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industry where living, never-ending games increasingly demand more and more of the player’s time, energy and focus, petting a dog can feel like a pressure release". Over time, Cooper focused less on games where dogs cannot be petted, outside of in-jokes within games, where the act of trying to pet a dog may have disastrous consequences for the player. Cooper felt the focus on a game's failure to include a pettable dog gave a game too much undesired negative attention, though does still include such games after checking with the developers ahead of time.
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could not be petted by players. He stated he "was frustrated that purposely put dogs in a poor situation, meant to evoke empathy from the player, but there was no way to comfort or care for these hungry, frightened creatures". He found other players had expressed similar concerns, and created the
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inability to pet the dog, in March 2019. Subsequent tweets simply reported the ability or inability to pet dogs in games, with a screenshot showing this capacity. Cooper said that the action of dog-petting in games generally does not yield any type of in-game reward or benefit, but that "In an
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included a dog that the developers had the "specific intention of trolling Can You Pet The Dog" that made it difficult, but not impossible, to pet. The
Twitter account and attention from players has led to inclusion of more interactive, detailed wildlife in video games.
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for a special bundle in
September 2020 featuring games that were featured on the Twitter account that allowed players to pet dogs. In March 2020, Cooper started a second Twitter account
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While games since the account's launch have promoted that one can pet the dog in their games in reference to the account, Cooper reacted angrily when he was mentioned by the
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expansion in March 2020. Some developers have gone out of their way to incorporate the dog-petting mechanic at the expense of other features;
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but due to having limited animator time, had to restrict other animations in the game including extended petting animations.
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account created by
Tristan Cooper in March 2019 which documents whether dogs or other creatures within selected
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Twitter account in a promotional tweet which showed that you would be able to pet cats in the upcoming game
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Within about three months, the account had over 250,000 followers, and nearly 500,000 by
November 2020.
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Though dog-petting had been a mechanic in video games prior to Cooper's documentation, as a result of
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369:"Creator of 'Can You Pet the Dog' Twitter account says Hogwarts Legacy association is "a new low""
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