Pokemon Go Salesian Style
Featured

24 August 2016

Pokemon Go has undoubtedly become the most popular mobile game in history with 21 million active users per day, according to SurveyMonkey, a company for the detection and analysis of data.

The first feature of this game is that you do not play Pokemon Go on the couch at home but in the streets, parks, beaches and other places in the real world, which are reflected on the player’s monitor and where the characters created by the imagination are hidden.

It creates a new "reality" that allows identification of the virtual elements in the physical world and makes it possible, in this case, for gamers to move through the streets with their mobile phone in search of Pokemon.

Pokemon Go is the most popular topic of conversation especially among young people and adolescents, so much so that the game has quickly turned into a social phenomenon that interests the media around the world.

There are alarms and protests every day demanding that the "hunters" of digital creatures with their instruments in hand do not invade locations where meetings or even religious celebrations are taking place. Some Pokemon hunters have been hit by vehicles on the road or by a train on the railway track because they were so completely absorbed by the search game.

Pokemon Go has become a global phenomenon that is still difficult to understand and open to all sorts of possible speculation. Phenomena on this scale are difficult to analyse.

This is a game that borders on mania. It is clear that the real concern of educators and parents for younger players cannot become an unnecessary bombing of moralistic messages, but it is vital to give the younger generation the tools and techniques to choose what is important and necessary for their cultural growth and to know how to distinguish trends of the moment that only serve to distract from the urgent tasks of their age and our time.

Fantasy Kindles Creativity.

As good educational methods teach, a game is always a serious activity that can serve to reflect and even bring benefits. There is the example of an NGO that has used the game with the slogan "Join us and come and save us", inviting players in the world to become aware of the inhumane living conditions of  Syrian children because of the war, associating the real photographs of these small children with fictional characters.

Another interesting initiative was started in the Salesian world. The Salesian Province of North Argentina have used using logic and game technology to invent another game called "Don Bosco Go" replacing Pokemon with Salesian saints.

These two simple initiatives are a sign of the ability of people in different situations to continue to create forms and initiatives to help and educate others.

InfoANS

ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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