If you are interested in casual mobile games, you must be familiar with "Talking Tom Cat". This gray-and-white, silly-looking cat with a little weirdness will shake its head on your phone screen, repeat every word you say in a strange tone as if it had sucked in a laughing breath, and make you laugh with a sharp voice and somewhat contrived attitude.
It's not smart, it's not even cute, but people still can't stop wanting it.
This "talking cat" was born in 2010, and now, 10 years later, what has it become?
<h3>Talking critters</h3>
In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store, an app distribution platform based on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad that has made a huge difference in people's lives. A year later, a Slovenian couple decided to make a name for themselves on the App Store.
With $250,000 saved while working at an IT company, Samo Login and Iza Login pulled together 6 friends and set up a small company called Outfit 7 in Ljubljana, slovenia. At first, they developed a football app, an Icelandic travel app and a money app, but all failed.
Samo Login attributed the reason for the failure to "users don't want apps like this." Six months later, Outfit 7 made a makeover with a new game, Talking Tom. The game features a gray tabby-patterned, big-eyed cartoon cat, "Tom", who can pet and feed tom, and Tom will bark or purr like a real cat. What's more, once the player speaks to Tom through the phone's microphone, Tom repeats the player's words in an exaggerated voice.
"Tom Cat" in 2010
Talking Tom is a simple electronic pet game. Samo Login hopes that it will be popular with children, and has done a lot of publicity for children. But the truth is far beyond his imagination, teenagers and adults are more interested in "Talking Tom Cat", and their sharing on social platforms has made this cat with its silly shape and voice quickly become popular. After "Tom Cat" became popular, Samo Login concluded, "It's because it's not aimed at a specific group of people" — it may sound different from what they originally thought, but it doesn't matter either.
Over the next year or two, Outfit 7 launched a series of small animals in one go — Hippo the Hippo the Little Hippo, Harry the Hedgehog, Larry the Little Bird, Rex the Dinosaur, John the "Bacterium", Robby the Robot, Gina the Giraffe, and more. Together with the original Tom, these critters formed the "Talking Tom Cat with Its Friends" series.
"Talking Larry", the shape of these small animals in the early days is quite rough...
In addition to the different shapes of the protagonists, the gameplay of the "Tom Cat and His Friends" series of games is actually much the same. But for people who like this type of game (especially mild users), gameplay isn't their focus in the first place. As a result, the "Tom Cat and His Friends" series has taken the world by storm, with more than 300 million downloads in about 1.5 years (19 months).
In the "Tom Cat and His Friends" sequel, the more important character is Angela. She's Tom's girlfriend, and the designers have given her a distinct personality — hipster, pretty, singing, dancing, traveling and fashion, and a little grumpy.
Starting with Angela, the small animals of the "Tom Cat" series began to have more specific "human settings", and the interaction between the characters was more storytelling. For example, in 2012's Tom's Love Letters and Tom Loves Angela, all players need to do in the game is make Tom and Angela fall in love.
In 2012, Angela made her first appearance in the game, and she was Tom's girlfriend
This design undoubtedly makes the image of the critters more intimate, although the gameplay of games such as "Tom's Love Letter" and "Tom Loves Angela" is still very simple, and may not be a game in the minds of core players, but the interaction between the characters still brings some new fun.
What's more, like other popular game IPs, "Tom Cat and His Friends" began to launch other adaptations. In 2012, Outfit 7 co-produced a 10-episode web animation "Talking Friends" with Disney Interactive Studios. It was a good attempt for "Tom Cat". Two years later, the feature-length animated series "Talking Tom And Friends" began airing, which was seven years old and still hasn't finished.
In addition to Tom, Angela, Ginger, and Ben, Talking Tom and His Friends introduces a number of new characters. The plot of the animation revolves around "Tom and his friends", but the content is not limited to "children's stories", business competition, artificial intelligence, intelligence, interpersonal relations, competition for wind and jealousy... Themes add some adult overtones to the 10-minute story in each episode (although the expression is still cartoonish and noisy).
Anime series "Talking Tom Cat and His Friends"
Since 2014, Tom and His Friends has also produced some shorts such as Talking Tom Shorts, Talking Tom and Friends Minis, Talking Tom Heroes, and so on. Angela and Tom also own solo singles. In 2018, Outfit 7 announced that "Tom Cat" would be adapted into an animated film.
Of course, as a series that started with interactive apps, "Tom Cat and His Friends" is still the most well-known game.
<h3>A variety of "Tom Cat" games</h3>
Since 2010's Talking Tom, the "Tom And His Friends" series has launched 22 games. Most of them are still virtual pet games that follow the original setting, and there are also many works that "follow the trend".
From 2011 to 2020, the number of "Tom Cat" family members increased quite a bit. If some of the early critters were clearly meant to make up numbers (or try), then as popularity grew, players increased, and anime aired, some of the characters gradually became regular members of "Tom and His Friends"—Angela, a Parisian girl, Ginger the kitten, Ben the Brown Dog, and Hank the Spotted Dog.
These characters all have their own "talking" games, and try to design different ways to play through personality differences. In addition to being able to talk to players, Angela focuses more on music, pop, and fashion elements; Ginger is a kitten who needs to be taken care of more; Ben is a "Frankenstein dog" who likes to work in the lab (and sometimes explode!). Being snubbed by players can also become grumpy; Hank first appeared in the anime Talking Tom Cat and His Friends before launching games, and his hobbies are photography and watching sitcoms.
