If you see more and more people appear in the street with their smartphone and staring at their phone screen to chasing after some virtual creatures, do not be astonished. They are capturing Pokemon Go. What is Pokemon Go? It’s a massively popular game which is taking over the planet. The player use a mobile device’s GPS capability to locate, capture, battle, and train virtual creatures. More and more people are addicted in the game. Last week, a young man called Johnson completed his international quest late last week and caught all 145 Pokemon.
There are 142 you can catch in the US, six legendaries within the original 151 are thought to be unattainable at the moment, plus three more exclusive to certain international regions. The ultimate goal of the game is to complete the entries in the Pokédex, a comprehensive Pokémon encyclopedia, by capturing and evolving to obtain the original 151 Pokémon. Pokémon GO is incredibly popular. But why are so many people addicted to catching digital monsters? Why do we love collecting things?
“There’s several general motivations — one is that it’s a challenge,” says Russell Belk, professor of marketing at York University in Toronto. “But it’s a challenge within a smaller world than generally succeeding in the world of business or a career, and so there’s a greater chance of success.” In a 1991 article published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, Belk described two main types of collecting: aesthetic and taxonomic. Aesthetic collecting occurs when objects aren’t in limited supply and so adding things to your collection depends on personal preferences. This includes artwork, but not pocket monsters.
“I expect no matter how beautiful or ugly the Pokémon is, there’s relatively little aesthetic judgment,” says Belk, an expert in the psychology of collecting. “You want them all — or as many as possible.”Collecting Pokémon is a lot like building a coin or stamp collection. It involves taxonomy — the process of naming and classifying things into groups. Pokémon Go Account One reason why Pokémon GO is so popular is that it puts digital monsters in the real world. Like finding a rare book in an antique shop, this turns the discovery of Pokémon — the challenge or thrill of the chase — into a story.
“With augmented reality, they’ve made the ‘thrill of the hunt’ in a version where you can tweet about it, you can post about it on your website, you can carry around images of the Pokémon that you’ve collected,” says Belk. “That’s a conversation piece, and something you can carry with you or brag about online.”Belk thinks collecting can even be good for you. This is especially true if you’re unemployed, as it lets you set goals and judge your own achievements — that even includes catching Pokémon.