PokeGames

  

 by Aaron Mingus

      I walked into my classroom and began checking homework when a little girl in the front row excitedly pointed to my feet.  Oh! I thought. I forgot to change into my work shoes.  I was still wearing my Chuck Taylors.  Thankfully, this girl was keen to point that out to me, as well as saying, “Teacher!  They are children shoes!  I have pink ones!”

     I decided not to argue too much with her.  Chucks are not children’s shoes.  They are skater shoes and I have been wearing them since high school, but I shouldn’t have to explain that to a kid… Besides, she was probably right.  Chucks are not a marker of maturity like my classy, wing tip work shoes are, and I had honestly bought my Chucks for nostalgia’s sake.

     Similarly, I sometimes use Pokémon and some other games as a way to relate with students.  A lot of kids love Pokemon and like to talk about it, and that talking is really important for Korean English students.  I too have a fondness for Pokemon.  I even have a Pokedex App on my iPod, just in case I encounter a Spearow in the wild.  But Pokemon is a children’s game, and I find that it is continuing to be a children’s game despite my aging.

     A fantastic example of this is one of the more recent installments, Pokemon Black & White, where the main antagonists are an ALF-style organization called Team Plasma.  Their goal is to end what they view as the oppression of Pokemon by humanity.  That’s what makes them villains.

     As adults we tend to have this urge to interpret messages or question morals found in any narrative, often times unconsciously.  We might feel slightly conflicted about the tribal, African, spear wielding zombies we are slaying on mass in Resident Evil 5.  Some people might associate this with “dated” racial stereotypes being unnecessarily injected into a game.  Alternatively, this can be a good thing.  The developer of Shadow of the Colossus probably wanted us to question the morality of killing the colossi, which is one reason Wanderer is brutally wounded every time he downs one.

     So in Pokemon Black & White we, adults, are going to ponder the morals of the story.  The game directly offers us an argument against the trading and battling of Pokemon.  Unfortunately, that children’s game’s writers treat the material too simply for the complex ground it is treading.  See, Team Plasma is actually power hungry and evil!  Well, that justifies their defeat… but then it really doesn’t answer the question, does it?  You know, is forcing Pokemon to fight wrong?

     “Of course not,” the consumerist mecca known as Nintendo says as it shrugs its shoulders apathetically.  “Now shut up kids, and buy more Marios!”  But really, when you take a step back and look at the games, players participate willingly in the trading and fighting of intelligent creatures for self-gratification, to be the “very best” or the Pokemon “master”.  I doubt one could seriously address this problem in a Pokemon game because it is so obviously antithetical to the premise set up by its publisher.

     As I am growing old, certain games are beginning to feel their age… or rather I am beginning to feel my age when I play them.  Pokemon, for example, is becoming much harder to appreciate for its simplicity and fun when similar ideas in reality are so complicated and serious.  I can’t help but feel Team Plasma was right and my Chuck Taylors were probably made by a kid in an Indonesian sweat shop, so now I can go be miserable all day, my youth and nostalgia ruined!