Serious What Has Pokemon Taught You? (Help for a paper)

[Saskia]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who decided to write a school paper on Pokemon. I had to write an epiphany essay, and I chose the moment I ran into a Shiny Caterpie on FireRed with no Pokeballs on hand. I learned to always be prepared.

I strongly believe that Pokemon is great for young children (from ages four to ten.) It teaches...

-Reading comprehension and vocabulary.
This is a big one. The brain is able to build connections with certain words and remember them much more easily. The child friendly nature of Pokemon makes it stand out from other RPGs. Also, reading comprehension is aided by visual clues with the wide variety of moves. When a Pokemon uses Bubble, you see bubbles. The move names also help with learning inference skills, such as: "Aerial ace is a flying type move, so Aerial must have something to do with flying."
Also, if kids have a dislike for reading, they don't realize they are reading when playing. This can help kids who are reluctant to read want to learn how. I can speak from experience, as my brother didn't want to learn how to read until he began to play Pokemon, and had no idea what to do.
-Creativity/Creative Thinking
Pokemon is a game of strategy so easy that kids can pick it up in minutes and teens/adults can spend hours creating a flawless 'Mon. Battles force kids to think of creative solutions to win. Thinking outside the box to secure wins is a main draw of Pokemon. Creating a team that complements each Pokemon is not easy, and requires creative thinking. Learning to think in unique ways is a great skill that many people believe children are lacking today.

-Social skills
Pokemon helps form friendships with other people. With the cooperative and competitive aspects of the game, it is fun and easy to connect with others, whether it be over a link cable, wireless, infrared or the Internet. I've made several friends through playing Pokemon, and strengthened existing friendships.


I hoped I helped. Pokemon has such a wide demographic, and there are many things to be learned from it for all ages.

 

[WILDsk]

Well, for me personally, Pokemon has really helped me come out of my shell and socialize with people. I was always kind of an awkward psyduck trying to make friends, and Pokemon made it a little easier since you HAD to talk and trade in order to 'catch them all' ... I guess Pokemon has also taught me that every pokemon has its' own special abilities and place on a team, and not to underestimate them ... this has allowed me to be more open-minded when it comes to different people and their abilities in group projects. And, of course, not to stereotype people. Also, Pokemon helps me keep a positive outlook on life because the game itself is so colorful and bright and the characters in the game and the people in the Pokemon community are really friendly as opposed to some other video-game communities around.

Also, another point for problem-solving and creative-thinking.

-Reading comprehension and vocabulary.
This is a big one. The brain is able to build connections with certain words and remember them much more easily. The child friendly nature of Pokemon makes it stand out from other RPGs. Also, reading comprehension is aided by visual clues with the wide variety of moves. When a Pokemon uses Bubble, you see bubbles. The move names also help with learning inference skills, such as: "Aerial ace is a flying type move, so Aerial must have something to do with flying."
Also, if kids have a dislike for reading, they don't realize they are reading when playing. This can help kids who are reluctant to read want to learn how. I can speak from experience, as my brother didn't want to learn how to read until he began to play Pokemon, and had no idea what to do.

Yes yes yes! As a library assistant, I totally agree and support this! I can't believe I forgot to mention it.

 

[Nosferalto]

Just note that this is concerning the actual pokemon games and anime (not competitive battling)

Honestly, Pokemon taught me to love all animals (which is probably closest thing to Pokemon irl) and to try to have them as companions because it brings nothing other positiveness to my life.
Also, it encouraged me to travel more and to see the world around me. Hopefully, I'll one day be able to launch my own adventure and go backpacking someday (planning on going to east asia ^_^)

 

[noobcubed]

Can you link the paper when you have written it? I'd love to read.

 

[The Leprechaun]

One change i've noticed in my thinking when teambuilding since when i started is really learning how to cover all the angles of a certain task to succeed. For example, drawing from experience in the RU tier, i know that if i don't pack an Entei check, my team is not gonna be successful regardless of whether i run into an Entei in my first battle with the team, first 5 battles, first 10, w/e because Entei is a pokemon who breaks unprepared teams easily and as soon as i do run into one, i'll lose that match. If this mentality of preparation for the worst can be applied in other aspects of life, it could be an extremely helpful tool.

Another skill that i haven't got much experience of but i have witnessed comes from the breeding of competitive pokemon. http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...economics-updated-11-01.3490920/#post-4922813 this post is an excellent example of the comparisons of aspects of pokemon to real life. But apart from the economic connotations to the breeding community it also gives people the skill to put time and effort into something to get a very tangible, very measurable achievement that can be used as a means to enjoyment/ more pokes/ w/e else. Hoped this helped.

