The Gaming Persona

Cherishing our Virtual Companions: The Emotional Bond with In-Game Pets

• Daniel Kaufmann Ph.D. | Dr. Gameology • Season 4 • Episode 5

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The loss of a pet can pierce the heart with a sorrow as deep and raw as any we experience in our lives. Today, we dedicate our heartfelt episode to Gene's cat, Illyria, and embark on an emotional exploration of the profound connections we forge with our video game pets. We open up about our own experiences of pet loss, sharing those vulnerable moments that remind us of the joy and sorrow our animal companions bring into our lives, both in reality and within the pixelated worlds we inhabit.

As we journey through the nostalgia of '90s virtual pet crazes and into the immersive companionship provided by modern games, we reflect on how these pixelated companions can teach us responsibility and offer genuine companionship. Jenny and I swap stories of our favorite in-game pets and mounts, like those in Final Fantasy 14, revealing just how much these digital friends enhance our gaming experiences. The conversation also touches on the excitement of community achievements and how in-game pets can mirror the importance of real-life furry friends.

We wrap up with a dive into the psychology that underpins our treasured virtual pets and their influence on our gaming behaviors, extending playtime and enriching our digital personas. As Jenny anticipates the addition of a dog companion to her gaming setup, we touch on the importance of mindful gaming, informed by recent research into the intricate relationship between players and their in-game pets. To close, I share a tender moment about my cat, Lexicon, and invite listeners to join our inclusive gaming community, reminding us all to cherish the companions that walk, trot, and scamper beside us in life's epic quest.

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Thanks for Listening, and Continue The Journey!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Gaming Personal Podcast. This is the show that explores who we become when we play games. I'm your host, dr Neymology, from YouTube and online classrooms across the country, and I'm joined by one of my very best friends for my gaming journey, jenny Lebron. How are you doing this week?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing fantastic and I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

I am too, and we are going to do a two-person show, which we have actually done quite a few of recently. If you're watching the feed lots of updates from the Gaming Persona this week. I will talk more about that in my ordinary world, but we unfortunately are not able to be joined by Gene tonight. I'm just going to go right out here in front of the episode. One of Gene's Mikote friends in real life, one of his cats, illyria, passed away today. For me, I literally have waking nightmares about how I'm going to handle when my lexicon is no longer with me someday A long way from now, and I'm just so overwhelmed with sadness for him and I don't even know how. In the sentence, Jenny, help me.

Speaker 2:

No, it's really hard losing pets. I've lost a couple myself and it is devastating. I was talking to you before the show about just how much of my time and my day is spent thinking about my dog and my cat, looking at my dog and my cat, petting my dog and my cat, wondering if they're okay, loving on them. It's such a huge part of my life and when this happens it's really hard. So I feel for you, gene, and this episode is dedicated to Illyria.

Speaker 1:

Yes, all right. So, jenny, what are we talking about from the world of video games this week?

Speaker 2:

Again in honor of Illyria. We are talking about pets in video games.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, all right, let's go ahead and do the ordinary world, where we share our everyday life through our games. So, jenny, how is your week in the world of gaming since the last time we spoke?

Speaker 2:

No new video games to report, but I did establish a new group to play board games with in person. We were going to be starting that here soon, in the near future, and I'm really excited because it's one of my previous remakes that I haven't seen in a really long time and, yeah, I'm just excited to get that started.

Speaker 1:

What kind of board games?

Speaker 2:

All kinds. So we've played with this group before a couple of different games. We've played Seven Wonders, we've played Tiny Towns. This is the same group of people that I play Magic with, so we are just expanding our horizons.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. I was thinking earlier today actually, about all the different board games I own and also about what content would be interesting. And I have this board game. I don't know how long it's been on the show since I mentioned it, but it's called Call to Adventure and the entire idea of the game is you use the cards that you draw to build your hero and complete the quests that line up with the type of hero that you're building. And it's not completely your choice. There are things that happen in the game where you have to pick this or that and, depending on the type of hero, the type of quest that you have, it determines what your final boss is that you have to defeat. And there's not really D20 kind of dice, but there is a dice style mechanic to the game. But the cards that come along with that game and all the different heroes I was thinking that, right, there is a gold mine for me. I totally should just draw a card every week Think what video game has a character that is this kind of hero, and then cater my content to completing the story of the board game called to adventure.

