The Pokémon Phenomenon

Whether it's powering through the many dungeons of Hyrule in a Legend of Zelda game or trying to complete an especially difficult assignment at work, you're not going to accomplish it all in one day. 

The key to getting through it all is to remain steadfast and keep moving forward, no matter the difficulty. Procrastination certainly doesn't help; it'll still be waiting right where you left off. 

If Team Fortess 2 has anything to teach, it's that even the motliest of crews can win the day when they work together toward a common goal.

Sometimes the best teams come together from different walks of life, so don't be afraid to bring your cocky Scout and your experimental Medic even if it seems they won't work well together. 

Researchers designed a game called SPARX to help treat depressed teenagers. The players had almost double the total recovery rate when compared to the conventional treatment group.

Games that are popular or involve social mechanics can help with making friends by giving access to the community that forms around the shared experience. 

Gaming conventions, online multiplayer sessions, and competitions all help players meet new people and make friends with a common interest. 

Pokémon is one of the few games to have tournaments and championships at an international scale, like the 2019 Europe Championships which happened in Berlin.

Youngsters get hooked to the world of e-sports like a gateway drug that is Pokémon.

Pokémon is an easy game to get into but is intriguing and difficult to master, whether it is consoles or trading cards. There are a lot of characters (or creatures) to know about and it is a pleasant world to get lost into.

The 2016 ‘Detective Pikachu’ movie, coming after 17 years after the original Pokémon movie, made it clear that it is still popular and has a captive audience.

Kids have been naturally avoiding schoolwork or household chores way before video games came in the picture.

And moderate video game playing, less than three hours a day is not an addiction but can actually be beneficial for the cognitive and reflexive development of kids.

There are certain psychological needs that kids look for:

• Competence: Kids need to compete, grow, and attain mastery over tasks.
• Autonomy: A sense of freedom and control.
• Relatedness: A want of being worthy to others while wanting others to matter to us as well.

Games are optimal learning environments:

• Feedback loops are short, fast and adapted to your skill level.
• Challenges grow as you develop new skills.
• Failures are learning opportunities because every time you make a mistake, you get a hint about how you can do better next time.

Boredom is what we feel when our brain decides that there's nothing worth learning. It's the brain searching for new information.

And even games become boring at some point because they eventually run out of things to teach you. That's when you stop playing.

• Also known as Twenty Squares, this 4500-year-old game, first unearthed in ancient Mesopotamia, is impressive in its complex rules and intricate design.
• The beautiful game board uses twenty squares and has a narrow bridge in the middle part, was played in Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and many other ancient civilizations.
• To finish the game as winners, players had to race their opponent to the opposite end of the board, moving pieces according to knucklebone dice rolls.

• Named after the Egyptian serpentine deity, Mehen is also known as the Egyptian Snake Game and was played between 3100 to 2300 BC.
• Six players could simultaneously play this spiral board, each having a piece crafted in the shape of a lion or a sphere.
• The rules of this game are not very clear because it lost its popularity after the decline of Egypt’s Old Kingdom and is hardly found in archaeological records.

Addiction can include:

• Addiction as a moral transgression, like excessive drinking or drug use.
• Addiction as a scientific disease, which characterize alcoholism and drug addiction as biological.
• Colloquial violation, which applies the term to almost any fixation. 

The idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains debatable.

• Excessive gameplay is a symptom of a larger problem, like anxiety or depression.
• The fear of possible addiction arrises from moral panic about new technologies, not scientific research or clinical data.
• Making excessive gaming a disorder can harm the gaming industry by stigmatizing their products. 

When your eyes are closed, your brain isn’t working as hard to filter out visual information. So: 

• Use one screen, one browser window, and one computer program at a time.
• Keep your physical and virtual desktop tidy.

Most of these addictive mobile games are casual ones, and raked in $50 billion dollars of annual revenue in 2018 alone, more than what Hollywood’s global revenue was in that year.

Core gaming has dedicated followers and are complex, requiring commitment and skill. They require years of commitment and people are passionate about them, with some being lifetime members.

These games use highly advanced psychological tricks, studying the behaviour of smokers, to get people to spend on their platform.

Games are enticing because you might win but you might not. And video games do it so efficiently, because they ride the tide of computer technology. The balance between winning and losing is continuously adjusted, according to how well you’re doing, as measured in hits and misses, gains and losses, moment by moment. The sweet spot knows you, it finds you. It adjusts to you.