 

[youngjake93]

I think the biggest thing about Pokemon from a competitive standpoint is what Jukain touched on.

Basically, when you take on a game like Pokemon, you learn a new vocabulary and a new framework. You then learn how things within that framework interact and from that can come up with questions and then theorize solutions. Thanks to things like Showdown or Smogon, you can even quickly test those potential solutions in battles or debate them with other users on a forum. When you think about it, that's what C&C, CAP, and RMT are all about. Even Uncharted Territory fits in with this, with many people exploring breeding combinations.

In other words, it's a specific process with a scientific method not dissimilar to the one we are all familiar with. Admittedly this is something you can get out of many other games. But I think Pokemon does it exceptionally well because of a few factors:

1) Easy availability of testing. You can't just go play team sports online (No FIFA doesn't count...) Games that can be played virtually are perfect for quick investigation and innovation.
2) Frequent additions to the framework, aka new pokemon, tutor moves, event mons, etc. keep it from getting stale and overanalyzed to ideal solutions (i.e. Checkers).
3) COMPLEXITY. It's a quantum game. There is almost never a Nash equilibrium in a competitive match because your opponent has so many decisions and there is so much information you might not know about your opponent's active Pokemon (moves, EV spread, nature.) As a result it remains a human dominated game and likely couldn't be taken over by computers without massive effort, unlike chess, where there is theoretically always one optimal move and never any hidden information.

When you think about it, if you took all these ridiculously smart people spending thousands of hours with Pokemon and had them do something else, you could probably get a lot accomplished. Heck if Smogon started an aerospace program, we might have had people on Mars by now.

That said, there is a definite observable correllation between Pokemon and intellect(just look at the programming/hacking feats accomplished by some). Are intelligent people drawn to Pokemon due to its deeply strategic nature or does Pokemon make people smarter by training the brain? Maybe both?

 

[mnmkami]

Thank you so much, everyone, for your replies and insights! I honestly think that this paper will end up awesome!

Since you guys are requesting it, I will post/link it once it's done!

It is, however, going to be quite the read as it is at LEAST 8 pages long.

Thank you!

 

[Stratos]

It is, however, going to be quite the read as it is at LEAST 8 pages long.

Eh, ive read bmb posts before

 

[yee]

That said, there is a definite observable correllation between Pokemon and intellect(just look at the programming/hacking feats accomplished by some). Are intelligent people drawn to Pokemon due to its deeply strategic nature or does Pokemon make people smarter by training the brain? Maybe both?

I actually thought about this myself and came to a conclusion. Part of the original Smogon mission statement or "why are you nerds taking this so seriously answer" is that Pokemon can be taken very seriously. It's not a relatively complex game battle to battle, but if you haven't played it seems like there are endless things to keep chewing on with the EV optimizing / set creating / battle playing etc. It seemed appealing to me personally at first because every move had so much writing behind it on analysis and Shoddy Battle had such a complicated explanation of how to rate pokemon players, and when you're just coming up and face someone really good and get creamed it's hard to really tell how they did it because so much is going on that you don't know about yet.

I did get about as addicted as anyone I'd say and found only one case where I felt like I had run out of things to learn about a metagame, but that was early BW2. Anywhere else you can build / modify extremely different things for months and not really find your final superteam, and that's not even getting into planning out entire games.

 

[toshimelonhead]

Competitive battling has taught me how I learn best: active participation, analyzing mistakes, and creating complex arguments.

 

[superstar]

Playing Pokemon is great practice for any technical field like Medicine, Law, Engineering, Accounting, Science, or hell even something like A/C Repair. I just realized reading this thread that I instantly know what stats 20 seperate natures belong to, can name the effects and base powers of 150+ moves, have memorized a complicated type chart, and know the most common sets for 70+ OU and Uber mons, just like I can instantly name the structures of any amino acid or the formation pathway of any metabolite. Or how a lawyer can instantly cite three cases to prove any point. pretty cool metaphor

 

[Yuri]

Playing Pokemon is great practice for any technical field like Medicine, Law, Engineering, Accounting, Science, or hell even something like A/C Repair. I just realized reading this thread that I instantly know what stats 20 seperate natures belong to, can name the effects and base powers of 150+ moves, have memorized a complicated type chart, and know the most common sets for 70+ OU and Uber mons, just like I can instantly name the structures of any amino acid or the formation pathway of any metabolite. Or how a lawyer can instantly cite three cases to prove any point. pretty cool metaphor

Yeah but that is true for anything you put enough dedication into:

I know each and every note, jigsaw piece, empty honeycomb, molehill, Jinjo, Brentilda, cheat code, Grunty quiz, etc of Banjo-Kazooie by heart;
a hardcore sports fan can name each and every formation of his team for in the past 20+ years;
a trekkie may have memorized every single line in the entire series.

