# If you play breeding games...



## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

I've been working on the design of an animal breeding game for a while, and the thing I am most torn about is what sort of animals should be breedable.  I'm talking about games like FishTycoon and PocketFrogs where breeding the animals to get different colors and/or shapes is the main activity of the game.  I've also seen a similar game with beetles, and one with various monsters that looked like 50s space aliens, and the odd game Celebrity Pedigree where you breed creatures that have dog bodies and human heads.  The Pokemon games and other monster tamer games like Monster Rancher and Azure Dreams have some breeding elements but they aren't primarily a breeding game.

There are some online games which are a different type of animal breeding game - these typically don't have any breeding goals but instead have a genetic system where all sorts of color combinations are possible.  Tygras is one example.  This is not the type of game I'm interested in making, I'm more interested in the fast-paced single-player breeder tycoon sort of game.

Anyway I thought I'd make a little poll to see what kind of animals gamers would prefer to breed.

*Secondary Poll Question: Do you prefer your bred animals to be used for combat (tactical or card-game) or do you not care about combat?*


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## LizardKing (May 26, 2011)

Inb4 anatomically-correct canines.


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## Volkodav (May 26, 2011)

Ooooh I play a dog agility game, you breed dogs and train em and whatnot. It's really fun
I like cat breedig games too


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## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

Hmm, first two responses mentioning canines and I didn't even consider them as a choice?  Wonder if I need to re-think that.  I'm not really much of a dog person, but they can be cute and funny.  Same with cats really.  But I don't want to do real breeds of animal, I want to do fantasy ones, so I'm hesitant to use a kind of animal where fans tend to obsess about the real breeds the way other people obsess about sports teams.


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## dinosaurdammit (May 26, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> Hmm, first two responses mentioning canines and I didn't even consider them as a choice?  Wonder if I need to re-think that.  I'm not really much of a dog person, but they can be cute and funny.  Same with cats really.  But I don't want to do real breeds of animal, I want to do fantasy ones, so I'm hesitant to use a kind of animal where fans tend to obsess about the real breeds the way other people obsess about sports teams.


 
Dire wolves. Canine and badass.


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## Unsilenced (May 26, 2011)

...

What is a breeding game?


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## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

Unsilenced said:


> ...
> 
> What is a breeding game?


 It's a video game where you are an experimental breeder of domesticated animals or plants.  This is a real job for people who produce ornamental fish and flowers; if you breed an attractive new type of betta fish or tulip you can make a lot of money.  This sort of thing is less practical for larger animals like cats, dogs, and horses, but it still happens to a lesser extant - munchkin cats and bengal cats are two recently developed breeds that have made their breeders a good bit of money.  In some breeding games the annoying reality that animals can only breed within their species is turned off and you can create fun hybrids or start from simple animals and climb the whole evolutionary tree.

If you want to try a game like this, Celebrity Pedigree is free online, Fish Tycoon and Plant Tycoon have free trials, and Pocket Frogs is free if you have an iphone or ipad.


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## Tabasco (May 26, 2011)

When it comes to breeding games, the type of breedable is a trivial matter compared to how the game actually runs and the user base, imo. Oh, well, I'll vote anyway.

Also, combat for critters that aren't fantasy-ish is kind of awkward.


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## Volkodav (May 26, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> so I'm hesitant to use a kind of animal where fans tend to obsess about the real breeds the way other people obsess about sports teams.


 Just a heads up.... you're interested in a breeding sim, correct? Did you read up on the communities surrounding these sims? The players tend to be extremely serious about the game - almost rabid about small details like their user # [they will buy accounts off of other users if the user # is lower]. The game I play on is extremely welcoming and everybody's very nice and helpful, but we had an option to "retire" a dog... which is a fancy word for saying "put down"... players didn't like that so they had to change that to "Sell pet to an elderly home" because these players were getting upset about putting down *pixel dogs.*


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## Lobar (May 26, 2011)

I've never even heard of these.  So there's like, Puppy Mill DS out there somewhere?


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## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

Clayton said:


> Just a heads up.... you're interested in a breeding sim, correct? Did you read up on the communities surrounding these sims? The players tend to be extremely serious about the game - almost rabid about small details like their user # [they will buy accounts off of other users if the user # is lower]. The game I play on is extremely welcoming and everybody's very nice and helpful, but we had an option to "retire" a dog... which is a fancy word for saying "put down"... players didn't like that so they had to change that to "Sell pet to an elderly home" because these players were getting upset about putting down *pixel dogs.*


 Yeah, I'm trying to be aware of who the potential players are and what they want.  Although I'm really aiming for a Plant Tycoon/Fish Tycoon/Pocket Frogs kind of single-player game, so it's not quite the same group of people as the one you play.  But I don't like the death of animals within a game either, so I chose a design where individuals do not age once they get to adulthood, and there aren't any fatal sicknesses or permadeath from combat.


