My urb converted into a virtual world
For Pokemon Go!, either you are a Goer or No-Goer. The game came out last week and surprisingly took the world by storm. Servers were crashed, headlines – good and bad were written, and people are talking about it. However, as with all things, it created a whole new bunch of haters. Also as with all things, haters will always be haters as their existence is not for conversion but preaching hatred, whatever it is based on.
For me, Pokemon Go! is a great game because it is Pokemon, period. As someone from the Pokemon generation we understood why it is important to us. So with a game that married modern technologies with a franchise that we have been following since we were kids, of course we will not pass the opportunity out. The fact is, every single Pokemoner had at some stage wishing that they could catch Pokemons in the real world, which is what Pokemon Go! offers.
What made Pokemon Go! successful is that it successfully modernised a franchise of 20 years old that has a huge following and transformed it into a modern, portable and wish fulfilling game. The application of augmented reality in Pokemon Go! places these cute little creatures into our “real life” habitat turning every part of the world into Kanto, the fictional Pokemon world. You can catch them all, you can battle in the virtual gyms to train them up, and you can evolve your Pokemons, just like what you did in all those games on various Nintendo handheld consoles. The only difference is this time the trainer is YOU, not a persona in the game that Nintendo created for you. That aspect further broke down the barrier between you and your Pokemons.
There are a lot of bashers for the game since the phenomenon started. I have a colleague questioning me catching Pokemon around the urbs and thought it is a waste of time. According to him I should go out do some exercise and talk to people instead. My reply was any comments on the game without first understanding the game is lame and I would take no notice of them. I told him his opinion is just like I say to him playing golf is lame (he is a golfer) as it is just a bunch of old men walking on a piece of lawn and swinging their poles. He laughed and said they exercise as they walk and they socialise as they talk. I replied “Exactly! This game requires you to go walk about to catch and hatch Pokemons and along the way you interact with other users in real life finding out more about where to catch Pokemons and share the same passion with each other.” From what I read online, a lot of so called bashers or haters don’t really understand the game or haven’t even tried the game. They read two paragraphs in the papers and started talking shit about the game as if they were experts. For me I don’t really care about their opinions as haters are not there to be converted anyway, so why bother? You can only educate people who have the curiosity in life and want to be educated.
As for reports of people hurting themselves while playing the game, it is not game’s fault but the players’ fault. You cannot blame the game when it is the people who were playing the game acting out irresponsibly. It is just like people driving without paying attention to the road and crashed into a lake or a tree. Is it the car’s fault? People giving out credit card information without thinking whether it is secured to do so, is it the credit card’s fault? People talking on their mobile phones and walked into a manhole, is it the mobile phone’s fault? For me all this Pokemon Go! blaming is just people want to shift responsibility as apparently an application on a phone cannot defend itself against criticisms. What we need to understand is people should always play the game responsibly, that is what needs to be communicated. But then whether people took the advice is another matter.
One thing I appreciate about my mum is that she would try to understand before she makes comments. She messaged me on the second day the game came out and asked me whether I was playing it. When I told her yes I am playing it, she called me to understand how the game operates and stuff before asking me to play responsibly. Yes, I cannot expect everyone to act like my mum, but if we want responsible players, we need to have responsible commentators and critics too. Ignorance will only breed ignorance and I can’t see how this would do any good to our society <cough cough right wing cough commentators>.
Whether you are a Goer or not, it is important to enjoy things without being critical for the sake of being critical. If you are a Goer play responsibly so you don’t give radical bashers an excuse to generalise exceptions and then normalise them. If you are a No-Goer, I respect your choice but I do expect you to respect our choice too and try to understand it better before you pass your judgement. Whether Pokemon Go! has a long lasting appeal is not an issue for me because I am enjoying it and I am not placing a dollar value on to my positive experience. But I do understand none of us live in an augmented reality so it is our responsibility to make the real world we live in a better place, with Pokemon or not.
