For all that, though— my male friends have mostly been completely smitten with Nintendogs—more so than some of my female friends, who find it “creepy” (my girlfriend, fortunately, finds it adorable—not the game, but the fact that I’m so into it). I wonder if that’s partly because I live in New York, where, like Japan, few people have apartments big enough to accomodate a dog. If you have real dogs around, the software puppies might just seem pathetic, but here, people are dog-starved enough that they’ll accept the substitute.

It’s true that there’s no ultimate “win’ for Nintendogs (except, perhaps, buying one of everything, including the apartment remodels). But there’s definitely goals, and most importantly, success and failure, which I think is crucial in distinguishing Nintendogs from previous generations of pet sims.

I’d actually say Animal Crossing is a much more prominent case of a non-game—not only is there no end point, there doesn’t really seem to be much of a distinction (I’ve just started, so this is all pretty preliminary) between success and failure, thereby undermining pretty much the foundational concept of Game. So far, I’m waiting to see whether it’s Zen mellowness sucks me in, or whether I’ll end up agreeing with certain (male) friends of mine who say: “Why do I want to play a game where you can’t kill anything and there’s no point?”

I’m a recent DS, and Nintendogs convert—up until now, I’ve been… well, I’m not really “hardcore”, but definitely spent many hours on Halo 2 and other FPSes (FPS’s? What is the plural, anyway?). And while I really liked your article, I did want to correct one misconception: that Nintendogs has no objective/gameplay element.

The gameplay, of course, is the contests—obedience, frisbee, and agility. Certainly there’s more to the game than that, but those are the things you musst develop (the dog’s) skills for, the obstacles that you have to overcome. And those were definitely crucial in getting me, and I think a lot of players, into the experience. Much of the genius of Nintendogs, I think, is its successful fusion of pet sim with objective-based gameplay, which is crucial to it’s achivement of the Holy Grail of game sales—50/50 gender parity. If it had just been a dog sim, I don’t think it would’ve had the success it has, especially among boys, but with the contests, it creates the kind of skill-acquisition and objective ranking that I think defines the male gamer’s notion of pleasure.

“My love of puppies is noble and pure”… even that sounds somehow wrong :-).

Years back, I coined a term for what you’re describing: “Dobbling,” named for the Lloyd Dobbler character in the film SAY ANYTHING. Dobbling is the pretense of “sensitivity” and defying gender roles and expectations for the purpose of getting a desired woman to lower her guard.

My love of puppies is noble and pure, though.