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## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

Blues said:


> When it comes to breeding games, the type of breedable is a trivial matter compared to how the game actually runs and the user base, imo. Oh, well, I'll vote anyway.
> 
> Also, combat for critters that aren't fantasy-ish is kind of awkward.


 Oh, feel free to describe how you would like to see the game function, I'm always happy to hear game design suggestions.  User base is not really an issue for a single player game though.

The kind of game I want to design is where the animals wander around on the screen (like fish in a tank or other animals in a paddock or birds flitting around inside a giant cage).  They have some amusing animations and the game can be used as a screensaver, like many single player breeding and fishtank games.  They emote when they want something from the player, like petted or fed or played with.  They can be picked up to place them in the breeding tank/pen.  Breeding produces eggs which the player has to incubate under appropriate conditions in an appropriate nest (I wanted this to be like the gameplay of growing seeds in a plant sim, because I think that's more fun than babies just appearing after breeding).  I also want to have a book of all the possible types that can be bred, they are silhouettes before the player discovers them, then the image appears after the player breeds one.


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## Volkodav (May 26, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> Yeah, I'm trying to be aware of who the potential players are and what they want.  Although I'm really aiming for a Plant Tycoon/Fish Tycoon/Pocket Frogs kind of single-player game, so it's not quite the same group of people as the one you play.  But I don't like the death of animals within a game either, so I chose a design where individuals do not age once they get to adulthood, and there aren't any fatal sicknesses or permadeath from combat.


Hahhahaha you'd hate me then
If I don't like the colours a puppy has when it's born I give that bitch the needle and throw it in a dumpster


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## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

Lobar said:


> I've never even heard of these.  So there's like, Puppy Mill DS out there somewhere?


 More or less.  Fish Tycoon is pretty literally 'fish mill tycoon' - you sell the results of your breeding in your aquarium pet store, and you can kill them if they are unhealthy or worthless.  Personally I don't think there's anything unethical about doing that with fish.  Most of the games where you can breed cats, dogs, and larger animals, they try to make the selling aspect seem ethical, story-wise.  In sims 2 for example you can sell cats and dogs to individual owners or give them up to the pound, but you can't kill them and you can't have more than 8 dogs on your property without using a hack.  In Celebrity Pedigree you sell your dog creatures to the bank - they have a set value determined by their genes, and there's no mention of what happens to them after they are sold.


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## LizardKing (May 26, 2011)

My old housemate used to have a game that involved caring for plants and discovering new varieties by cross-fertilisation and shit.

By far the most boring game I have ever seen.


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## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> My old housemate used to have a game that involved caring for plants and discovering new varieties by cross-fertilisation and shit.
> 
> By far the most boring game I have ever seen.


 Possibly Plant Tycoon.  They're fun if you like gardening and experiments.  Not much different from any combatless sim game in terms of the type and amount of fun.


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## sunandshadow (May 26, 2011)

Clayton said:


> Hahhahaha you'd hate me then
> If I don't like the colours a puppy has when it's born I give that bitch the needle and throw it in a dumpster


 I wouldn't do that in real life, but in a game I find it merely irritating, not horrifying.  Games can completely shape the players' actions by declaring what the goal is and making certain actions efficient at accomplishing the goal, and others not efficient or not available.  So the great thing about being the designer is, if you don't want people killing off animals, you design the game so that isn't a necessary or useful step toward whatever the goal of the game is.  Specifically I think I want to create a game where you can only create one of each specific animal, the overall goal is to have one of every specific animal, adults have no upkeep costs, and you have enough storage space that you're never in the position where you have to get rid of animals before you can create more.  In that situation it would make no sense to kill an animal because it would be taking you further away from the game's goal.


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## Volkodav (May 26, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> I wouldn't do that in real life, but in a game I find it merely irritating, not horrifying.  Games can completely shape the players' actions by declaring what the goal is and making certain actions efficient at accomplishing the goal, and others not efficient or not available.  So the great thing about being the designer is, if you don't want people killing off animals, you design the game so that isn't a necessary or useful step toward whatever the goal of the game is.  Specifically I think I want to create a game where you can only create one of each specific animal, the overall goal is to have one of every specific animal, adults have no upkeep costs, and you have enough storage space that you're never in the position where you have to get rid of animals before you can create more.  In that situation it would make no sense to kill an animal because it would be taking you further away from the game's goal.


 
Lmao i wouldnt do it IRL too, but I don't think twice about putting down a pixel dog because it has brown eyes instead of blue.
I mean, I don't have 2 mil $$ for nothin B] I'm a puppy mill machine [lolool]


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## Azbulldog (May 26, 2011)

Without reading any of this thread I'd just like to mention the Chao in the Sonic universe.


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