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

[mnmkami]

Greetings, everyone!

I've been a long-time lurker of the Smogon forums and as much as I've always wanted to interject my ideas in threads, I feel that I'm not experienced enough to feasibly contribute to the conversation in any manner. I digress.

My professor recently approved my topic proposal for my research paper: "The Pedagogical Applications of Pokemon."

Fancy wording aside, it basically means "How can Pokemon (as a game series) be used to teach?"

I know there have been countless people doing similar papers, but what really attracted me to the topic was all the discussions I've read here in this very forum. It was brought to my attention that competitive Pokemon requires so many skills that are actually applicable to a real-life setting (be it Math or Critical Decision-making). It doesn't matter if you learned something academic (like Math brought about by number-crafting BST's) or something not related to the academe at all (such as social skills brought about by discussions).

Regardless, all I really wanted to ask was:

"What has Pokemon taught you?"

Thank you all in advance!

P.S.
I'm not sure where this would really fit so I played safe and placed it here! Thank you! :D

 

[Asek]

The most applicable thing i can think of would be risk / reward which is a core aspect of pokemon as well as a lot of irl things. I guess you could also fit in something about oppurtunity cost (if i switch in landorus this turn on terrakion to set up stealth rock, i miss out on being able to get a layer of spikes with skarmory for example).

 

[mnmkami]

I think opportunity cost and risk-reward are very prevalent in competitive Mons.

I mean, mere team building is in itself an exercise of Opportunity Cost. (Having X pokemon on your team would mean that you have to drop Y pokemon for it since they fulfill similar roles.)

Thanks for the reply! Every bit of information helps! :D

 

[Soul Fly]

To be the very best.
Like No one ever was.

Like really.

Pokemon is a didactic delight. No wonder, since the target audience is the 10yo child.

 

[Rugi]

Gen III's moral was not to stuff around with the climate or something like that? I don't know. I hate to tell you this but I don't think Pokemon is going to serve as a moral compass or a teaching tool to ten year old children. If it taught me anything it's that a bug will kick a magician's ass.

 

[mnmkami]

Gen III's moral was not to stuff around with the climate or something like that? I don't know. I hate to tell you this but I don't think Pokemon is going to serve as a moral compass or a teaching tool to ten year old children. If it taught me anything it's that a bug will kick a magician's ass.

It's not so much as taking the game's themes (such as its plot and the type effectiveness chart) and applying it to real-life situations.

It's more on focusing how certain things in the game, and the community surrounding the game, are able to impart a form of learning onto players/people.

Now, this learning may be a moral, but we shouldn't just say that it teaches you "how to cherish life," or "to connect with other people."

As Asek said, competitive Mon is able to indirectly teach players the concept of Opportunity Cost. Now, said 10 year olds may not know what Opportunity Cost means, but they know that if you use the Mega Ring to Mega Evolve Blaziken, they can't do it with Gengar in the same battle. They learn the basic "concept" of opportunity cost and they apply it.

That in itself, I think, warrants that Pokemon can teach people something outside of the usual adages regarding patience, love, being one with nature, and so on.

Thank you very much for your reply, though. It serves as a great counter-argument that I can address later on. :D

 

[scorpdestroyer]

I'll have to say that the discussions about Pokemon have taught me how to develop my arguments. I'm not sure if I'm making sense, but it's sort of, like, if I want to convince someone that A is better than B, I need to state why A is good, what it does for the team, how well it does it, and how the metagame is good for it, and afterwards explain why B isn't as good and doesn't perform the job as well. Otherwise, nobody cares if you just say "A is better than B"

I guess it also teaches us about friendship? I mean, it's something that's emphasized a lot on in the games, and especially in the anime. All the anime theme songs also have special meanings in them.

btw Psychic is actually about the mind and not magicians. Its weaknesses are based on common fears (Ghosts, Bugs, and the Dark) so it makes sense.

