Not many are aware of this perhaps (or perhaps you are!) But almost every computer game we play is an application of robotic software technology. That is, the icons you see and maneuvers are really program settings with set parameters. You cannot go beyond those parameters simply because that is the limitation of your programming. Very often, in fact, ‘updating’ does not involve adding a new function to an existing entity, but simply replacing it in its entirety and dumping its memory from the game database.

The original Pokémon game, ported to the Game Boy as ‘Pocket Monsters’, was a fairly simple and standard ‘fighting bot’ game that became popular. Imagination is a funny thing. Geeks design and fight their ‘bots’ with a very strong ego: they designed the robot; they are pitting their ability against that of their opponent. When you put a premise or story in a game, everything changes. Pokémon are robots, no doubt, but they were not designed by the user, but by fans of computer games. So it becomes a fantasy world where the goal is to get the best Pokémon that one can use with their “feature” to the best of their ability. Losing, one can almost feel like the Pokémon let him down, he wasn’t strong enough or whatever. You may blame yourself in part, but not entirely.

If the fantasy behind a game is strong enough, it can lead to splits. On the contrary, something that is popular like Ultraman can lead to a game. But games are usually still games and toys are still toys. Pokémon has seen very good results (although it is not taking the world by surprise) due to its intriguing concept. This is where the robot is left behind and the human imagination begins to expand and explore.

The Pokémon card game is very popular with children. You might think that that has nothing to do with robots, but if you let your logic get a bit ‘confusing’ I think we can see robotic concepts in a lifetime, that in fact machines were meant to replace things. what humans do The robot ‘humanizes’ the machine even more due to broader parameters. So we can talk about a baseball player as a robot (he throws so fast, he had so many hits, he weighs so much, he is so tall, etc.) and trading cards. Similarly, we get the stats of a Pokémon and it is more like a robot. But that is not so in the imagination. In the imagination it is something alive. And if we do something to it like make it shiny (shiny raikon cards), it becomes even more valuable and alive.

But the fundamental truth of all computer games is that they are robots. The question is then: in a network game like Second Life, are you a robot? Will Pokémon ever get real?