Virtual Petz -- PF. Magic

Virtual Petz are not a game exactly, they are just that: a pet that lives on your computer. (The original Dogz, from 1995, was the world's first virtual pet, before Tamagotchi.) The user takes care of the pets over time, plays with them, and trains them with positive and negative reinforcement. They are autonomous agents with real-time layered 3D animation and sound. Using a mouse the user moves a hand-shaped cursor to directly touch, pet, and pick up the characters, as well as use toys and objects. Virtual Petz grow up over time on the user's PC computer desktop, and strive to be the user's friends and companions. They have evolving social relationships with the user and each other. Over 2 million copies of Petz have been sold around the world over the past 3 years. Check out Petz users' websites at http://www.petz.net/petznet/linkz/petzpals.htm.

I think that's our biggest achievement with the virtual petz: that people (and not just children) actually form real relationships with these characters. People nurture and take care of their Petz, they feed them and play with them every day. We don't intend for these Petz to be substitutes for relationships with real living things -- they're more in the tradition of what stuffed animals or dolls or imaginary friends are to people.

We've given several talks and short papers at academic conferences about Petz, including the 1997 AAAI Socially Intelligent Agents symposium, Autonomous Agents 98, Lifelike Computer Characters, Computer Game Developers Conference, and so on. One of the papers is online at http://pw2.netcom.com/~apstern/cgdc98.html. See my webpage at http://www.netcom.com/~apstern for a complete listing. There you will find a comprehensive set of links to other projects involving AI, ALife, interactive story, etc.