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| Source // PlayStation |
I definitely remember thinking "wouldn't it be cool if every other footballer in this game was actually controlled by a human somewhere else in the world" when I was younger, and clearly before I knew what the Internet was. We're not there yet with 22-player online football, so far as I know, but the point is that in the future, technology could lead us anywhere.
But never did I think that "one day I'm going own some kind of augmented reality digital pet". Technology can't do pets, can it? Tamagotchi's aren't pets. Furby's aren't pets. They're both a pain in the arse, whereas a pet is a companion.
Other folks - smarter folks than me - thought otherwise, and with camera tracking and motion controls, something like EyePet could finally be unleashed upon living room floors the world over.
Should it have been is a question we're about to find out.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Frustrations
This is the dream EyePet wants families to buy into. Siblings smiling and laughing as they interact with the abomination that is a monkey-puppy, a creature that only exists on your TV through the power of the PlayStation 3's camera.
Originally that was about it, but add in a PlayStation Move controller and its world opens up as you shower him with treats, play games, clean him... the wonders of technology and imagination.
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| Source // PlayStation |
What you get is something closer to this. I've not altered that image at all, either. To onlookers you will look as strange as that, your eye lines making no sense to anyone but yourself, your camera struggling with image quality and the inevitably poor lighting you'll have in your living room, and a whole experience that gives off the impression of "so what's the point in this again?"
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| Source // PlayStation |
The point of EyePet is to play with your pet, in your impossibly large living room, with multiple generations getting down to its level and blowing bubbles at it, or wiggling fingers to attract its attention, or trying to teach it to jump, but failing because the camera can't pick out your fingers from the wooden floorboards.
On paper, the concept makes a bit of sense. In practice, it is the longest tech demo you've ever had to witness, starring a creature that just creeps me out a little.
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| Source // PlayStation |
The set-up consists of performing some activities to keep it entertained and exercised, and performing challenges to unlock new toys to play with. You can, for example, use your pet as a bowling ball in a bowling mini-game, or try to capture photos of him performing a certain action.
At one point, EyePet had me - oh, sorry, yeah, I have the pleasure of actually playing this game for a bit - using the motion controller to scoop up some food and throw it in the air in an attempt to make my pet catch it a few times. An absolute pain in the arse, that challenge, because while you're trying to sync up your movements to what you can see on screen, the bloody pet is reacting to what it perceives as input from the camera, or is still performing an animation that lasts who knows how long, or is simply lost and doesn't know what to do...
Anyway, a bunch of activities keep your pet fit and healthy, and you've even got an X-ray machine to diagnose any problems they may face. The stuff of nightmares.
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
Speaking of nightmares, you can dress your furry little gremlin up in a variety of all-too-human costumes, and colour it to the point where it looks like it fell out of Spore or something, should you be the kind of weirdo that does that sort of stuff to their pets.
Turn up every day to play with the little rascal and that's EyePet in a nutshell. Bet you wish you bought a dog instead of a PlayStation 3, huh?
Final Word
I made sure P2 was in the room for this one, in part because she's always asking for a bloody animal (it changes each time), but mostly because there is a bit of tech in EyePet where you can draw a picture, either using the Move controller or an actual pen and paper and 'teach' your pet to draw.
Delightfully, its first attempt is a mess, and even more delightfully, the artist that is P2's first attempt was just as rubbish. But through some algorithms and magic, the horror that was watching our artistic efforts slowly understood what an elephant was, and if you squinted, you too could agree that the scribbles it drew were roughly elephant-shaped. Awww.
But getting to that point was a chore. We've got just enough space to play with a digital creature, but in the light we were using, our scene was awfully orange, so maybe the camera had to work a little harder to pick out the details.
To alleviate that a little, the Move controllers come into play, but if they're not quite calibrated right, you end up holding things at weird angles as you try to match up on-screen graphics to your hand position trying to correct any offsets and quirks, which no doubt compounds the problem over time.
At the end of the day, neither of us really wanted to spend time with this thing, and given that that's the whole point of EyePet, that's a bit of a problem for it.
I said that it felt like a long tech demo, and it's perhaps more like a whole series of tech demos linked together under the theme of 'digital pet'. To see how the camera and controllers work and what they could be used for, EyePet is worth checking out. For a digital pet, it's probably better to watch YouTube and imagine you own the perfect pet instead.
Fun Facts
Somehow there is a PlayStation Portable version of EyePet, but no interpretation of the idea for the PlayStation Vita, what with its front and back touch panels and cameras and whatnot. Did the Vita die because of a lack of EyePet?
EyePet, developed by London Studio, Playlogic Game Factory, first released in 2009.
Version played: EyePet Move Edition, 2010.