The Problem With the “Can I Pet the Dog?” Question

Making video games is hard, and there are infinite ways players judge and pick apart games depending on their personal tastes. Some games are too complicated, others too simple, while a game that’s fun for one might be a drag to another. Game makers have their work cut out for them, so they have to find ways to determine what players will like when working on their worlds.

One common question players will ask about games is this: “Can I pet the dog?” While the question doesn’t seem relevant to most games, as games like Call of Duty, Silksong, or Path of Exile don’t tend to include our furry friends, it’s more applicable than one might first think. However, the issue with this question is simple—some developers take it far too literally, missing the point entirely.

Why Do Players Care So Much About Video Game Dogs?

The “Can I pet the dog?” question is deceptive in that it’s more nuanced than just a single-button interaction that lets you comfort a furry companion. It’s been asked about games for years, but really began to gain traction in 2019 with the Twitter (now X) account created by a man named Tristan Cooper in response to the fact that the dogs in Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 were un-pettable. Cooper and many other players expressed sadness that there was no way to comfort the pitiable creatures, and the account was born.

Over the following year, the @CanYouPetTheDog account has accrued over 500k followers and even more acclaim, being featured in publications across the internet. Inevitably, game devs noticed the attention the account was getting, pushing them to include pettable animals in their own projects. While it’s fun that so many games feature animal friends you can pet and love on, so many devs and players alike miss the point of the question to their game’s detriment.

When A Touchstone Becomes A Metric, Quality is Lost

The issue with the “Can I pet the dog?” question is that it’s used as a standard rather than one metric of many when judging the quality of games. In terms of relevance, whether or not a player can pet the dog in any given game has little to no bearing on whether the game is good. In many cases, particularly after Cooper’s account went mildly viral, devs were adding a petting interaction into their games out of arbitrary obligation. They thought petting the dog was enough to make their game good, added it, and moved on.

However, the true meaning of the question makes its relegation as a simple requirement—a box to tick—even more annoying for players. The question really asks a deeper one: “Is there a way to meaningfully interact with this world, or is it just a backdrop?” For example, one of the biggest complaints about Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, aside from its performance on the original Switch, was that its world, despite being huge and open, was largely empty. The towns were relatively devoid of people, featuring a few NPCs with only surface-level interactions, which made the game feel lifeless and unexciting.

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That’s not to say that Scarlet/Violet could have been fixed by adding a dog to pet, though. The dog-petting, in an ideal game, is just an indicator that the devs were considering more than just the plot when making the world of their game, adding richness in depth in a plethora of ways that just so happens to include dog-petting.

A good example of this is Hades and Hades 2, where, yes, you can pet the dog, but you can also interact with the NPCs in unique and interesting ways depending on your progress through the game and your relationship to each character. Those developers who know that a unique and living world is an essential part of making a game that feels good to play tend to ask themselves a more important question.

What Is the Question Game Makers Should Be Asking?

The question good game devs ask themselves goes beyond dog petting, and as it should. Instead of looking at one or two high-profile ways to make their world seem deep and engaging, the more devoted devs will go out of their way to make the world of their game feel real. They ask, “What would a person in this world do?” A great example of this is Baldur’s Gate 3, where, beyond petting dogs, the devs have accounted for a nigh uncountable number of possible choices a player might make, coding a response from the game for many of them.

These hidden interactions and marginal cases make the game feel incredible to play, but they also make the player feel like they’re part of the world rather than just a visitor in it. By creating avenues for the player to impact and be impacted by their surroundings, devs invite their audience into the world of the game and garner their investment in it.