Do You Pokemon?
Did you Pokemon as a kid? I was too old for the cards and the TV show however my little brother was their target audience so there was a lot of Pokemon talk in my house. I played the video game with him on the N64 and eventually got REALLY in to the Gameboy Advance version which I still play to this day. In fact I recently purchased an old Nintendo DS to play the game only for Pokemon Go to be released a couple of months later and the franchise be totally reborn.
It feels bizarre to me that I've lived through such an amazing evolution of technology, I had a games console with wired controllers and now we have augmented reality on our PHONES.. it's insane! The game knows where I am and I'm walking through the real world to play it, encountering fellow gamers along the way. The general concept is so mind blowing to this 80s child I couldn't not be entirely sucked in by it. As this goes live I'll be in New York where I'm hugely excited to play and catch Pokemon and see how the game differs from my small home town.
What I have encountered a lot of in the short time the game has been online is judgement. It's kind of mad to me that anyone would care about a game that someone else is playing but it's been dubbed as childish, ridiculous, dangerous even and there's a general vibe of 'I just don't get it' from a lot of people who, well.. just don't get it. If someone said they'd stayed home and powered through 3 seasons of Breaking Bad on Netflix that would be met with a more positive reaction than 'I walked 4 miles catching Pokemon yesterday'. I personally don't get the fascination with Candy Crush but I'm not about to call people stupid for playing it!
The only difference can be the social media attention Pokemon Go has garnered that is irritating people. I felt a little of this during Love Island, I've never watched an episode but the number of people talking about it in my twitter feed made me HATE it! Totally irrational but I think I can relate to the Pokemon No crowd via this analogy.
As a stay at home blogger (i.e.: not an event attending blogger) I am not particularly active, I am home most days and the most exercise I get is walking the dog when Lee isn't around but this game has had me out and about more than ever before and excited to get moving to level up and achieve goals. Ok there are people that have gotten in to trouble playing because they have zero common sense or awareness of their surroundings but you can't blame the game for that.. it's modern day natural selection.
At the end of the day it's just a game, it's a huge game that I can't believe is a reality in my lifetime and has the potential to get even better but it's just a game.. do we need to fall out over it? Do we need to judge others because of how they choose to spend their free time?. I'm 30 years old and I enjoy it, my Mum is 56 and she's been playing too.. as has my 4 year old. The only reason to care if someone else is playing it and you're entirely disinterested is because you feel left out of something. Well that's me when everyone's talking about Game Of Thrones and Downton Abbey.. you do you and let me do me!