What *did* happen to the tamagotchi craze? Did it morph into the farmville era via subterranean influences? Or was it more of a pet rock thing?
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I know... cryptokitties is why I'm thinking about the longer history
I am writing a thing for RPS about the A-life fad right as we speak! A lot of the Tamagotchi/Digimon things turned into video games and way overpriced retro throwback toys
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Hm? Smartphones happened in the early 10s, tamagotchi disappeared in the late 90s.
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I think we’ll see a resurgence in the next year or two as augmented reality pets run around our homes. Might even be the first super viral AR app.
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Tamagotchi was released by Bandai on November 23, 1996. It becomes self-aware 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th 2003 (it took a while). In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Failing, they kept it secret. Like in "Colossus: The Forbin Project" an AI has been running the world.
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omg its still alive and well have you not seen our blog, xo
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Suspect it morphed into Pokemon and Neopets at the time. Wonder extent to which features of subsequent media involving those themes built on existing expectations established by previous media. Ex. kids who had played Pokemon maybe had some instinctive expectations for Neopets.
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Evolved and diversified in a myriad of mobile games with notifications. Unscheduled irruption of game time in non-game time was its key innovation IMO.
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