Pokémon Go – A Threat to the Health and Well-Being of Your Teens
When the minds behind video games decided to move video games from arcades to the living rooms of their users in order to commercialize their product in a more home-friendly way, what they forgot was the implications of such a product. Initially, no problem was seen with the people playing video games in the confines of their living room, sitting in front of their computer for hours on end. But, eventually, as time passed and the number of players progressed every single day along with a hike in the number of people suffering from myopia from sitting too close to the screen as well as obesity from sitting inside for far too long, people started to realize that playing video games was not as harmless as they had initially deduced.
Cut to a few years later and Nintendo came up with the idea of introducing Wii to the world. The Nintendo Wii was a gaming console that was designed with the purpose of getting people on their feet and moving while they were playing the game. But, the trend was not able to catch on to the players, instead of doing the rather though job of standing up on their feet, in their opinion, decided to recline on an arm chair and go through all the motions needed to play the game albeit from a distance. Thus, the Wii attempt by Nintendo did not prove to be as amazing of a game as it was initially presumed and anticipated.
Pokémon Go
Almost a decade after the launch of Nintendo Wii, the entire world was blessed with Pokémon Go, an augmented reality game created by the Niantic Inc, practically forced the players to move around. Making use of one of the most famous game characters from the 1990s, Pokémon Go asked its players to move around in order to ‘catch’ their favorite Pokémon Characters in order to play and win the game. The minds behind the game had though that the players would move around a park or a beach and catch their favorite players, which is why the most rarest Pokémon are usually found in places Santa Monica Pier and New York Central Park – public recreational areas while entertaining themselves and yet getting some exercise as well. But, once again the rather inventive players found a way around the intent of this game as well.
The Game & The Accidents
As the popularity of the game increased, so did the number of players and the number of accidents that took place courtesy of the players that were too obsessed with the game that they could no longer differentiate right from wrong. They played the game even when they were driving the car and played it when they were walking down the road. It got so bad that there are more than 200 reported accidents that have occurred because of obsessive and careless Pokémon Go players.
We have had people drive into a cop car, fall off a cliff and even run into a tree because they were not careful enough when it came to them playing the game and playing it nonstop. Thus, in August, the minds behind Pokémon Go came up with the idea of an update that would inquire a player if he or she was a driver or a passenger when the device detected that the player was in a moving vehicle.
But, that didn’t work out so well since lying drivers could simply proclaim themselves as passengers and get to play the game the way they initially wanted. Then, they came up with a rather inventive idea that stopped people from playing this game while driving altogether.
They built a sensor in the game’s new update that makes it impossible for an anyone in a car driving over 30 miles per hour speed to access the game and yet plays it, even if they are riding in the car and not driving it. This was a genius idea on their part, but it did come a little late when a number of teens, tweens, and even adults had already participated in this craziness.