Speaker 2:

That is a great idea. Have we played the game together?

Speaker 1:

We haven't, because I bought it in Arizona and my wife and son didn't like it and I just thought this is the best board game ever. Actually, we were talking in the pre show about one of the other podcasts I listened to and how it's a wrestling podcast. It's hosted by Frayy Prince Jr. Not that I'm trying to plug that, but you were blown away that Frayy Prince Jr was a wrestling writer because we know him from Star Wars Rebels, we know him from she's All that. We know him from. I know what you did last summer. Anyway, last night on wrestling completely unrelated, but this is how my brain works. You just have to hang with me here. Last night, on Monday Night Raw, the rock came back.

Speaker 2:

Oh my goodness, that's huge.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that's huge.

Speaker 2:

I know that's huge.

Speaker 1:

And the rock is, of course, known as the People's Champion. Yeah, and the one time I got to play this board game, the type of hero card that I pulled off of the top of the deck and this is the character I'm trying to build, and if I build him successfully, I'll complete the quest of the hero's journey was the People's Champion.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love it.

Speaker 1:

I did not realize until that moment that the People's Champion is a concept from heroes that are mythological in origin.

Speaker 2:

Oh.

Speaker 1:

I thought it was just. I thought it was just a phrase that was assigned to Dwayne Johnson by Vince McMahon to try to make it more interesting to the crowd. But then I was like, oh my gosh, wrestling is modern day mythology.

Speaker 2:

Oh, is this something that they thought of?

Speaker 1:

Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure wrestling is steeped in mythological concepts, mixed with masculine ballet or feminine ballet, just with punches and kicks. I love it. We don't have to gender the ballet, it's just fighting, dancing. What does this have to do with video games? I did play WWE 2K23 this week as well. There we go, ordinary world.

Speaker 2:

Tied it all in a nice little bow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we just needed for a Prince Jr in order to make it work.

Speaker 2:

Six degrees of separation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there we go, so I also have been playing Final Fantasy 14 and the playlist I have since I started my new character is at nine streams now.

Speaker 2:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

And I have leveled up Thaumaturge to where, if I get the story far enough, I will be able to become a black mage. So the goal with this character, jenny, is to do everything. I'm not in a hurry to get to endgame. I don't even know if I want to get to endgame. I just want to play the game as my stream game forever and just talk about the psychology inside making a video game, playing and enjoying a video game, being motivated to choose different activities inside online games. And I have to mix in other games into my stream portfolio because the competitive stuff and some of the more addictive stuff the way I play MMOs at least is not going to become a conversation. So if I need to talk about gamer rage, I need to play Dead by Daylight Stuff like that, yeah. Or depression, right, because I'm pretty bad. Yeah, so that's really the three games I've been playing. I played Final Fantasy 7 this week a lot because I'm trying to finish it before Rebirth comes out. Yeah, so let's do the Call to Adventure and start our topic for the week. Jenny, I'm going to let you answer the main question here first, so what we are going to talk about for this week's episode in honor of Illyria and pets in our past, present and future Nice to meet you. Is what are some stories that we can tell from our gaming lives about in-game pets or video game-based pets?

Speaker 2:

I have not really been the type of video game player that collects pets. I played many games where pets are available Star Wars, old Republic you can have a little guy following you and then Final Fantasy 14, same kind of concept. It's fun, but I've never been like a God of Catramal pet person in video games. However, when I play Sea of Thieves, when I play Sea of Thieves, they have the ability to have pets that you can call out just whenever you want, which is similar to most games. But anyway, when I first started playing that game, the only pets that were available were oh, and Sea of Thieves is a game where you are a pirate and you play mostly on a ship and you go do pirate quests and pirate things on the ship. They had available three different kinds of pets. You could either have a cat, you could have a monkey or you could have a bird. This was before I owned cats. Now I have two cats and I love them so much. I have always been more of a dog person than a cat person. Now I'm just like pets are awesome and I love them all, except for birds.

