cats

Friskies iPad cat games: developed by cats, tested on humans?

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May 20  |  Brand Building  |   Simon

There are a few iPad games for pets, but Friskies has taken the production up a notch with three free cat games released today on gamesforcats.com. The games were built with HTML5, enabling your cat to attack your iPad or any Android device. The Friskies scientists claim that their cats haven’t scratched the glass of an iPad, but could damage a plastic cover.  The boss’s cat here is a heavyweight in the ring (pictured here), so I’m still sceptical on letting him take a swing at it. So I figured I’d test it out first before I mention it to second in command. The three games are Cat Fishing, Tasty Treasures and Party Mix-Up. All are pretty addicting from my end, the cat equivalent of Nintendo’s classic Duck Hunt, letting the cat swipe the targets instead shooting with a light gun. Now that I think of it, they should remake Duck Hunt for cats, catching the nostalgia market for cats that grew up in the 80s on 8-bit NES. Check out the video below:

I did a little Googling on it and found the game developer, Mondo Studios, which has already released two games for Friskies called Wonderland Quest and Wonderland Quest II. Both designed for humans, the popularity of the first demanding a sequel. I gave the sequel a go, which followed the original by letting you uncover cat treats in a fantasy setting, which was oddly hypnotic. The weirdest part is the developer’s press release, which sites a research study, funded by Friskies, which discovered these key findings:

  • Wonderland Quest positively influenced the purchase intent of Friskies dry cat food among buyers and non‐buyers of Friskies
  • Among Friskies buyers, the game had a positive impact on brand loyalty and influenced the purchase intent of specific varieties of Friskies cat foods
  • Among most groups the game also enhanced the Friskies brand perceptions of taste, variety and mealtime experience

So what I gather is they reverse-engineered the new games for cats from their success with cat food-based games for humans. This leads me to the only conclusion that the Friskies scientists are, in fact, cats.

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