A (slightly cognitively motivated) defense of Pokemon:
Now, there are two main areas you could be talking about, the card game and the video game. I’m going to focus on the video game, because that’s what I’m more familiar with.
This game taught me and gave me an intuitive sense of expected value calculations, the use of standard deviation, and risk aversion. Each move has a certain power and accuracy. So, as an 8 year old, I was dealing with the question of, “Do I use a move with an attack of 90, but an accuracy of 80%, or one with an attack of 70, but 95% accuracy? And if I use a move which decreases their defense by 25%, and does the extra damage I will do later make up for the fact that I will spend one turn not attacking?
Now, the question is whether this is worth it. And the answer is sadly probably not, considering the number of hours I put into this game. Any focused game on teaching these concepts would do a much better job. But, it is not entirely useless.
I agree with this. But then there is always something to be learned. And as you say: You invested lots (!) of hours into it. And most went into attention to trademarks.
I think that’s a really bad way of thinking about it. It’s not like you play 100 hours and 50 hours go into attention to trademarks 10 go into learning math etc.
Every hour that you play does multiple things at the same time.
It depends on what the alternative is. If the alternative is doing nothing or sitting in front of the TV then surely anything learned from a game is better.
But here the alternative is to prefer games or in general interactions that have less attention diversion.
For children that means playing and talking with them. Directing their attention to lasting topics.
The effect of media and marketing on children is addressed in multiple parenting guide. A scientific inquiry into this can be found here:
Discussing what is better wasn’t my point. The point is that it’s a bad idea to separate out hours as being about A or B. I don’t think that’s a useful way of thinking about an activity that does multiple things at the same time.
A (slightly cognitively motivated) defense of Pokemon:
Now, there are two main areas you could be talking about, the card game and the video game. I’m going to focus on the video game, because that’s what I’m more familiar with.
This game taught me and gave me an intuitive sense of expected value calculations, the use of standard deviation, and risk aversion. Each move has a certain power and accuracy. So, as an 8 year old, I was dealing with the question of, “Do I use a move with an attack of 90, but an accuracy of 80%, or one with an attack of 70, but 95% accuracy? And if I use a move which decreases their defense by 25%, and does the extra damage I will do later make up for the fact that I will spend one turn not attacking?
Now, the question is whether this is worth it. And the answer is sadly probably not, considering the number of hours I put into this game. Any focused game on teaching these concepts would do a much better job. But, it is not entirely useless.
I agree with this. But then there is always something to be learned. And as you say: You invested lots (!) of hours into it. And most went into attention to trademarks.
From the constant rumors of nonexistent Pokemon, I learned how to distrust the epistemological practices of my peers.
I think that’s a really bad way of thinking about it. It’s not like you play 100 hours and 50 hours go into attention to trademarks 10 go into learning math etc.
Every hour that you play does multiple things at the same time.
It depends on what the alternative is. If the alternative is doing nothing or sitting in front of the TV then surely anything learned from a game is better. But here the alternative is to prefer games or in general interactions that have less attention diversion. For children that means playing and talking with them. Directing their attention to lasting topics.
The effect of media and marketing on children is addressed in multiple parenting guide. A scientific inquiry into this can be found here:
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791231/obo-9780199791231-0006.xml
Discussing what is better wasn’t my point. The point is that it’s a bad idea to separate out hours as being about A or B. I don’t think that’s a useful way of thinking about an activity that does multiple things at the same time.