Speaker 1:

Except for birds.

Speaker 2:

It's just not. That is not an animal that I think I will ever own or enjoy. So those were my options and I really I definitely didn't want a bird. I was like, is there a cool wool? And then the cats were like treat and cuddly and you can put them in the cannons and shoot them out. It's really funny. But they announced that they were going to start allowing dogs and then I was like, oh okay, this game has me forever now. And one of the dog arts looked like my dog Merlin, and I ended up getting a dog. I named him Glitter Beast and he was my favorite. He would pee on things and I was just fun to have him around in the game. That's really the only time I ever got super insipents. The other thing in video games that I do get into sometimes is so in Final Fantasy 14, you can have a mount and your mounts can be one of a million different things, and a lot of the mounts are animal based, and I've told this story many times on the podcast. But the origin of me being the RNG goddess is we played, we were farming the mounts one night all of the little horsey mounts. I wanted all of them. It was a gotta catch a mall moment for me and I ended up getting all of them on the first try, ruling for them all on the first try. That I'm pretty sure we got them all in that one night, plus the like the next nightmare.

Speaker 1:

You got them all in that one night.

Speaker 2:

I continue to suffer for weeks. So yeah, it was that. That was really fun. It's just a fun extra element to the game. It's also really nice because you form a connection with your animal and, depending on the game, it's just a nice way to pull reality into your video games.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when I was a more active Star Wars the old Republic player, one of the things that BioWare would do for us is send us codes that we could give out for exclusive pets, so that people who watch the streams for their content creator team could get rewarded by getting one of these codes. And the only way to get them is watching people that BioWare is including in this program, right, and so it would be a different colored R2 unit or a little ship flying behind your shoulder or little things like that, or a different colored lizard. You would be able to encourage people to interact on the stream by typing in chat and trying to win a raffle gambling, but you're not spending money in order to participate in that. So it's it's carnival kind of fun reward stuff. You also can win pets in a lot of online games by defeating different bosses, which you talked about the mounts and in Final Fantasy 14 specifically, which we will do an episode soon. that just explains what Final Fantasy 14 is, if you want to start playing it right now, because we're not doing that tonight because circumstances dictate that we talk about the importance of pets. But I do think that it's really neat to think about why people go after these deep challenges in order to get something that is just a digital set of pixels floating close to the character that is a digital set of pixels. It's not a real pet. It's not like my two cats or your cats and dogs that we just have them on screen with us and they don't often do anything except follow us.

Speaker 2:

Follow you around.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, jenny, what's the what's? Some of the earliest games you remember playing that involved a pet kind of activity or a pet dynamic?

Speaker 2:

So and? And is it Super Mario 3, when Yoshi's introduced?

Speaker 1:

No, that's Super Mario World, okay.

Speaker 2:

So that to me is the first, probably the first pet like interaction in the video game, because they were your companion. Yoshi couldn't really do anything on his own. He wasn't a playable character, he was just an addition to Mario.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he's an extra set of powers actually. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Extra powers, different kinds of jumping, but he was your companion.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, also, he gives you an extra jump if you want to sacrifice him into the pit.

Speaker 2:

Right Yoshi.

Speaker 1:

I was really wondering if you were going to bring up Gigapets or anything like that. Oh my God, Keychain things.

Speaker 2:

I didn't even consider that, but I absolutely had to get so many Gigapets. I had the nano baby, which was like there we go. The one that was. It was a baby and you had to change his diaper and it wasn't a little dinosaur or whatever.

