Response:
For this critical play, I played Pokemon Emerald through the emulator. It was developed by Game Freak and Creatures Inc. in partnership with Nintendo. While it was made for the Game Boy Advance, I am currently playing it on my laptop through an emulator. The game is made for Pokemon Fans, but more specifically, those that love adventure, open worlds, and animals. While the Pokemon franchise has its own wild lore nowadays, it’s clear to see that back in the day, people flocked to this game for the worldbuilding through all the various Pokemon, Trainers, Gyms, and more.
This game invites the character to care about the world through its narrative as it appeals to the part of humans that love animals. By making most of the Pokemon cute and playful, we treat them like pets and therefore start to care for them – and if we care for the Pokemon, we care for the world. The game also does such a great job at throwing the player into a fully developed world, there is no cold opening or slow build up, immediately from the start, we experience layer 2 from the Psychology of World Building reading, as the supporting cast is full of Pokemon enthusiasts. We don’t actually know anything about our character themselves, but the first person we meet is the Professor who delves into Pokemon lore before we can even move our own character. Then we meet our mom who explains that our dad is out in a tournament as a professional Pokemon trainer. This combines with layer 4 from the reading, as the surroundings are all Pokemon based. We can see as we are moving in to our home that Pokemon are moving heavy objects. There is also a Pokemon lab just south of our home. The game establishes the world so well because it doesn’t make us learn about it over time, it drops us in a fully created world and our only option is to learn.
The game has some great formal elements that push us along this path as well. The mechanics are very simple, there are essentially 6 buttons, one for each direction of movement, a select, and a back button. We move our character around until we are touching something, and then hit select to interact/talk. This is brilliantly simple, and pretty intuitive from the start. Pokemon fights are simple, you go through and select options with a turn based combat system. There is a clear non-zero sum outcome in these battles making the player much more invested in them as there is something at stake. Since the player has to carefully fight and then collect Pokemon, they are truly invested in their care, and this creates that pet dynamic that we talked about earlier. Combining this with the pixel art, playful music, and inability (so far) for anyone to die (they just faint), the game cultivates a very cutesy and fun aesthetic that anyone can enjoy. Combine this with layer 5 from the reading, and the world itself is pretty flat, allowing the character to easily move anywhere they want (although trees and buildings do create a natural barrier), but psychologically this gives the player a greater sense of freedom with movement and as such, the player tends to play for longer as they feel more in control. It also can’t go without saying that the meta does help – Pokemon is a huge IP and part of the reason players feel so bought into their worlds is the name of the games themselves. Of course this wasn’t the case when the first couple games came out, but nowadays, it would be hard to find someone who doesn’t know what Pokemon is.
Ethics:
With Pokemon Emerald the characters all seem to be (at least in this town) pretty similar. There isn’t much customization, just picking whether you want to be a boy or a girl and then setting your name. So Pokemon Emerald doesn’t give much options to the main character, but their main ethics considerations when it comes to race is in the Pokemon themselves. In the rough hour that I’ve played, most of the Pokemon are pretty similar – they may not look the same, but they are all treated like wild animals and people can essentially adopt and then treat like a pet. However, from the little bits of the show I have watched and some prior knowledge I have on the franchise, some ethical discussions can come fromhow different types of Pokemon are treated. It feels like the common types such as a magikarp or rattata are clueless animals without much intelligence. But then you also have emotionally-intelligent creatures such as Pikachu or the incredibly wise Legendary creatures such as Zapdos that have an intelligence rivaling humans. Yet all the Pokemon are called Pokemon and able to be captured and kept. It feels like a great over-generalization to put all these creatures into the same category despite having different levels of intelligence, emotion, and general being.
