During this previous weekend, I spent a lot of my time with friends playing Pokémon Go, a game that lost most of its popularity after the summer of 2016, when school started up again. That was when my current SCU friends and I also stopped playing, so why are we playing it again now? It all started when I noticed that my girlfriend, who I met at SCU, still playing the game, so I started playing again, remembering how much fun I had. This would eventually spread to a bunch of my friends. Initially, everyone just played casually, catching whatever we liked or wanted. However, we started to work together to defeat gyms, help find strong and rare Pokémon, and eventually attempt to beat raid bosses to catch legendaries. The latest being from meeting an SCU Pokémon Go community while casually playing (https://discord.gg/w7eQnST).
Now my friends and I are competing to catch the strongest Pokémon, claiming every gym they can get, and even paid real money to make those tasks easier. But why? Well, as the title of this blog suggests, competition. Meeting that community and seeing so many other strong Trainers make us want to be stronger; it convinces us to be more dedicated to the game and work harder to be one of those strong Trainers. They also make us feel justified for spending that extra hour or pay that extra dollar for the game. And, honestly, it worked. However, this was not entirely a negative impact. We were able to make new friends and form closer bonds to existing ones. My friends and I are aware of our priorities; we are not skipping classes or not doing homework just because a rare digital code appeared in a specific area. Competition is a form of entertainment, whether it be sports or games. Although its more difficult when applied to school/education, this new form of knowledge I learned can be applied to many others activities.