For this week’s critical play, I explored the world of Pokémon Emerald Version, a console game originally made for the Game Boy Advance and now played by many (including me) through browser emulators. The game was created by Satoshi Tajiri and published by Nintendo, and it continues to be a classic example of adventure RPGs built on strong exploration, turn-based combat, and layered worldbuilding. The game’s target audience is broad, appealing to both kids and adults, but this game is especially perfect for players who love adventure, fantasy ecosystems, and a personal sense of progression.
The game begins with a small but emotionally rich moment: you choose your own name. That act of naming immediately places you in the center of the world. You’ve just moved to a new town, your mom sets the stage with a few lines about your dad being a famous Pokémon trainer, and then you’re off exploring your neighborhood, meeting new people, and discovering that the professor you’re looking for is out in the wild, being chased by a rogue Pokémon. You grab one of the Poké Balls from his bag to save him, and in doing so, learn the basics of the game’s battle mechanics. From there, the world of Pokémon Emerald unfolds gradually, through towns, forests, gyms, and battlefields all tethered to your personal journey as a trainer.
Pokémon Emerald Version invites players to care about its world by immersing them through personal agency and layered character-based worldbuilding. Rather than dumping lore upfront, the game gradually reveals its systems and society through your interactions with key characters, your ability to shape your identity, and the emotional attachment you build by naming and battling alongside Pokémon. These narrative and formal elements align with Gabriela Pereira’s ecological model, drawing players into the world not just through setting, but through connection to character, community, and progression.
Gabriela Pereira’s article The Psychology of World Building argues that the most effective worlds are not built from setting outward, but from character inward. Pokémon Emerald follows this ecological model closely. At the center is you: the main character. Your ability to choose your name and nickname your Pokémon (depicted below; I named myself Shayla and my first Pokémon Shaylito) transforms the game’s events into a personalized story. You aren’t just playing a trainer. You are one. The act of naming my Pokémon made me care more about them and feel like they were part of my team, not just random tools I was collecting.
This fits Pereira’s argument that the main character acts as a filter for how the world is experienced. I was enacting a life in which I live in the world of Pokémon, walking through tall grass, getting jumped by wild Pokémon, making strategic decisions, and watching my team evolve. The world wasn’t described to me; I discovered it through action.
Layer two of Pereira’s model is the supporting cast: the characters who define the norms of the world or push against them. In Pokémon Emerald, you quickly meet characters like May, your friendly rival who introduces you to the idea of friendly competition. Professor Birch serves as your initial mentor, and the townspeople, gym leaders, and even villains from rival Pokémon teams help define the game’s social and moral systems. These characters either support your development or challenge your progression, making the world feel alive and responsive. For example, the fact that your dad is a gym leader adds a personal motivation to the larger goal of becoming a Pokémon Champion. It frames your journey not just as a random adventure, but as something tied to your family history—a clever way the game uses supporting characters to raise the emotional stakes.
Pereira’s third and fourth layers (the immediate surroundings and the broader society) are both deeply present in the game’s structure. Each town has its own architecture, color palette, and music. You move from quiet forest paths to coastal cities to mountaintop battle arenas. The environment isn’t just background; it sets the tone for each stage of your journey and reflects the kind of Pokémon that live there. The society of the world is also gradually revealed. You don’t get a lore dump about the Pokémon League or how gyms work—you learn by engaging with it. Trainers battle you on roads, gym leaders test your skills, and townspeople tell you local legends. You see a world where Pokémon battling informs culture, economy, and identity. The mechanics and the worldbuilding are interwoven so you’re living in this world and figuring it out step by step.
Not everything was perfect, however. I only played the game for a couple of hours, so I didn’t get to finish it, but even in that time I noticed some areas where the design could be improved. While it’s fun that you get to discover the world through your own exploration, I sometimes felt a little lost. There’s a lot to see, but because this isn’t really a walking simulator and more of a progression-based game, wandering aimlessly can feel like wasted time. It would’ve helped to have a map that shows where you’ve already been, so it’s easier to navigate and know where to go next. Also, one part of the mechanics that started to feel repetitive was the constant wild Pokémon encounters when walking through grass. The first few times were exciting because I got to meet new Pokémon, but after that it started to feel like a nuisance, distracting me from the story and slowing down my progress.
Despite these small critiques, I loved my time playing this game. I was truly enamored by the small choices that I was given while enacting this role in the world of Pokémon Emeral: creating my own trainer identity, building my Pokémon family, exploring places with no one telling me what to do. I cared because the game made space for me to feel like it was my story. As Pereira notes, good worldbuilding doesn’t have rely on elaborate maps or fantasy languages, it can just be about giving the player a character lens and a world that reacts to their decisions. Pokémon Emerald succeeds because it invites you not just to explore a world, but to belong in it.
Ethics section:
One thing I noticed while playing Pokémon Emerald is that all the characters, including the player avatar, share the exact same body type. Everyone has a compact, stylized design with exaggerated heads and short limbs. In a way, this abstraction works to the game’s benefit: it pushes players away from “cosplaying” a hyper-realistic body that might not match their own, reducing pressure to conform to idealized or gendered standards. It creates just enough distance for players to project themselves onto the character without getting caught up in physical realism.
However, this only works to a certain extent. While the body type may be cartoonish, the character’s skin tone and facial features still reflect a narrow standard: light skin, ambiguous East Asian or Eurasian features, and no real customization options. As a result, the game implicitly reinforces the idea that the default player is of a certain background, excluding players of color and from the global south. There’s very little room to imagine yourself differently unless you already align with that default. I think Pokémon Emerald could have struck a better middle ground by offering some basic appearance customization, even just different skin tones, without sacrificing its charming visual style. That way, more players could see themselves in the world they’re being asked to care about.