 

[Rugi]

It's not so much as taking the game's themes (such as its plot and the type effectiveness chart) and applying it to real-life situations.

It's more on focusing how certain things in the game, and the community surrounding the game, are able to impart a form of learning onto players/people.

Now, this learning may be a moral, but we shouldn't just say that it teaches you "how to cherish life," or "to connect with other people."

As Asek said, competitive Mon is able to indirectly teach players the concept of Opportunity Cost. Now, said 10 year olds may not know what Opportunity Cost means, but they know that if you use the Mega Ring to Mega Evolve Blaziken, they can't do it with Gengar in the same battle. They learn the basic "concept" of opportunity cost and they apply it.

That in itself, I think, warrants that Pokemon can teach people something outside of the usual adages regarding patience, love, being one with nature, and so on.

Thank you very much for your reply, though. It serves as a great counter-argument that I can address later on. :D

ohh I see. Well Pokemon was the first thing that got me into playing games as well as the first thing that got me into doing complex things (making my own scripts for romhacks) Now I'm just starting to learn how to use python. and studying Japanese all because Pokemon's preliminary influence. Does that count for anything?

 

[mnmkami]

I'll have to say that the discussions about Pokemon have taught me how to develop my arguments. I'm not sure if I'm making sense, but it's sort of, like, if I want to convince someone that A is better than B, I need to state why A is good, what it does for the team, how well it does it, and how the metagame is good for it, and afterwards explain why B isn't as good and doesn't perform the job as well. Otherwise, nobody cares if you just say "A is better than B"

This is a point to note. Much of the competitive community seems to thrive on argument (note: PROPER argument) in order to establish whether something is viable/strong/worth our time. That is, like you said, emphasizing the pros and defending the cons of your side while emphasizing the cons and attacking the pros of the opposing side. This is quite interesting that the COMMUNITY/CULTURE revolving AROUND THE GAME is what gave the learning, rather than the actual game itself! Thank you for your reply! :D

ohh I see. Well Pokemon was the first thing that got me into playing games as well as the first thing that got me into doing complex things (making my own scripts for romhacks) Now I'm just starting to learn how to use python. and studying Japanese all because Pokemon's preliminary influence. Does that count for anything?

It might seem a bit far from the realm of my topic. HOWEVER, one thing of note here is that Pokemon is able to FACILITATE learning, or at least MOTIVATE it. That is a point worth mentioning! Thank you!

 

[Yuri]

The most applicable thing i can think of would be risk / reward which is a core aspect of pokemon as well as a lot of irl things. I guess you could also fit in something about oppurtunity cost (if i switch in landorus this turn on terrakion to set up stealth rock, i miss out on being able to get a layer of spikes with skarmory for example).

This, pretty much. If anything else, understanding the degree of luck (or, more broadly, factors you cannot control) involved in something and work to minimize their effects by maximizing the effects of the factors you do have control over. Like when I choose Flamethrower over Fireblast, I'm minimizing the influence of luck over a potential increase in power or whatever would be at odds in real life, but some times you gotta go with Fireblast because you cannot dispense the extra power. I'm having a hard time drawing an association with a real life situation where this applies lol but I'm sure someone else will.

 

[mnmkami]

This, pretty much. If anything else, understanding the degree of luck (or, more broadly, factors you cannot control) involved in something and work to minimize their effects by maximizing the effects of the factors you do have control over. Like when I choose Flamethrower over Fireblast, I'm minimizing the influence of luck over a potential increase in power or whatever would be at odds in real life, but some times you gotta go with Fireblast because you cannot dispense the extra power. I'm having a hard time drawing an association with a real life situation where this applies lol but I'm sure someone else will.

Risk-Reward would be the thing we're looking for. It's quite interesting that you used the Fire Blast VS Flamethrower example.

