I don't want to shoot the dog, but I do want to shoot the idea of having a dog in the game to pet.
I know, I know, it's pretty mean of me to pull out a gun and unload a full clip into a completely adorable and wonderfully intentioned little trend even if it IS a little bit annoying, and it's certainly kind of an overreaction, but while I've got this gun out and you're listening would you mind if I made a particular hyperspecific point? I take issue with the idea of putting a dog in the game to pet because I think that's missing the point: if you have a dog in a game, you should be able to pet it.
Do you understand the distinction? The only reason for asking "Can You Pet The Dog?" is because the dog, when present, doesn't give the player any way to interact other than what the player normally has, usually gun. Gun is not the ideal way to interact with dog, and developers tend to forget pet but remember gun because petting a dog doesn't do anything. For player's that's exactly the whole point, that there is no point, and that's kind of mindblowing to me. Like, I spend all day every day trying to make a big digital stage and trick people into believing it's real, and they laugh at your antialiasing and say you need to upgrade your version of the Unreal Engine, and then they'll go on to ask why they can't pet a dog. Isn't that funny? They think they see all the fakeness and seams but at the end of the day the human brain is not immune to seeing a picture of a dog and going " doggie :)"
My best friend and streaming partner Fern loves Bloodborne and Souls games more than anything, and one of her favorite things about these games is the ability to wave and gesture at people. They put emotes in those games because of multiplayer, but you can do them whenever you want. Wave to the Silver Knight shooting arrows at the pillar right in front of you. Wave to the boss through the fog door. Wave to the fire keeper—wait she waved back!
You can't "pet the dog" in Bloodborne (dogs in these games are made of knives, unsafe to pet) but you can "pet the dog" (the doll giggles when you act goofy, like a teenager trying to get a girl to notice her). This fake, inanimate world responds back to the player's attempt to communicate with it, even when there is absolutely no mechanical reason to do, an act of communication between player and world that is delighting in and of itself.
This is the spirit, rather than letter, of petting the dog. It's not about a literal dog that you literally pet. You can find a way to put a dog in the game and you can figure out a way to pet it, but it's not very impressive. What I would like to see is identifying what in the game the player wishes they could interact with, simply for its own sake, just because they believe in the game, believe in it more than you who made it does, and want the game to speak back in a way that validates that belief. That is a much harder dog to pet. But isn't the whole point a lot of work for no real point?
Speaking of, while I've got this gun, I feel the exact same way about fishing minigames. A calming and idle pastime in the middle of a very different kind of game is a great idea, but I think you should pick one that suits what your game is about. Yes, Cruelty Squad does have fishing in it, but the real fishing in Cruelty Squad is the stock market. Think about that while I lower my gun and give you a chance to flee.
Y'know, all of the above. But I'll also throw in a few other things.
Light switches on walls. If they exist, and I can tell that they're light switches, I want to be able to flick them on and off. Yes, I know, modern games and their heavily baked lighting make it hard to simply tell a bunch of light-emitting nodes to stop emitting light, but we've had light switches in video games that work since 1994, if not earlier. Devs heavily underestimate the narrative and/or horrific gravitas that can come from entering a room where the lights are too dim to see, and forcing the player to fumble around for the switch while having no idea what awaits directly in front of them. But also, I want to be a complete goober and flick them on and off in rapid succession, like I'm 4 years old again and I haven't been yelled at about that. If you don't want me to do be able to do that, you can just as easily not put a light switch in there.
Same goes with toilets. There's much less narrative reason for the player to be able to use a toilet in a game. But the principle is the same - if you're gonna put toilets in your game, I expect to be able to at least do something with them. It's not hard to drag in a copy of flushing.wav from your sound library of choice and wire it up to your toilet entity. You don't even have to make it do anything, mechanically; I'm not looking for fully fleshed-out fluid dynamics or even an animation. If you're gonna let me walk into a bathroom and see the toilets, let me jiggle that handle. Or find some excuse for why that doesn't work. Break it. Have it leaking all over the floor. Whatever. Show that you put some thought into it and you aren't just dragging toilet.fbx from your asset store a bunch of times without really thinking.
My whole thesis here is, if you're gonna put something in to your game, I like it when that something has some thought behind it.
also you can't turn it on and off from the security room anymore
