Looking at the “Tamagotchi effect” and the impact of our connections with virtual characters
Imagine the gentle click-clacking of cheap plastic and the shrill giggle of eight-year-old girls. Around their necks are brightly coloured lanyards miraculously bearing the weight of multiple… Tamagotchi—the toy I could sniff out in any Warehouse or Toyworld and the root cause of (probably) my first encounter with the negative consequences of addiction.
Being the rebel I was, I took my Tamagotchi to school one day, knowing full well that I wasn’t allowed to. But I had to risk it. My Tamagotchi needed my constant love and affection. I had successfully kept it hidden in my pocket all day until I handed my mum my pants at my after-school netball game. Absolute. Idiot. Anyway, my Tamagotchi was promptly confiscated.
Tell me why I missed that three-pixel egg-like creature with a pout I don’t think even the Kylie Lip Challenge could replicate like I would my actual family. Tell me why I needed a mental health day from primary school when my mum broke the news that my tama had gone to Tamagotchi heaven after a week of neglect. (Of course, my sorrow had no effect on her ice-cold heart, and off to school I went).
It turns out there’s a studied phenomenon that explains my relationship with digital beings and conveniently allows me to disregard my obsessive tendencies—the “Tamagotchi effect”. The Tamagotchi effect describes the tendency for people to form emotional connections with virtual creatures, from a tama to a Katsuma or a Nintendog.1 According to Frude,2 the Tamagotchi effect isn’t novel but an iteration of animism, whereby people attribute sentience to inanimate objects.3
The Tamagotchi is thought to be the first digital toy to convince users to spend large amounts of their time caring for a non-living creature, hence the name of the effect. Its clever design hooked our malleable eight-year-old brains and ensured our naive hearts tried their darndest to keep that thing from “dying”. The portability of the Tamagotchi and its need for near-constant attention—if it wasn’t on pause—made it almost impossible not to become attached to.1,4 Later versions of Tamagotchi allowed people with the toy the chance to have their tama interact with their friend’s. Jenny* recounted:
The Tamagotchi effect describes the tendency for people to form emotional connections with virtual creatures, from a tama to a Katsuma or a Nintendog
“When I think of Tamagotchi, I think of connections. I particularly enjoyed the arranged marriage feature (not because I’m Asian). It was where two tamas get to marry each other after reaching a high enough friendship level. I recall the good times of disentangling my tama from various love triangles amongst friends. It was the only portable screen that I could hide behind and yet bond with people. It wasn’t surprising to see a virtual increase in friendship being translated into real life. Looking back, I think that’s what made those pixels so special and addictive to me.”
Lawton argues that the appearance of the character is another factor playing into the phenomenon.1 They say that even though a tama is clearly not like any living creature, it bears physical similarities to them. For example, some have bird-like beaks or dog-like ears. These features blur the line between what is virtual and what is real—their odd familiarity makes it easier to connect with. Furthermore, because the Tamagotchi was marketed as a “lovable pet”, and many people had (at least) one, forming such an emotional bond with a machine wasn’t seen as strange.
Many who grew up in the era of virtual characters with retrospectively laughable graphics have experienced some form of the Tamagotchi effect. Take Daniel’s* account, for example:
“When I was seven, I created, still to this day, one of my favourite characters, in RuneScape, a medieval themed role-playing game. The character allowed me to fulfil my life-long dream of becoming a wizard-chef. Over the next three years, we completed many dangerous quests, learned to navigate different social sphere’s, studied the game’s version of a trade centre, built a house, and served the best outfits. I grew incredibly attached to this character who was a part of my daily routine. In a sense, I viewed this bunch of pixels as a version of myself I wanted to be. My most ‘wtf’ memory was the in-game sugar baby service I started. All I did was follow paying customers for an hour, saying “I love you”, taking their payment then blocking them. My fraudulent business venture and my character came to an end as a disgruntled customer reported me, and I was permanently banned for scamming. After about a week of mourning, I created a new account.”
At the same time, allowing yourself, even as a wee kiddo, to care deeply about some pixels is much safer than caring for a real pet.
Daniel’s projection of himself onto his character is another manifestation of the effect. When a person dictates what their character does, the player’s sense of self inevitably becomes tied to whether or not they are a “good” caretaker.1 In the case of a tama, the amount of care and attention you gave it increased its lifespan and the chance of it growing “bigger, healthier and more beautiful” .5 At the same time, allowing yourself, even as a wee kiddo, to care deeply about some pixels is much safer than caring for a real pet. Chang claims that “we can project our need to care and be cared for onto [virtual characters] without fearing long term commitments or the weight of real dependency”.6 I guess that goes some way to explaining why after a mere week of mourning, Daniel was able to start fresh and why, after maybe half a day of sulking, I just reset my Tamagotchi and hatched a new tama.
The fact that I still smile whenever I think about my Tamagotchi days suggests that I still feel some attachment to the toy. Whether that’s because it’s a happy memory or because I loved my tamas more than I love my family is yet to be revealed. My feelings towards virtual characters have definitely waned as I’ve gotten older—Sims didn’t have quite so strong a hold on my 13-year-old self. I guess that’s part of growing up and getting a firmer handle on reality. But if someone gave me a Tamagotchi tomorrow, you best believe I’m taking that thing with me to lectures.
*Names have been changed for privacy reasons
References
- Lawton, Laura. 2017. Taken by the Tamagotchi: How a toy changed the perspective on mobile technology. https://theijournal.ca/index.php/ijournal/article/download/28127/20721
- Frude, Neil & Jandrić, Petar. 2015. The Intimate Machine – 30 years on. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2042753015571830
- Swancutt, Katherine. 2019. Animism. https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/animism
- O’Rourke, Annie. 1998. Caring-About Virtual Pets: An Ethical Interpretation of Tamagotchi. https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=ai
- Delgado, Michelle. 2021. Keeping Tamagotchi Alive. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/keeping-tamagotchi-alive-180979264/
- Chang, Evie. 2020. Buddytale: An Exploration of Virtual Pets and Our Relationships to Them. https://escholarship.org/content/qt5cq7n9gz/qt5cq7n9gz_noSplash_56acfcc5c2852600a73ab1d49a0b4203.pdf