Pokémon GO is for Kids
Everybody is playing Pokémon GO right now. I haven’t seen many people walking around with their phones out in the last couple of days who haven’t been throwing Pokéballs at a Zubat (it’s always a Zubat). The only thing stopping my dear mother from downloading it is a fear that she’d get too addicted. Obviously Pokémon GO is a phenomenon, but I feel I’ll save my thoughts on the game itself for another time. Today I want to complain about Twitter memes.
Specifically, this tweet. For those of you who can’t get to it, it reads: “All kids younger than 15 years old need to get off #PokemonGO and stop overloading the servers, y’all don’t even know who Squirtle is.” It seems a pretty popular sentiment, given its like and retweet tally. It’s a sentiment I really can’t get on board with.
Pokémon is absolutely for kids, for people 15 and under. It is born of childish instincts, to explore and collect and discover a vast, diverse world. All of Pokémon was inspired by a childhood interest in collecting insects. Satoshi Tajiri, founder of Game Freak, Inc, created Pokémon as a means to get back his excitement as a child. Pokémon GO is absolutely in keeping with this philosophy. Pokémon GO might actually be the closest game yet to achieving it.
I’m a strong supporter of letting your inner child flourish, so I love that older people are enjoying Pokémon GO as well. But I’m a little worried. Is the only reason we’re playing it because we’re reminded of being carefree kids? I really hope not.
People under 15 who don’t know what a Squirtle is? When they finally glimpse it hanging out in their local park, and desperately try to capture it before it flees, they are experiencing the purest form of Tajiri’s vision. The details that pop up in the Pokédex, rote learned by those of us who have spent a decade or more with Pokémon, are gold to people seeing them for the first time. For those who have never experienced Pokémon, they have 722 fresh discoveries to make. Why would you try taking that away from them, even if it’s only some shitty joke on the internet?
More importantly, perhaps, why would you take the magic of Pokémon away from yourself? A strong lust for discovery isn’t the only core element of Pokémon. The games, the show, the whole thing is propelled by friendship and inclusion. Ash is always bringing friends along on his adventures. The character in game is surrounded by supportive adults, even those they have just defeated. The villains? At least in the early games/show, their major crime is denying and impeding the friendship between trainers and Pokémon.
If we act like only people who grew up with Pokémon can really “get it”, we’re functioning as the Team Rocket of Pokémon GO. We’re taking Pokémon away from kids because we want it for ourselves. And it shows we don’t really get what Pokémon was all about. We just want to grasp at what’s left of our childhood.
I think that’s what disappoints me the most. It sucks that people could be left out for whatever reason. But I think it’s more upsetting to think that we never really got Pokémon the whole time. We only cared cause we were exposed to it as kids and now we only want our nostalgia hit. Pokémon is absolutely more than nostalgia. If we understand what it is that makes Pokémon great, what drew us to it as kids, we can bring back our childish wonder far better than simply reminiscing. I think that’s what we should be striving for, at any rate. And if that’s the goal, we can’t begrudge anybody for doing the same, even if they only met Squirtle yesterday.
Pokémon Sun/Moon releases on November 18th. If you want to experience Pokémon again like we did as kids, don’t look at anything else about it until it releases. Play the game blind, and you’ll find the Pokémon magic we fell in love with.
