 "The Pokemon conundrum")
Since its debut, smartphone app Pokemon Go has been downloaded millions of times. The game uses your phone's camera to make Pokemons appear on the screen alongside real-life objects, so you can go and catch Pokemon, by flicking a Pokeball at Pokemon, which may break out of the Pokeball, so keep unlimited Pokeball by visiting unlimited PokeStops, or spend unlimited money on in-game purchases. The overall objective, however, is to go out into the real world, explore your backyard and socialise with complete strangers. If you don't like that part, why the hell are you playing Pokemon Go in the first place?
If it wasn't obvious at this point, playing the game requires the player to go outside and walk. Here's how: take one foot and place it in front of the other, then take the other foot and place it in front of the previous foot. After repeating this motion, you will find your body automatically transported from one place to another. The coolest part is that this feature comes absolutely free, unlike other games, which provide basic services for free but charge for advanced services, such as walking.
Critics, however, point out a hefty cost: The game's actual objective, they say, is to collect as much personal data as possible, and the game can only be won if you complete all in-app purchases, they warn. But I say, why worry about the amount of information you expose about yourself, when that worry never stopped you from playing similar apps before? As for the in-app purchases, Pokemon Go aims to provide players with too much Pokemon in their lives, or too little money in their pockets, with a Pokemon-catching experience that emphasises the need for nerds to leave their grandmoms' basements for a change - I think that's good: remember, Pokemon Go is stylised as Pokemon GO, the capital letters screaming at everyone to get outside. Get it.
This was the early 2000s, we were in school, all Pokemon were in TV, most were in our heads. In class eight, we saw its forerunner Dragon Ball Z (pronounced zee not zed), a Japanese TV series on Cartoon Network that centred around battles of dragons summoned from orange balls known as Dragon Balls for obvious reasons. The hero, a regular kid, not smart, not stupid either (we could relate to him), was adopted - his parents having died long ago mysteriously.
As the series progressed, we learnt more and more about mons (monsters) - all of this set us up for pocket mon, or Pokemon, the television series, and later on, the Pokemon card game, a heavily casualised forerunner of Pokemon Go. Thus, we schoolboys burnt in a similar frenzy back then: Pokemon cards - which were addictive, tradable, cute, so much so that many schools barred kids from playing the cards - their possession led to five years in prison, and dealing in them brought life imprisonment. In 2002, a classmate of mine went to trial for soliciting junk food from canteen, a charge heightened by the fact that he tried to pay with a Pokemon card. He is still on death row. And it is still illegal to carry Pokemon cards in my school, except for limited and medicinal use by desperate school kids. I remember the principal having declared the cards "a cause of permanent brain damage...with obsession, gambling, and spending excess money on the game, as dangerous signs".
Today, I find something similar unfurling: compulsive use of Pokemon Go leading to people wandering into dark alleys. Critics say all the wandering is making it difficult to hide a body. For example, one girl hopped a fence to follow a river and found a dead body. Another found an entire graveyard. Others found an afterlife by walking off a cliff, playing. Sigh.
ashish.sharma@bsmail.in
If it wasn't obvious at this point, playing the game requires the player to go outside and walk. Here's how: take one foot and place it in front of the other, then take the other foot and place it in front of the previous foot. After repeating this motion, you will find your body automatically transported from one place to another. The coolest part is that this feature comes absolutely free, unlike other games, which provide basic services for free but charge for advanced services, such as walking.
Critics, however, point out a hefty cost: The game's actual objective, they say, is to collect as much personal data as possible, and the game can only be won if you complete all in-app purchases, they warn. But I say, why worry about the amount of information you expose about yourself, when that worry never stopped you from playing similar apps before? As for the in-app purchases, Pokemon Go aims to provide players with too much Pokemon in their lives, or too little money in their pockets, with a Pokemon-catching experience that emphasises the need for nerds to leave their grandmoms' basements for a change - I think that's good: remember, Pokemon Go is stylised as Pokemon GO, the capital letters screaming at everyone to get outside. Get it.
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So, look out for creatures popping up on your screen alongside real-world objects: they could be mole-like sitting on your toilet; demon-like galloping around; or ostrich-like perched on top of your phone. The game is perhaps the first real success story of augmented reality technology, which blends the digital and real, and the effect is nostalgia: back in my school days, the only way you could win was by spending months, not money, on building a personal relationship with an imaginary Pokemon before luring it away from its family. After the capture, the Pokemon would emit a deep, mournful moan, and you could kill it for that.
This was the early 2000s, we were in school, all Pokemon were in TV, most were in our heads. In class eight, we saw its forerunner Dragon Ball Z (pronounced zee not zed), a Japanese TV series on Cartoon Network that centred around battles of dragons summoned from orange balls known as Dragon Balls for obvious reasons. The hero, a regular kid, not smart, not stupid either (we could relate to him), was adopted - his parents having died long ago mysteriously.
As the series progressed, we learnt more and more about mons (monsters) - all of this set us up for pocket mon, or Pokemon, the television series, and later on, the Pokemon card game, a heavily casualised forerunner of Pokemon Go. Thus, we schoolboys burnt in a similar frenzy back then: Pokemon cards - which were addictive, tradable, cute, so much so that many schools barred kids from playing the cards - their possession led to five years in prison, and dealing in them brought life imprisonment. In 2002, a classmate of mine went to trial for soliciting junk food from canteen, a charge heightened by the fact that he tried to pay with a Pokemon card. He is still on death row. And it is still illegal to carry Pokemon cards in my school, except for limited and medicinal use by desperate school kids. I remember the principal having declared the cards "a cause of permanent brain damage...with obsession, gambling, and spending excess money on the game, as dangerous signs".
Today, I find something similar unfurling: compulsive use of Pokemon Go leading to people wandering into dark alleys. Critics say all the wandering is making it difficult to hide a body. For example, one girl hopped a fence to follow a river and found a dead body. Another found an entire graveyard. Others found an afterlife by walking off a cliff, playing. Sigh.
ashish.sharma@bsmail.in