{"id":1955,"date":"2014-09-01T11:23:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T09:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2014\/09\/01\/ive-spent-a-lot-of-time-watching-dogs-playing-and\/"},"modified":"2015-01-04T17:22:46","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T16:22:46","slug":"ive-spent-a-lot-of-time-watching-dogs-playing-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2014\/09\/01\/ive-spent-a-lot-of-time-watching-dogs-playing-and\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019ve spent a lot of time watching dogs playing and it\u2019s been a source of fascination and happiness for years. So the subject matter felt really natural to me. But as a game designer, I find the dynamics of how dogs play together really interesting. Dogs are expert players. Dog play is made of all these ritualized moments of violence and dominance, but when it\u2019s healthy play, it doesn\u2019t cross the line into real violence. Dogs are really good at regulating their play. Playing and playing well is this really deep instinct for dogs, and I thought it would be interesting to try to pull some of that into a game for humans. Healthy dog play isn\u2019t about defeating a bunch of opponents \u2014 it\u2019s about having fun above all, while simulating all these really dark and dangerous real-life situations and working out social relationships.<\/p>\n\n

So the pretentious idea at the heart of Dog Park<\/a> is to make a game that has all kinds awesome \u201cfighting\u201d in it that\u2019s not about defeating your enemies. It\u2019s about how we work together, by pretending to fight each other, by competing with each other, to create enjoyment for each other. In other words, it\u2019s about trying to turn my players into dogs, for a few minutes at a time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(via \u00bb Kevin Cancienne<\/a>)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent a lot of time watching dogs playing and it\u2019s been a source of fascination and happiness for years. So the subject matter felt really natural to me. But as a game designer, I find the dynamics of how dogs play together really interesting. Dogs are expert players. Dog play is made of all … Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[983],"tags":[915,102,259,914,168],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tumblr","tag-dogpark","tag-dogs","tag-games","tag-kevincancienne","tag-play"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2606,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions\/2606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}