Speaker 1:

I don't know how well we're doing with the under 20 year old demographic here, but kids. This is a story from a little thing that we call the 90s or the 20th century All right. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

We should explain what these things are, because they feel like Sure, yeah, I will try.

Speaker 1:

I never owned one, but let's go. It was a little keychain, I didn't. It was a little keychain looking thing about this size, like this file fantasy stone. It had a little screen on it, a couple buttons, and you have to feed it. You got to take care of it, you got to clean it, you got to pay attention to it. It was like smartphones before. We had smartphones to distract us. Yeah, it would die if you went a whole school day without helping it be alive.

Speaker 2:

It'd be a little tombstone yeah.

Speaker 1:

Like a pet, like a child, like a little digital baby. Yeah, yeah, this is what we occupied ourselves with A huge craze.

Speaker 2:

They ended up being banned at school.

Speaker 1:

Our teachers were monsters, killing all of our pet babies.

Speaker 2:

I'm like you don't understand. This is teaching me responsibility, Okay.

Speaker 1:

So not only were our teachers allowed to hit us with parent permission, but they also were allowed to force us to neglect and murder our pet dinosaurs on our keychain. Yeah, that's the world that we came from. This is why I like Elden Ring. Jenny, I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was the beginning, though, of the custom ones and the exclusive ones and a bunch of I don't know third party ones that ended up coming out that weren't as cool. But then you had the like S tier level tomagotches and nano babies, and If you didn't have the cool one then you weren't cool.

Speaker 1:

That's like the exclusivity around different trading card games like Pokemon.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I.

Speaker 1:

Never got to have my hollow foil Charizard from the original generation of cards. And that has haunted me so bad that I have a giant-sized version of that card right there on my wall.

Speaker 2:

The first pack that I ever opened, the first Pokemon part card pack that I ever don't say it, don't say it. No, I got a holographic blast, oyes.

Speaker 1:

No, that card's on my wall. Right there too, jenny, you're constantly getting oh. I'm mad at you now. All right, if you'd like to be a co-host for the gaming person a podcast.

Speaker 2:

Email. I was it. I honestly wasn't that in Pokemon. I watched the show like every day, but I the trading cards didn't really grab me and I was just like, yeah, what's this? And my mom bought us both packs and he didn't get anything cool at all. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay, eventually give it. You're so nice, jenny, thank you. I wasn't actually thinking about Pokemon at all when we got ready to do this episode, but those original Game Boy games that I played on my atomic purple Game Boy color, the whole process of seeking out every single Pokemon, and I walked to Kmart and used my lawn mowing money to buy the transfer cable so I could Sneak my Game Boy into eighth grade and trade so that my cadavera could become an alakazam, and Just things like that that are part of the DNA of me as a game player. It really is about the collecting aspect of getting each Pokemon and if you think about Pokemon as pets because you're the trainer and you pick your team of six to battle with, that kind of has to leave Pokemon, our pets. Okay, yeah, I think they are too. But Pokemon yellow version Takes that to an extra level because, like in the anime with Ash and Pikachu, you have a Pikachu walking behind you the entire game. You can turn and press the button to interact with it and it will have an emote at you that pops up on the screen. He's either Hungry or angry or super happy, and you're his friend till the very end. Oh no, like Chucky. Oh, that's not what.

Speaker 2:

I was trying to make people think about. Not a pet.

Speaker 1:

No, not a pet at all. That is a different kind of toy.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I just like my body.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, so I think that might have been the first game where I really got into the collecting and finding everything aspect that involved a pet like dynamic. I remember playing Mario 64 and trying to get all 120 power stars. I remember playing Zelda and Hunting down all the golden skull tulas. But those are not things that you keep with you, they're just things that you Touch and then it's a number on the screen with Pokemon it's. I have all of these. I can put them in my battle party and I can level them up and get them new abilities and make them the Powerful winner of my team.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So let's go ahead and do our next segment, the road of trials, where we face our challenges and discover our strengths. This is, we do not have to linger on this, jenny. There's a lot of research, actually, on pets and video games, which it seems like such a small thing. But if it's such a small thing, why do all these video games have it, mmos have it, rpgs have it? Anything that has a Lifestyle create your family kind of thing has something like this, whether it's the Sims or animal crossing. Lots of cozy games have something in it that feels like pets. My wife, I remember, was trying to create her aquarium and animal crossing and was collecting all the different sea life. That is definitely a pet dynamic. I Don't know what are some of the? What are some of the reasons that pets are interesting to you, jenny, before we we give them all the spoilers from the psych research? Why does this work for you?