A "real life" example would be picking between a commodity and a luxury. An example of a commodity would be something like clothes from your local Walmart while a luxury is something like clothes from a high-end brand like Luis Vuitton. Clothes from a local Walmart are cheaper but are more likely to be sold. On the other hand, Luis Vuitton clothes net more profit but are less likely to be sold.

As such, to gain a certain amount of profit, Walmart would have to sell more but Luis Vuitton would have to luck out on actually selling.

This is likened to the Fire Blast VS Flamethrower analogy since Fire Blast nets you more KO's faster but you have to be lucky and not miss. On the other hand, Flamethrower doesn't KO as fast, but you'll always be hitting!

Thank you for your reply! :D

 

[noobcubed]

I guess the primary thing I have learnt is to recognise patterns in the opponent. For example, in an NU team i used to have, I had a Cacturne with Sucker Punch and Spikes. Normally against anything threatened by Sucker Punch (which was a lot), I would notice my opponent would switch out of it, expecting to get a free switch-in to a better match-up, allowing me to get down free hazards. But a few opponents had the balls to stay around (or perhaps they were oblivious to the threat) and attack it anyway, making the thing pretty useless. So against those opponents I eventually learnt to just attack them. Eventually those opponents learnt too, at which point they would start trying to play around it with switches, at which point I could start punishing them again with Spikes, etc etc.

I'm sure there are parallels in real life with how you act in a certain situation depending on the person you are dealing with. What is different is that, in a competitive decision-making game like this, the person you are dealing with will be doing the same thing, and his efforts are to undermine yours.

On a non-serious note, the Pokemon games have also taught me that:

- Trees are an insurmountable obstacle
- Ten-year-old kids aren't obliged to go school
- Nobody ever locks their front doors
- Comprehensive veterinary healthcare is free but a bottle of water costs $200
- The best way to make Pokemon happy is to cram them into tiny spaces and only let them out to fight each other
- No matter how inconspicuous you might think a wild Pokemon would be, you can never see it until it attacks you
- Pokemon are incredibly deep sleepers, often refusing to wake up even when they are being attacked
- The police never do anything about crime syndicates
- Pokemon will never attempt to strike an opponent multiple times or dodge an opponent's attack - when they have attacked they will obligingly wait for their opponent to strike back
- Evolution is a very fast process
- Wild Pokemon can fight for themselves, but as soon as a trainer captures them they lose their ability to think independently
- If something is described as "legendary", it definitely exists, but it's probably concealed by a tedious puzzle

 

[Soul Fly]

- Wild Pokemon can fight for themselves, but as soon as a trainer captures them they lose their ability to think independently

Bitch Please. have you ever overlevelled a pokemon early game before getting enough badges?

(it's a pretty fun allegory of how authority begets respect)

 

[Cresselia~~]

Use Pokemon cards to teach maths for 10 year-olds

Proceed to Pokemon video games for slightly older ones.

Then present the generally damamge formula and teach them to apply it. (15 year-olds maybe)
Step up with introduction to binary and hexadecimal systems, ask students to hatch shiny eggs. (17 year olds maybe)
Proceed to using Calculus for appropriate EV's. (18 year-olds)

After that, time for some hardcore programming.

 

[Jukain]

One thing has to be how dedicating yourself to something allows you to comprehend in unimaginable ways. If you think about it, every competitive player memorizes the effects of natures, type interactions, stats/other attributes of a Pokemon, effects of moves/abilities/items, possible sets of a Pokemon, etc. -- all as a given. Then competitive players have to apply their decision-making skills, and analyze every condition to come out on top. This shows how patience and study can get you very far in something.

 

[Grey Knight]

Competitive pokemon taught me that the big percentages like 95 % or 90% are not as solid and reliable as they seem.

 

[faint]

that making friends on the internet is possible :)

 

[dwarfstar]

Risk-reward, etc. You've heard it before.

