Baby boomers like me are not alien to video and computer games. We started our adulthood during the Space Invaders, Asteroids and Pac-Man era. I believe if we were to play Pac-Man again, we could beat the pants off some of the millennials.
Pokémon Go is relatively easy to understand. I found out fast enough to know that you (called a trainer) can catch these Pokémons at public places while you refresh your supplies of the balls (used to catch these Pokémons) and collect other stuff at what is called a Poke Stop. Since I began on Saturday, I have collected 60 Pokemons and surpassed Level Five (now at Level Six) where you can join a team and fight battles against other trainers for fame, glory and loot. My niece, nephew and I have since joined Team Valour but we have not had any battles as yet.
The Pokémon Go application for Android has registered some 100 million downloads so far. Some parents have had requests from their children to get their phones and data plans upgraded to enable them to play the game.
But, even before the game reached our shores, there were attempts to get the authorities to ban it, even to the extent of involving the religious authorities. Muslims here are discouraged from playing the game due to its negative effects.
The Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim) has in fact supported the decision by the Federal Territories Islamic Legal Consultative Committee in forbidding Muslims from engaging themselves in Pokémon Go.
Apparently, the decision was said to be consistent with the views of other Muslim countries which found the game to be dangerous, resulting in fatal accidents.
It is a different story across the Causeway.
I was drawn to a Facebook posting by the Muslim Converts’ Association of Singapore — Darul Arqam Singapore, whose building is one of the Poke Stops in the republic. They have not stopped anyone from entering the building. In fact, they encourage trainers to use their facilities. They welcome trainers "to step in to cool down your body after a whole day of outdoor activities.
"For Muslim trainers, do perform your daily prayers before continuing your quests to catch ‘em all". They also encourage trainers to stay safe while on the move.
When you start up the app, it actually warns you to heed your surroundings and not trespass but as long as we are human, we are bound to make mistakes. Trainers tend to ignore these warnings in the heat of chasing after these creatures of all shapes and sizes. Their concentration will be on the screen of their mobile phones. That is when accidents happen. We have read about injuries and even deaths because of Pokémon Go in other countries.
One thing good about this game is that you will have to do a lot of walking. My nephew, who shunned outdoor activities before, is now spending more time outside the house, but we cautioned him to be careful like we always did even before the Pokémon Go craze.
While there are many reports of the negative side effects of playing Pokemon Go and any other video or computer games, there are numerous articles that give the benefits of it.
The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported this week on a study by associate professor Alberto Posso, an economist from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology of Australia, who said playing computer games could boost a student’s school performance and should be incorporated into classroom activities.
Posso had used the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s test results and information on the amount of time Australian students spent in the digital world to measure the impact computer gaming and social media had on 15-year-olds’ performance in maths, science and reading.
Social media was outed as a pastime with little return on investment. He said games like Minecraft let students apply and sharpen skills such as problem-solving and analytical thinking.
"They have to solve puzzles, use their cognitive skills and even solve some maths when playing video games," he said in the (SMH) article.
Posso said for a generation whose lives had become increasingly virtual — 97 per cent of Australian teenagers have access to the Internet, which is above the global average — incorporating gaming in education made sense. "We shouldn’t be dismissing these games," he said. "These are the tools that they are using... and the curriculum perhaps has to be a bit more flexible to reach this generation."
Well, I would not worry too much about Pokémon Go. It is a craze and like all crazes, the novelty will run out.
Take, for example, Facebook’s FarmVille. Launched in 2009, it became the most popular game on Facebook but by 2011, it experienced a considerable decline in popularity. By May 2012, it was ranked as the seventh most popular Facebook game.
As at April 30, its rank had fallen to the 110th most popular Facebook game by Daily Active Users, while FarmVille 2 is at 42nd place.
Millions of mobile phone users, like some of my older friends, may have downloaded the Pokemon Go app just to see what everyone is talking about. They will likely uninstall it.
And depending on how aggressive these players are, they will reach the end of the game in no time.
Don Bluth, an American video game designer and once a Disney animator, was quoted as saying the shelf life of a regular video game is usually about three to five years.
So, let’s see how long Pokemon Go will last.
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