Crosstalk: Is petting the dog bad, actually?

Welcome to Crosstalk, wherein A.V. Club writers discuss their varied (or unvaried, as the case may be) perspectives on a pop-culture topic. This time, Jen Lennon and William Hughes discuss the temptation of interacting with all the very good animals in video games.

Jen Lennon: What’s your opinion on petting animals in video games, William? It’s something we’ve seen in more and more games over the past few years, but it was Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Star Wars Outlaws that really got me thinking about it. It stood out with Dragon Age because there are just so many animals to pet. There’s a dog, a cat, or sometimes both on practically every corner in Minrathous. And then there’s Assan, the griffin pet of one of your companions. You can ruffle Assan’s feathers, you can boop his nose, you can give him a big hug. BioWare really went all-out on friendly Assan interactions, considering he’s not even the player character’s pet. In Star Wars Outlaws, there are various creatures scattered throughout the galaxy that you can pet, but there’s a special bonding mechanic with main character Kay Vess’ pet/sidekick, Nix, where you can eat a meal together that goes on for way too long and consists of a seemingly endless string of easy but monotonous and ultimately frustrating quicktime events. I’ll put it out there: I love petting animals in video games, and I love Nix in particular because he’s extremely helpful and cute and he’s basically a giant axolotl who’ll roll over and play dead as a distraction and how could you not love that, but the meals together were a bridge too far even for me. 

What about you? How do you feel about petting animals in video games?

William Hughes: Heavy Grinch vibes incoming: I will never pet Assan, the adorable Dragon Age griffin, and in fact actively snub him every time the game drops him into my path, pathetically asking for a nuzzle. Even looking past the weird way the game positions that particular character (his whole narrative is used as a metaphor for parenthood, as opposed to responsible pet care), Veilguard‘s attitude toward animals speaks to a sort of lazy indulgence of surface-level player satisfaction that pervades the entire game—and the “Can You Pet The Dog?” ethos as a whole. And, look, I’m not made of stone: When Tristan Cooper’s Twitter account cataloguing instances of animal petting in video games first took off several years ago, I was as enamored of all this digital affection as anybody. But five solid years of developers dropping environmental pooches and kitties into their worlds solely so they can generate social media-friendly GIFs of characters taking a break from saving the world to trigger a canned petting animation has taken the shine off the apple for me. There have been many great, meaningful animal-human relationships in video games, and lots of moments of affection between them that touched my heart. (It sounds like Outlaws‘ Nix falls into that bucket.) But the pervasiveness of animal-petting in the last few years, the knee-jerk way it seems to have been added to every big budget game, and the way the whole thing seems to scream “YOU LIKE THIS, RIGHT? THAT MEANS YOU MUST LIKE US!” has left me feeling gross, and a little manipulated, every time I see a button prompt and the word ‘PET” pop up over an adorable animal’s head.

Am I out of line here, Jen? A curmudgeonly enemy of all things cute? Do you ever feel a little manipulated when a video game invites you to pet the dog?

JL: You’re maybe being a little curmudgeonly, but I don’t think it’s unwarranted. And, as Can You Pet The Dog pointed out, only 50% of Dragon Age: The Veilguard players have pet Assan, so you’re clearly not alone. I agree that a lot of animal interaction in modern games feels cynical, and the intentions behind including those mechanics are likely exactly what you described—a shortcut to surface-level player satisfaction and shareable clips and GIFs. I think where we differ is that, while I agree with your point, it doesn’t stop me from petting every single animal I come across. Assan, for example, feels extremely manipulative, especially in how he’s positioned and where he pops up—he’s usually alone, outside, just sitting and staring at you, like he only exists to wait for someone to come along and pet him. But it still makes me smile like a dope whenever I go over and give in to his pathetic display.

Maybe I’m so susceptible to it because I don’t have any pets in real life, but I love animals. It’s possible that my tolerance for this sort of stuff is higher than yours because I’m lacking in actual furry friends. Whenever my partner goes out without me, one of the first things I ask him when he comes back is, “Did you see any good dogs today?” That’s my version of “How was your day?” I see what you’re saying about the manipulativeness of including animal interactions in games, but I don’t feel bad when I engage with them. In fact, they often make me happy.

There’s another piece of the puzzle for me, too: Does the type of animal make a difference to you at all? Are you more likely to give in to scritches for animals for which you have a particular fondness? I’m a crazy dog person but I couldn’t give less of a shit about cats, so it’s very easy for me to ignore a cat in a game. And, in fact, if there’s only a cat and no dog, I’m a lot more likely to see the animal interaction mechanic as manipulative and refuse to engage with it on principle. I didn’t even play Stray because of my extreme feline ambivalence, even though I think it’s the sort of game I would typically enjoy. (I’ll pet pretty much anything other than a cat, too, especially if it’s an animal that doesn’t exist in the real world, which is why Assan and Nix get plenty of love from me. Maybe I’m being dishonest with myself in describing my feelings toward cats; maybe I actually hate them and am afraid to admit it because I don’t want to ruin my relationships with all the cat lovers in my life.)

Getting back to the topic at hand, you mentioned that there are meaningful human-animal relationships in video games that you’ve actually enjoyed; what are some of the ones that make the cut for you?

WH: I am proud to call myself an equal-opportunity hater: If there’s some kind of animal I haven’t seen get this treatment in a game before, I might give it a test-snuggle just to see the animation, but neither digital pups nor virtual kitties get the automatic “Aw!” from me. 

As to your second question, there have been tons of rich animal-human relationships I’ve been invested in in games: I teared up when Agro the horse fell in Shadow Of The Colossus, and loved bonding with Very Good Boy Hewie in survival horror classic Haunting Ground. I’ll even give Dragon Age itself a nod and say I have plenty of affection for Dog from the first game in the series, who’s as happy tearing out Darkspawn throats as he is fetching a ball. And while all of these are fairly deep and game-long takes on these tropes, I’ll note that developers don’t have to go all-out to get me to love an animal in a game: Take the example of Baldur’s Gate III, which, as part of its general approach to player freedom, has unique dialogue for pretty much every animal in the entire game when you use the Speak With Animals spell on them. The vast majority of that dialogue is just for goofs, but the fact that it let developer Larian Studios give each animal in the game a distinct personality—as opposed to a canned set of animations applied to every member of its species—makes for a much richer animal kingdom than any simple “Pet” prompt; just because I don’t like hitting the “inject dopamine now” button doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate His Majesty in all his feline glory. Which is kind of my overall point: Animals are cool, and fun, and funny, and surprising. My objection isn’t to depicting them in games—it’s in turning them into something way more boring and one-note than they actually are.

JL: I think that’s totally valid. I’m still going to pet all the dogs, though.