In the last week, Pokemon Go has Team Rocketed to the top of the charts, Nintendo has made bank with their stocks, people are getting off the couch and out of the house to interact with other people, and it has paved the way for virtual reality games and apps in the future. Like pretty much all of the cool kids who itch for mementos from their childhood, I’m stoked.
As a mere five year old child, I had all things Pokemon. I had a giant book full of trading cards, plush Pikachus and Jigglypuffs, the key chain Pokeballs with assorted Pokemon figurines inside, pajamas, slippers, underwear, guidebooks, posters and a killer crush on Ash. In kindergarten they banned Pokemon from my school because the trading of cards was causing such a commotion and rivalry among the children. I snuck my guidebook to school once and it was taken away from me and stored on the teacher’s desk, to be retrieved later with a note sent home to my parents. It was a big deal.
Fast forward to today, it’s a big deal again thanks to Pokemon Go. There has been a multitude of responses to the game, negative and positive and we can’t deny the fact that the wild popularity is yet again causing a commotion and possibly changing the future of gaming as we know it. I’ll admit, I wasn’t one of the people who immediately downloaded the game and began searching for Pokemon, although I was a die-hard fan back in the day. I’ve preferred to sit back and watch the events unravel, and it’s been a very interesting investigation.
As someone who loves to take daily and nightly walks, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see groups of people out at all hours of the night catching Pokemon. Everyone wants to be the very best, and they’ve formed coalitions to walk through the neighborhood and search for Pokemon. It’s a real accomplishment when a game forces you off the couch and out of the house, and there’s also the opportunity to meet other people with the same objective as you. I’ve talked to a broad range of people who are playing the game, including kids who are too young to have experienced the first Pokemon craze, and people my age who say “I was never really into Pokemon when I was younger, but I can’t stop playing this game!” and older generations, including my aunt who walks around at night with her baby and twelve year old son to play the game. Another older person in my family asked me in utter confusion “Wait, so are people going around and physically placing Pokemon dolls in random places for other people to find?”
This type of virtual reality is taking the U.S (and now the UK!) by storm, and I expect to see apps developed in the near future that have similar objectives. It’s exciting to see my cousins, who are always plugged into video games in their dark room with head phones and microphones talking to strangers on the web, actually go into the real world and meet people while still playing a video game. People will always have their negative opinions on anything and everything that other people enjoy, but honestly how can you be negative about something that is prying children and adults away from the isolated virtual world and putting them in their own reality. People are talking to real people, walking real streets, catching Pokemon in real locations… how cool is that?
Nintendo has expertly combined nostalgia with the future, playing on the heart strings of people like me, who were absolutely obsessed with the franchise before and also making a game appealing enough to attract people who weren’t fans before and getting them hooked. Virtual reality is the future of gaming, and we are lucky to experience a shift in gaming with the breakthrough of this extremely popular game. My advice while you continue to play the game is to look both ways before crossing, be respectful of where you are searching, and keep trying to be the very best. Also…who’s down to meet up tonight to catch some Pokemon?
