Synonyms
Definitions
Digital games aimed at animal players are a growing area in both entertainment and research, enabled particularly by the mass availability of touchscreen technology. These games rely on animals’ natural proclivity for play and can facilitate playful interactions between species.
Prerequisites for Digital Play in Animals
Humans are far from the only species known to engage in playful behavior. Wirman et al. (2011) argue that “all mammals play, including humans,” and play-like behaviors have also been identified in birds, reptiles, fish, and invertebrates such as octopuses (Burghardt 2005). While the evolutionary dynamics and psychological mechanisms of play are not yet fully understood, it is known that in both humans and other animals, playing is a crucial prerequisite for physiological, psychological, and social development (Bekoff 1972) and play deprivation can result in serious developmental deficiencies in adulthood (Hol et al. 1999)....
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Autier-Dérian, D., Deputte, B.L., Chalvet-Monfray, K., Coulon, M., Mounier, L.: Visual discrimination of species in dogs (Canis familiaris). Anim. Cogn. 16(4), 637–651 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-013-0600-8
Baskin, S., Zamansky, A.: The player is chewing the tablet!: towards a systematic analysis of user behavior in animal-computer interaction. In: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, pp. 463–468. ACM (2015). doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/2793107.2810315
Baskin, S., Anavi-Goffer, S., Zamansky, A.: Serious games: is your user playing or hunting? In: Chorianopoulos, K., Divitini, M., Baalsrud Hauge, J., Jaccheri, L., Malaka, R. (eds.) Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9353, pp. 475–481. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24589-8_43
Bekoff, M.: The development of social interaction, play, and metacommunication in mammals: an ethological perspective. Q. Rev. Biol. 47, 412–434 (1972)
Burghardt, G.M.: The Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2005)
Cat Alone: [digital game] Galbro, Inc. (2015). Available from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.galbro.cataloneandroid&hl=en
Cheok, A.D., Tan, R.T.K.C., Peiris, R.L., Fernando, O.N.N., Soon, J.T.K., Wijesena, I.J.P., Sen, J.Y.P.: Metazoa Ludens: mixed-reality interaction and play for small pets and humans. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part A: Systems and Humans. 41(5), 876–891 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMCA.2011.2108998
Denzin, N.K.: Play, games and interaction: the contexts of childhood socialization. Sociol. Q. 16, 458–478 (1975)
Ferworn, A., Sadeghian, A., Barnum, K., Rahnama, H., Pham, H., Erickson, C., Ostrom, D., Dell’Agnese, L.: Urban search and rescue with canine augmentation technology. In: System of Systems Engineering, 2006 IEEE/SMC International Conference. IEEE (2006). doi:https://doi.org/10.1109/SYSOSE.2006.1652317
Friskies Jitterbug: [digital game] Nestle Purina PetCare (2014). Available from: https://www.gamesforcats.com
Geurtsen, A.: An experiment in animal welfare informatics: effects of digital interactive gameplay on the psychological welfare of home alone dogs. Master of Science Thesis, Leiden University (2014). Available from: http://mediatechnology.leiden.edu/images/uploads/docs/geurtsen-an-experiment-in-animal-welfare-informatics.pdf
Greenfield, P.M., Lyn, H., Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S.: Protolanguage in ontogeny and phylogeny: combining deixis and representation. Interact. Stud. 9(1), 34–50 (2008.) Available from: http://greenfieldlab.psych.ucla.edu/Evolution_and_Primate_Studies_files/04gre.pdf
Herzing, D.L.: Interfaces and keyboards for human-dolphin communication: what have we learned. Anim. Behav. Cogn. 3(4), 243–254 (2016). https://doi.org/10.12966/abc.04.11.2016
Hol, T., Van den Berg, C.L., Van Ree, J.M., Spruijt, B.M.: Isolation during the play period in infancy decreases adult social interactions in rats. Behav. Brain Res. 100(1–2), 91–97 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4328(98)00116-8
Jolly Dog: [digital game] Crashinvaders. (2016). Available from: http://crashinvaders.com
Mancini, C.: Animal-computer interaction: a manifesto. Interactions. 18(4), 69–73 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1145/1978822.1978836
McGrath, R.E.: Species-appropriate computer mediated interaction. In: CHI’09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2529–2534. ACM (2009). doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/1520340.1520357
McGrath, R.: Species-Inappropriate Touch Screens [online], https://robertmcgrath.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/species-inappropriate-touch-screens/ (2015)
Meijer, E.: Animal deliberation: from farm philosophy to playing with pigs. Krisis. 1, 71–73 (2016.) Available from: http://krisis.eu/animal-deliberation-from-farm-philosophy-to-playing-with-pigs/
Neitz, J., Geist, T., Jacobs, G.H.: Color vision in the dog. Vis. Neurosci. 3, 119–125 (1989)
Pons, P., Jaen, J., Catala, A.: Animal ludens: building intelligent playful environments for animals. In: Proceedings of the 2014 Workshops on Advances in Computer Entertainment Conference. ACM (2014). doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/2693787.2693794
Pons, P., Jaen, J., Catala, A.: Towards future interactive intelligent systems for animals: study and recognition of embodied interactions. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. pp 389-400. ACM (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3025171.3025175
Smith, J.: Apps for apes: Orangutans want iPads for Christmas. New Scientist. 212, 69–71 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(11)63173-4
Sutton-Smith, B.: The Ambiguity of Play. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1997)
Webber, S., Carter, M., Sherwen, S., Smith, W., Joukhadar, Z., Vetere, F.: Kinecting with Orangutans: zoo visitors’ empathetic responses to animals? Use of interactive technology. In: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp. 6075–6088. ACM (2017). doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025729
Westerlaken, M.: Uncivilizing the future: imagining non-speciesism. Antaeus. 4(1), 53–67 (2017.) Available from: https://muep.mau.se/handle/2043/24019
Westerlaken, M., Gualeni, S.: Felino: The philosophical practice of making an interspecies videogame. Presented at the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Istanbul (2014). Available from: http://gamephilosophy.org/download/philosophy_of_computer_games_conference_2014/Westerlaken_Gualeni-2014.-Felino_The-Philosophical-Practice-of-Making-an-Interspecies-Videogame.-PCG2014.pdf
Wingrave, C.A., Rose, J., Langston, T., LaViola Jr, J.J.: Early explorations of CAT: canine amusement and training. In: CHI’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp. 2661–2670. ACM (2010)
Wirman, H.: The playing other and what we cannot help learning from the study of animal play. Presented at DIGRA 2013 conference, Atlanta (2013). Available from: http://www.hannawirman.net/wirman_digra2013.pdf
Wirman, H., Smits, W., Yu, G., Yuen, W.: Defeated by an orangutan? Approaching cross-species gameplay. Presented at DiGRA 2011 conference, Utrecht (2011). Available from: http://www.hannawirman.net/wirman_digra2011_abstract.pdf
Woodman, C.: Successful intuitive computer interfaces for birds, and other forays into giving parrots electronic enrichment. Presented at the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators Conference (2014). Available from: http://flyingwithpencils.runningwithpencils.com/ForaysintoGivingParrotsElectronicEnrichment.pdf
Young, J.E., Young, N., Greenberg, S., Sharlin, E.: Feline fun park: a distributed tangible interface for pets and owners. In: Video and Adjunct Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Toronto (2007). Available from: http://hci.cs.umanitoba.ca/publications/details/feline-fun-park-a-distributed-tangible-interface-for-pets-and-owners
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Fiadotau, M. (2018). Digital Games for Animals. In: Lee, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_191-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_191-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering