Thank you so much for writing about Petz and Babyz. My first job in the software industry was at PF.Magic.

It was truly a magical place where people cared passionately about those little Petz. I remember all of these heartfelt debates at the time: "Should the Petz die?" "Can they mate and, if so, how do we show it?" "If your Petz run away, should we give the player a way to get them back?"

I pulled so many all-nighters there, I practically lived at the PF.Magic office at the time.

If I remember correctly, since the trademark on "Pets" was already long gone, we had to go with the "PetZ" modifier.

A bit of trivia: At PF.Magic -- you had to work there for a entire year before you were told what the "PF" stood for (I'll never tell!).

I loved Catz. Great fun, it was - I missed Babyz the first time round though.

The difference here is that the first time round, the .. Nounz.. series weren't marketed as pink games. They were for anyone, as you rightly point out.

My issue with this so-called "Imagine" series is the ironic lack of imagination: the anachronistic content (cooking, shopping, raising babies) and the simplistic view that if girls don't ask for policemen games, they don't want or like policemen games.

It's so incredibly simple-minded :)

Haha, Nounz :)

Yup, I think the more open-minded history of the series actually makes the whole Imagine thing even more insidious.

Well, game designers often follow society rather than proactively trying to mold it, especially the more mercenary ones. I'd guess there is probably still a sizable market for stereotypical "girl stuff", in games no less than anywhere else. You might be surprised at the proportion of young girls and perhaps especially parents of young girls with an interest in pretty stereotypical things.

Short memory, indeed. I'm surprised you don't mention ill-fated Purple Moon (also from about 10 years ago). Didn't they start pretty much the same way as Ubisoft's Imagine? "Hey, girls play games, let's do a bunch of market research and figure out what girls like, and then make games targeted at them! It's pure gold!"

So, apparently it's not only snarky bloggers who have short memories, it's also game developers...

Mark nailed it.

These companies, including the one currently signing my paycheck, design and market these experiences based on focus data from parents.

Generally speaking, little Susie won't get a police game until she is able to articulate that desire with her own Visa card.

Sad, but reality.

As lead designer of the original Babyz from 1999, I'll quickly throw in a comment here... (I'm just now reading this thread, as I've been traveling the past week.)

Ian, thanks for this post, we can always count on you to help fill in the relevant details about history of games under discussion. Also, thanks to Peter Kemmer (one of the Petz developers) for explaining, on the various discussion threads on other blogs, the history too.

About the open-minded design of the original Babyz and Petz -- yes, this was very intentional on our part -- but a lot of the credit needs to go to the company management and marketing at PF.Magic and Mindscape, who allowed it to happen -- John Scull, Rob Fulop, Brooke Boynton, Bret Berry and others. They permitted the design team to avoid pink boxes, and overly goal-oriented design for that matter, to make the more open-minded, all-inclusive (kids and adults, male and female) design we wanted to make.

The more typical case, as Mark and Dakota mention, which are probably the case at Ubisoft now, are more conservative executives that lean towards "playing it safe", pandering to a niche market that supposedly is the only type of player that would be interested in playing with virtual babies.

(One small detail to clarify: the first version of Dogz was released in fall 1995, then Catz in spring 1996, then Oddballz in fall 1996.)

I found this article interesting. I actually played Babyz, Catz, and Dogz as a kid and I loved those games. I've always wondered why they didn't come out with any new Babyz games.