I played the Pokémon Go app on my phone throughout the day and came to the conclusion that I have the best luck in my apartment, which is right next to a gym at a cafe. Every so often I can open up the app in my bedroom and see if there are any new Pokémon around. One or two usually pop up. I’m not sure what the benefits are of catching multiple duplicates of the same Pokémon so I’ve just been focusing on catching new ones. I tried playing the game to and from a restaurant later with my friend in the evening when it snowed. It was so cold I had trouble flicking Pokémon balls on the wet screen.
I noticed that Pokémon Go doesn’t have any narratives. There’s no emergent narrative or otherwise surrounding the avatar / the Pokémon. I didn’t spend my childhood collecting Pokémon cards or playing a Nintendo so I might be unaware of the stories that may surround the different creatures. I’ve seen people cosplay as the male avatar character with the red Pokémon balls and I knew what Pikachu looked like before I started playing the game. I get the feeling like I’m missing out something.
Pokémon Go seems to function as a simulation without any narratives. The objective of the game is to catch Pokémon anywhere outside through an accessible app. There are set conditions and an education of rules in the beginning through text and the image of a character. After that, the player is free to wander around with or without interacting with the creatures that pop up. The slogan “gotta catch ‘em all” promotes a specific behavior, which the chapter “Simulation versus Narrative” by Gonzalo Frasca mentions as part of what simulation incorporates (237). Including an emergent narrative or an embedded narrative would potentially hinder the game’s success in addition to its internal issues (which I will elaborate on in the next blog).