Knowing an entire metagame of Pokemon isn't very different from knowing Metroid's map layout or fixing a car blindfolded. It is a matter of the effort you devote to something.

 

[Codraroll]

Seeing as most members here appear to be native English speakers, there is a point that has (largely) been overseen: The games might help you learn another language.

I started playing Pokémon in 1999, when I was 8 years old. And, since I am Norwegian and the games we get are in English, I didn't understand half of what was said, at first. However, the games are very child-friendly and easy on the language, surprisingly so for a game with so much text. That might be because you're never presented with more than a sentence or two at the same time. The game will only display two lines of text at a time, so you completely avoid those huge walls of text. In the later games, we've got long cutscenes or scenes with lots of talking, but in R/B/Y, most NPCs got their point across with a couple sentences, at most. If you missed what they said, you could talk to them again. Bite-sized portions of foreign language all over the place.

I soon started to recognize words and expressions, and got a grasp of what was being said in the games. To get from one plot point to another, I sometimes had to use a dictionary. Now, I don't think there are many things in life that will make an eight-year-old look up words in the dictionary, but Pokémon was one of them for me. If understanding English was what was needed to proceed through the games, well, I had to learn English. Way more motivation than my English teacher could ever give me.

Foreign kids playing English games also pick up a few advanced expressions too. Words like "Item" or "Psychic" might be mundane to native speakers, but they are certainly not on the list of the first words you hear when learning English. Saskia mentioned that Pokémon helps your vocabulary, well, certainly so if English is a second language to you.

It might also be mentioned that in the age of the Internet, kids who are into Pokémon will seek to international websites and forums to learn more about Pokémon, and end up learning a lot more English in the process. Learning not only to lay out sentences in another language, but to commuicate with it, that's way better than the stuff you learn in school. There are ways of expression you won't learn in any English class, words that have several meanings you don't learn because the dictionary doesn't mention them, not to mention the concept of sarcasm.

All in all, Pokémon first taught me basic English, which helped me learn intermediate English, and later it motivated me to seek to websites where I ended up learning advanced English. I won't claim to be fluent in the language now, but I'm certainly a lot better than what school could possibly teach me alone.

So thanks a lot, Pokémon!

(Also, it teaches you how to write "é" on a keyboard).

 

[Laurel]

Anything is possible in pokemon man. Don't give up after that first turn crit if you think everything through you almost always have a shot.

 

[TrueSoprano]

Pokemon taught me the difference between affect and effect. In other words, I learned it's not "super affective".

I think I also learned a lot of vocabulary words from the games.

 

[Seth Vilo]

I could write for days on this. But I'll bubble it down to one point; it's actually rather educational as far as language and cultures go. Most every Pokemon name is some kind of play on words or a pun (in English anyway; I don't know other languages too horribly well to get the name jokes). By unraveling the names, it teaches kids (and college students) easy ways to remember things. I had a test in class once - a college level Abnormal Psychology class - and got stumped on a question. It was asking for what medicine was used to treat an illness. Ass I remembered was that the pill was iron-based. Ferrothorn. Ferrothorn is a combination of "thorn" for its Grass-typing, and "ferro". Ferrum is Latin for Iron. Lo and behold, one of the complex medicine names had ferrous in it, and I got that question correct. All because of my Pokemon knowledge.
Outside the mathematics and other applications that Pokemon has, it to me is a great teacher of world cultures. Many of them are based on local stories and myth. Yes, many of those myths are of Oriental base, but there are others as well, like the thought that the Genie Terian formes are based on Aztec/Maya/other "Native American Indian" Quetzalcoatl lore, or that Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde are based on Yggdrasil. It's an excellent way of introducing people to the many cultures and thoughts and little things of the world.
That's just two things I didn't see listed here already. Obviously the competitive side has augmented my strategic and mathematical problem solving, but that seems to be a given already in this thread.

 

[JoeTheDarkType]

Summed up, Losing is not fun, But it is necessary.

 

[Nerdking]

This isn't really just from Pokémon, but from video games in general, but if there's one thing that I've learned, it's this: If you run into enemies, you're going the right way.

 

[Sturdynips]

I think a major thing I have learned from Pokemon, particularly competitive, is how to prioritize. For example, if i see Volcarona on the opponent's team, my #1 priority is to get down Stealth Rock. Likewise, my opponent's priority once i have done this is to remove the rocks. I definitely think this can be applicable in real-life situations as knowing how to observe a situation and select the most important aspects of it to address first is invaluable in just about anything you do.

