Simon, Jenny Waycott, Amanda Lazar & Barbara Barbosa Neves
2021. Dignity, Autonomy, and Style of Company. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5:CSCW1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Dongye, Xiaonuo, Dongdong Weng, Haiyan Jiang & Lulu Feng
2023. A Modular Haptic Agent System with Encountered-Type Active Interaction. Electronics 12:9 ► pp. 2069 ff.
Kortmann, Rens, Els van Daalen, Igor Mayer & Geertje Bekebrede
2014. Veerkracht 2.0. In Frontiers in Gaming Simulation [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 8264], ► pp. 44 ff.
Lawson, Shaun & Thomas Chesney
2009. CHI '09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ► pp. 4787 ff.
le Roux, Marieanna C. & Simonne Wright
2020. The Relationship Between Pet Attachment, Life Satisfaction, and Perceived Stress: Results from a South African Online Survey. Anthrozoös 33:3 ► pp. 371 ff.
Liang, Wei, Xinzhe Yu, Rawan Alghofaili, Yining Lang & Lap-Fai Yu
2021. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ► pp. 1 ff.
Lin, Chaolan, Travis Faas & Erin Brady
2017. 2017 Seventh International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII), ► pp. 362 ff.
Luo, Yan, Fang Liu, Yingying She & Baorong Yang
2023. A context‐aware mobile augmented reality pet interaction model to enhance user experience. Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds 34:1
Malinowska, Joanna K.
2022. Can I Feel Your Pain? The Biological and Socio-Cognitive Factors Shaping People’s Empathy with Social Robots. International Journal of Social Robotics 14:2 ► pp. 341 ff.
Oxley, James Andrew, Kristof Santa, Georg Meyer & Carri Westgarth
2022. A Systematic Scoping Review of Human-Dog Interactions in Virtual and Augmented Reality: The Use of Virtual Dog Models and Immersive Equipment. Frontiers in Virtual Reality 3
Rault, Jean-Loup
2015. Pets in the Digital Age: Live, Robot, or Virtual?. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 2
Ruberg, Bonnie & Rainforest Scully-Blaker
2021. Making players care: The ambivalent cultural politics of care and video games. International Journal of Cultural Studies 24:4 ► pp. 655 ff.
Xue, Yaqiong, Dongdong Weng, Haiyan Jiang & Qing Gao
2019. MMRPet: Modular Mixed Reality Pet System Based on Passive Props. In Image and Graphics Technologies and Applications [Communications in Computer and Information Science, 1043], ► pp. 645 ff.
Yang, Liheng, Yoshihiro Sejima & Tomio Watanabe
2022. Effects of Virtual Character’s Eye Movements in Reach Motion on Target Prediction. In Human Interface and the Management of Information: Applications in Complex Technological Environments [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13306], ► pp. 162 ff.
Zhou, Fei, Yifan Lin & Jian Mou
2024. Virtual pets' cuteness matters: A shared reality paradigm for promoting internet helping behaviour. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 202 ► pp. 123308 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.