Speaker 2:

Okay. So it's similar to how, like when you create a character typically Not always, but a lot of times you create a character that's like you because you're playing yourself in the video game, and For me specifically so, when I was super excited about getting glitter beast and see it these, it was because of that. I wasn't a cat person, still despise birds, monkeys are cool, but didn't really consider that a pet. But as soon as they were like, oh, we're gonna introduce dogs, I was like I was legitimately so happy when that came, that news came out, I was like this is all I've ever wanted this do you have my dog in the video game. Yeah, it's really just. It's a part of who I am, my love for animals in.

Speaker 1:

If I'm injecting that into my video game persona and feeling connected to my video game, then that's a big part of that so glitter beast Was, had a certain set of traits or represented something in the game that made the character you created Feel more genuine for you. I yes okay, yeah, so that's a customization motivation, which this is episode 120. Glitter Beast is a really interesting addition to our conversation, because I'm pretty sure you mentioned Glitter Beast on episode one of our show I am almost certain it was one or two and and that's really fun for me yeah, as the person who edits and has to always update this information, I know that I have interacted with that sound bite because I accused you of neglecting Glitter Beast in a episode shortly after that and letting him die.

Speaker 2:

This is true.

Speaker 1:

I remember that oh oh yeah. For anyone who's been following the almost four-year history of our show and if you're new here it is customization. Motivation is the one motivation that appeals to all the personality profiles in some way. That doesn't mean it's high For all of them. Some personality profiles react in a I really don't care about this. Okay, but that number of what you are as a game player and how it's measured, your Personality is either gonna push that up or it's going to push it down, or it's going to actually have a neutral effect. But it's going to move specific to your personality profile and not randomly. And that's one of the coolest things, because the other, for example competition, is another player motivation category and there are certain personalities where it just doesn't register. The needle doesn't move Because it's not a part of the game. That is in your interest profile. But customization always moves based on your personality, and that was one of the coolest things that I realized early in my research career. And pets are actually found to influence a lot of player in-game activities. It will make us do boss battles that we actually don't have that much interest in doing. Oh yeah, yeah, it'll extend our play time by hours and hours It'll turn. Yeah, I'm gonna play until 8 pm and then it's 11 30 pm, which is not cool. Pay attention to the clock, people. This is my main message is we can learn a lot about ourselves from video games. That doesn't mean we need to play recklessly, and that's why a lot of people judge video gaming as a bad Leisure activity. But I would just say there's so many times I'm watching a true crime series on netflix and they hook you with the final 20 seconds of the episode. Yeah, are you still watching? Yes, because they haven't decided the verdict. You fool, yeah. So we have a couple research studies that have been published from 2017 and up to now. So 2024 just started. So let's just give us the benefit of the doubt. Five years or less and they all conclude that your personality, design and the level of creativity that you pour into your character, plus social status, are going to determine whether you're going to go after a pet or not. You do this in Sea of Thieves, jenny. Just for my own curiosity, when's the last time you played Sea of Thieves?

Speaker 2:

Man, I'm gonna say going on multiple years, oh no.

Speaker 1:

Since episode one of the gaming persona.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's been like either a year and a half or two years since I've played there's. There's been a strong push in my friend circle to get me back on, but we'll see.

Speaker 1:

Jenny, I know it's not Sea of Thieves, but I'm like a level 38 Thaumaturge in Final Fantasy 14 and I currently have traveled back to the crystal goblin server. So if you ever wanted to sign in on a sunday night or one of the other nights that I'm streaming, we totally could do sastasha and battle some pirates together.

