On Pokemon …

I had to stop playing Pokemon yesterday because as I mentioned before I was totally addicted to it. I played for too many hours, hours which I pirated from my Masters thesis. Thankfully my girlfriend set me straight and I am back on track but this experience prompted some reflection on why Pokemon is soooo addictive.

I am a graphics programmer. My MSc thesis has me working with programmable fragment shaders and my hobby projects usually centre around learning this or that aspect of OpenGL. Pokemon is designed for the Gameboy set of platforms from a black and white version all the way to Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire in full colour for the Gameboy Advance. The graphics are nothing fancy because the screen is only like 320×200 but still it is a great game.

This game alone is a testament to how important game play is to creating a successful game. We are constantly hit over the head with graphically intense (but terrible) games every time there is a moderate advance in graphic capability. These games may attract a few gamers with their Ooooo factor but they quickly fail. Again and again we see great games that are not visually intense succeed due to their excellent game play. As an example we’ll take the Grand Theft Auto series; weak graphics overall, especially considering what hardware is available these days but they sell like hotcakes even though each game is the same.

I’m handing out lessons to those in the gaming industry so get yours here and maybe your next game won’t fall flat.

BTW GTA is addictive too :o)