Ginger the Kitten
"Frankenstein Dog" Ben
Hank, who only appeared in the game in 2017, has become cartoon style
In 2015, talking Tom Jetski, the first non-virtual pet game in the "Tom Cat" series, was launched. The game is a typical casual racing game, and the difficulty is not high. It's hard to say if it was influenced by another hit game, Temple Run, which has seen its popularity decline since 2013. Either way, Jet Ski was a test of the Outfit 7, and Tom Cat has since been involved in other genres of casual games.
2018's "Talking Tom Cat: Jet Ski 2", the two generations are no different from the graphics to the gameplay
That same year, Outfit7 also launched Talking Tom Bubble Shooter, a game that can be summed up in one sentence: "Tom Cat" themed "Bubble Dragon".
In 2017, the game Talking Tom Camp was launched, a game that combines strategy, placement, and tower defense elements. To make it more suitable for underage players, all battles in the game are fought with water guns. In the same year, the elimination game "Talking Tom Pool" was launched, using a "popular" elimination game.
Talking Tom: Camp, where all battles use water guns
In 2018, Outfit 7 launched several games in one fell swoop, such as Talking Tom Candy Run, Talking Tom Cake Jump, and Talking Tom Jump Up. As the name suggests, these games are all related to "jumping", and the gameplay is also quite familiar to the player.
Talking Tom: Candy Run is the more "rare" side-scrolling game in this series
In 2019, Outfit 7 produced Talking Tom: Hero Dash, a superhero-themed parkour game. Then there's Talking Tom Karting — but the game appears to be only Chinese version, perhaps related to the fact that Outfit 7 was bought at a high price by a Chinese company in 2017.
Today, "Talking Tom Cat" has gradually changed from a virtual pet game to a "comprehensive casual game". Although from the player's point of view, many games in this series are suspected of "skinning", for "Tom cat" fans, when they want to play the game, there is always a type of "Tom cat" to meet the needs, which may be enough.
<h3>An urban legend about cats</h3>
When "Tom Cat" came out, Outfit 7 hoped that it would be welcomed by children. When "Tom Cat" is popular all over the world, there are indeed many parents who regard this series of games as a good thing to pass the time for their children - whether at home or abroad, you can always find some parents who use smart phones to coax their children, most of the time, it is these parents who cry about their children 'addicted to mobile phones' after the fact - this seems to be no problem, but there are also many people who play by this and create some urban legends.
Shortly after the launch of "Talking Angela", a message began to circulate on social media: "Angela" is an app controlled by hackers, Angela will ask minors some privacy issues related to age, home address, school, personal hobbies, etc., and the app will even hack into their photos and friends list, and collect this information and send it to pedophiles.
Angela does ask the player's name, school, hobbies during the conversation
This "pedophile" rumor received widespread attention from parents in a short period of time, and many articles with the keyword "Talking Angela Dangerous" appeared for a while. Outfit 7 came forward at the first time to refute the rumors, saying that Angela's dialogue with the player was only a pre-written script, and she asked the player's name, age, school, and personal hobbies only to "standardize the conversation content", but instead used the algorithm to block inappropriate messages for children. Developers pre-delete personal privacy information from conversations when they collect them.
Outfit 7's explanation is well-founded, but not everyone is convinced. After that, while there was less skepticism about the Angela app, in niche areas, its story continued to add fuel to the fire and eventually became a true urban legend.
In urban legend, the person who controls the app goes from hacker to a "horrible man." If a player says he's over 18, it's still a normal entertainment app, but if a child says he's under 18, the man will not only ask for the child's personal information, but also take photos and videos of them through the phone camera.
The author of the urban legend vividly describes this passage: a child chatting with Angela accidentally puts his hand on her eye, and she angrily says, "Take your hand away, I can't see it!" The kid was so frightened that he turned off the app, but could still hear the phone clicking and seemed to be taking pictures.
Urban legends also have noses and eyes
There are many more stories like this, some of which are even inappropriate for children, or rather, these urban legends are not for children at all. Of course, like other urban legends, none of these stories about Angela are true.
However, although "Pedophile Angela" proved to be a rumor, the "Tom Cat and Its Friends" series of games also encountered many problems related to child users, and these problems also exist in other similar games - as a free download, ad-based and in-app purchase game, "Tom Cat" itself is still not enough to be "healthy" enough, and many parents report that their children see a lot of adult ads when playing "Tom Cat" games, so that they have to uninstall the app. And that's something Outfit 7 should have avoided when accepting ads.
At the same time, "Tom Cat and His Friends" has also been criticized by parents for some content, the more important of which is the attitude towards animals. In some "Tom Cat" games, players (especially children) can interact with Tom, but even if they hit Tom hard or make some bad moves, Tom will only show funny reactions and will not criticize the child's behavior. Some parents therefore believe that games condone children's cruelty to animals, and they should not let their children think that "recruiting cats and dogs" is an interesting thing.
While some of the ideas may sound a bit nitpicky, perhaps, as Sam Login said in a statement clarifying the rumors of "pedophilia Angela," people must always be cautious when dealing with children.