Speaker 2:

That sounds fun.

Speaker 1:

I can't tell if you're being genuine or yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's just terrible.

Speaker 1:

I can do copper bell mines and Halitally and Cutter's Cry. I'm getting all the early ones unlocked. I haven't met your boy toy yet, though, but I know where he is. I've talked to him. He's going by a different name right now. He's got his hood up and he's totally not sit Spoilers. Oh, by the way, did you get to listen to the or watch the episode with me and Jean talking about the Final Fantasy 7 trailer?

Speaker 2:

No, not yet.

Speaker 1:

We had a fun little sidebar there talking about how every seed is hot now. Yes, that's fun. Yes, I think that we summarized all these research studies pretty well with that little bit about itself, expression, its social interaction. Sometimes the pets are a quick way of people knowing oh, this person's good at the game because they be so insane. So even if it's an ugly pet, you'll display it because it means something. Yeah, yeah, like a visual achievement list.

Speaker 2:

My favorite pet in Final Fantasy. I just popped in my head the thought is the whale mount, because then I can sit on it while someone takes me somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So that's a social factor there. It changes the way the game can be played with other people. It also enables laziness, yep, yep. So let's go on the ascent. Elevate the topic. Pets bring a fun aspect of life to video games, and if you have never gone after a pet or other kind of extra cosmetic item in a video game, where have you been? They're in all of our games. They encourage deeper play and further understanding. They ask us to accomplish things that we haven't completed yet, and when we get to display them, they become a fun way of feeling like. This is my character and the concept of optimal distinctiveness that game players are striving for when they play online games is this idea that I'm creating a version of this character that was uniquely created by me. That can be our outfits, our weapons, our hairstyle, the way that we create the face and other physical features, and it can also be our fur friends, our pets and our mounts that get us from place to place. Before you start thinking that's a silly thing to involve ourselves with, think about all the things that your pets represent in life, and then the idea that we can bring a little bit of that into a video game makes the experience feel more complete, but then we can always reverse it and have a greater respect for how wonderful our fur friends in life are, just by thinking about the way they are in our video games. And our video games reflect things from our lives. Alright, let's do the return and go back to our daily lives and take our next step forward. Jenny, we're going to take with you from this episode into the coming week.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to lava on my Merlin and my winter and my rocket extra hard. This week. I'm going to send all my good energy to Jean and his family for losing their family member. And yeah, just think about that and keep doing what I'm doing my pets, because that's all I think about all day. The amount of text messages and photos that my boyfriend and I send back and forth of our animals is insane.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that all my devices, the lock screens, are either pictures of Journey, the game, or my wife or son holding one of our cats, and that's it. Oh, there we go. That's a consistent theme on her phone as well. Actually, you know what? I was cleaning up the kitchen before this episode and my fur baby, lexicon, who is one of my emotes on Twitch, he did his thing, where he stands on the back of the couch and just stares at me while I'm in the kitchen, and usually that means he's going to do a high five, and then that means I will give him a big hug, say the thing that I always say to him, and let him know that he's loved, and then I'll throw a treat across the room and he'll just go bolting for it. But he did not give me my high five. He left me hanging, that's work. So after this episode I'm going to try again because I feel like that ritual was left incomplete. But I'm not really aiming for any pets in video games right now. I just really love both of my cats so much and my my feel I almost didn't do the episode today when Gene sent us that message because I just my sympathies or maybe we can call it empathy just went off the charts and I was like I am not going to be able to do this episode now. But I believe it turned out okay and we got to talk about some cool research, not in specific detail, but just the overall findings of how it works and why it works, and that's what we try to bring to people. So if these conversations sound fun for you and you're looking for some great people to play online games with, check out aie at aie-killorg. And I have one last quest for everyone to collect for the day Treasure your pets and continue the journey.

Speaker 2:

See you next week.

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