One thing has to be how dedicating yourself to something allows you to comprehend in unimaginable ways. If you think about it, every competitive player memorizes the effects of natures, type interactions, stats/other attributes of a Pokemon, effects of moves/abilities/items, possible sets of a Pokemon, etc. -- all as a given. Then competitive players have to apply their decision-making skills, and analyze every condition to come out on top. This shows how patience and study can get you very far in something.

This.

If we're being totally honest, then I'd have to admit that Pokemon is, to some extent, responsible for the development of my social skills. Those kinds of things can only really be learned through experience, and a lot of that experience would have eluded me if I hadn't bonded with certain people over a shared love of Pokemon. Competitive play has also helped me in that the prediction exercises that would come into play in each game made me get a little better at understanding how other people think, which makes me act like less of a schmuck and has enabled me to help certain people get through emotional problems. Playing Pokemon has also taught me lessons in humility - getting cocky and underestimating the intelligence of my opponents cost me a fair few matches early in my competitive career, which I think helped me understand and accept the fact that there will always be people more talented or skilled than I am (not something I was used to as a kid, at least in an intellectual capacity). A lot of my interests (e.g. rock music, Star Trek, D&D) were introduced to me by people I befriended thanks to Pokemon, so I suppose everything I've learned about those things can be tied to Pokemon as well.

If I think about it, Pokemon has probably been the single most important thing in my life. Funny how that works out.

 

[faint]

ah I didn't realize this was for a paper. still, my post could still be relevant. you could talk about the community that surrounds the game and how we influence it. it's sites like smogon that impact competitive play, whether through innovative sets, bans, metagame changes etc. you can also talk about how knowledgeable a lot of us are of the mechanics within the game. what may seem like a very simple game made for little kids is actually a very complex sex of algorithms on game theory and the like. just take a look at some of obi's and x-act's old posts. i don't even understand half of that shit.

you could get really detailed i guess, explaining how in some ways pokemon is a game of chance, because it really is a gamble with the statistics they provide us with. lastly, you could discuss what the poster above me said. although i'd argue it's more SMOGON and FORUMS that helped develop one's social skills, at the core the one thing we all have in common is pokemon. if you do decide to write about that, i suggest reading articles disagreeing with a social norm that gamers have no desire for social interaction and the like. the reality is they just don't understand the difference between being shy and being an introvert.

good luck! if you don't mind i'd be interested in reading it when you're finished, but i understand if you wouldn't wish to share.

 

[Bad Ass]

i used to get really fucking mad over hax.

but then i stepped back from it and realized that even though i get lucked sometimes, there is a ~equal amount of times where i am the one doing the lucking. i've actually thought about shit like this in real life, like when i'm having a really shitty week; not only are other people getting it worse, but i know that i've also caught some breaks before.

 

[Bughouse]

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

natures, type interactions, stats/other attributes of a Pokemon, effects of moves/abilities/items, possible sets of a Pokemon, etc

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.

 

[newtonja]

One thing is teaching you to work harder for a better outcome which is taught by the pokemon breading aspect of the game

 

[shade]

its taught me that nintendo and game freak can release the same game year after year and every fanny will still buy it

 

[yee]

You got the Nature / EV etc. memorizing stuff for sure (my bud Anachronism actually said he'd be bad in Chem if not for memorizing all these mons) but for me the biggest thing is learning to look at your loss logs. You throw out excuses and find different ways you could've been successful. In real life that's also what you should do; anything that didn't go right find a way you could've made it go right and now you're a little bit smarter.

 

[mnmkami]

Thank you everyone for your replies!

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.

Problem-solving. I think that's an interesting thing to consider. People often argue that Math exists to simply teach people how to solve problems. Just imagine having Pokemon instead of Math? That's awesome!

P.S.

Would anyone know of someone who would be willing to be interviewed for this? Nothing too serious, just a dedicated interview, rather than a throw-out question like I'm doing here.

I mean, most of the people here would be "experts" on the subject matter, anyway. :D