 

[TaiCrunch]

Patience: The more I play competitively, building and strategizing through trial and error, the more patient I have to be to raise my rating. As much as I'd like to have a team of six sweepers and be done with it, some situations call for having to replace a couple of them with more bulky Pokemon that focus more on passive damage over time, or focusing more on spreading status and laying down hazards, which obviously requires a lot more patience.

 

[Merritt]

Another aspect of the culture is the Self Imposed Challenge, such as the Nuzlocke challenge. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially a hard mode where you can only catch the first Pokemon you meet on a route and if a Pokemon faints then you must release it. I've done it a couple times, and I feel that it's taught me a whole lot about really planning ahead and putting in the hours so that the time you spent with the random Pokemon you first caught isn't wasted in a lucky critical hit because you're underleveled. In addition, it really realizes the idea that practice is what makes "perfection". Butterfree in ADV is not a very good Pokemon but there are many many many LG or FR Nuzlockes where it ends up at the top.

In the metagame culture, there's a certain level of respect that, for the most part, is fairly prevalent, especially in official tournaments or the WiFi battles. Getting a viable team, let alone an extraordinary one, in an actual game can take long hours running back and forth in from of the day care waiting for an egg, and as we all have to go through that we have a respect for the time that the other person also put in to create their own team. (In addition, that's why people using Ubers in things like random matchup is frowned on, as they require nearly no time to create a powerful team.)

Something that you'll find in many of the more recentish games is that NPCs will say that strength isn't the only thing that matters, and that they prefer to make a team of their favorites. It may seem like that's a view that many people on the site or in the metagame in general wouldn't share, but you just have to look to the "lower" tiers of NU and RU to see some very dedicated people who use the Pokemon who might fall into the category of "favorite but not particularly strong" and you can look to issue 31 of the Smog for some of the spotlight on RU.

Overall, Pokemon is a game that doesn't really encourage hatred of other people, as the competitions that occur aren't so much winning at the expense of others (unless you're laddering, in which case all bets are off), but instead trying to improve and be the very best like no one ever was.

 

[Warped Worlds]

It taught me how to be a better gambler. Risk vs reward. I spent 52 dollars and won a 3ds XL at an arcade last week.

It taught me that bad luck doesn't make you any better than what you really are. It taught me more patience, it taught me to learn from my mistakes even if they wouldn't have mattered if the bad luck didn't exist. Which in a sense translates into "attack the problems which matter, attack the problems which you can actually change and not waste time on the ones you can't."

It taught me how to think outside the box. I personally believe pokemon has made me a more open minded person when it has come to solving problems.

I feel as if pokemon helped teach me about efficiency. Making the most out of how little you have. Crafting EV spreads or playing and winning games while behind requires precise efficiency.

I feel as if pokemon taught me when to call it quits more often. Sometimes you just need to say fuck it, and just not play pokemon. Treat it for what it is, a game. Don't let the addiction and the inherent problems it has as a game affect other areas of your life.

 

[Relados]

I learned more about probability through pokemon than any math class has taught me.

 

[BenTheDemon]

Pokemon has taught me a fair bit of psychology. It's so fun to analyze your opponent's team, moves, and playstyle.
You learn prediction skills, which makes your brain always on alert and keeps it from rotting. It also teaches you some realistic match skills.
In general, strategy games are good for your brain.

 

[Holdingb]

Oh god, I could not help but post in this thread.

Since I have been playing Pokemon since I was a child ( as I imagine most of us have ) Pokemon has certainly had a good effect on me. I can remember several occurences vividly of how Pokemon has opened up my vocabulary further. Not only that, but memorization skills I could also attribute to the series as the whole type chart, and different moves buffing defense stat X amount, etc. Logic is another thing that I suppose also fits, if this move got rid of half of its health (or more) if I use it again it will faint, that sort of thing.

Now in much more recent years getting into competitive areas of Pokemon, this only expands further having to do many calculations and psychological analysis of your opponent. As I don't have damage calculators up, I usually just open up the Start > Applications > Calculator to do all my math, and having to memorize what order the damage formula goes through, certain exceptions etc. Psychological Analysis as stated previously has also been fun as, let's be honest, we all know you're going to send out X if I send out Y since you did it before. Finding patterns and finding ways to break those patterns (Zoroark my love c:) AKA THE Meta is a very good example of this.

:O A video I watched somewhat recently actually used studies to show how video games improved co-ordination and certain skills in people. If you haven't watched it yet, it is by ASAPScience and I believe the title was something along the lines of "Can Video Games Make You Smarter?" Hopefully I helped you in some way :P Good luck on this paper! :D