Hatch is a virtual pet game for iOS which officially launches today and as you can see from the picture above and the video below, the pets are face-punchingly cute. I interviewed Phill Ryu, Hatch's lead developer, for my book on game design last year, and for this NWN post when the Beta version launched. Since then, he tells me now, they've added new features where you can name your pet Fugu, and take photos with it. The idea with Hatch is to create an emotional bond between the virtual pet and iPhone owner, and because of that, the developers saw some interesting emergent behavior during the Beta testing process:
"My favorite surprise was hearing from multiple testers of their younger children kissing the Fugu when it ran up to the screen," Phill tells me. "And one older friend as well! It’s too bad we can’t pick up on a kiss vs. a tap." With that intensity of engagement, it's no surprise that Beta testers didn't want to let their Fugu go:
"We learned how very dangerous and emotionally taxing it was to ask our testers to start from scratch and say goodbye to their pets due to major changes behind the scenes," as he puts it. "Losing data is a really bad experience as is, but with a pet it’s a lot, lot worse." Then again, that's also true when people lose their iPhone -- Hatch just heightens and literalizes the bond we already have with our devices.
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