Pokemon Is Here

There are a few themes which underlie many aspects of our culture. We see them in our movies, video games, comic books, television shows, and plenty of other entertainment media and products.

One big one is the concept of a showdown between the good and the evil heroes. Davy Crocket, The Lone Ranger, Hawkeye, Superman, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers have been fighting the likes of Billy The Kid, Geronimo, Lex Luthor, and Darth Vader for hundreds of years. It's something so inherent in our culture that it instantly captures our attention when it happens. The press uses this as a tool daily, instantly creating heroes and villans to sell newspapers and rivet television viewers to their screens.

Many recent games have capitalized on this concept, perhaps the most successful being Pokemon. The premise of the game is that you play the keeper of an animal, and you search for other keepers to challenge them in an animal duel. The master of the victorious animal then gets to keep both of them. It's very similar to the Magic card game by Wizards Of The Coast, or simply two hot rodders drag racing for pinks.

Two heroes, meeting in public, and fighting for supremacy. It drives so many plots, and thanks to modern technology, it's here again, only this time, it's going to be revolutionary. Wireless networking will do to video games what the Internet did to home computers.

Imagine playing your favorite one-on-one video game on your handheld device. It could be a racing game, or a fighting game, or anything where it's you against another player. As you win, your car or virtual champion gets stronger, and is ranked on the web site for the game. You start to achieve notoriety. You are the master of a serious champion. You polish off a new opponent while waiting for the train in the morning, and head off to work.

At lunch time, you're sitting at the coffee shop going over some papers when suddenly, your PDA starts to buzz. Nearby, a new champion has arrived. Just like the immortals in The Highlander series can tell another immortal is nearby, your PDA tells you another champion is there, and a battle may ensue. You pick up your device, and enter the game. Sure enough, the other guy accepts the challenge, and you instantly transform from bookkeeper for a small law firm into Komdor Heavyhand, the grand champion of Somerville, Massachusetts!

Wireless is going to bring a Pokemon-like gaming style craze that will make Pac-Man Fever look like a sniffle. As more WiFi hot spots are developed, and more public areas are set up for wireless networking, the backbone that will support this craze will be in place. The technology is here now, and manufacturers are developing the games to run on them. The real question is: what are marketing and advertising groups doing now to be ready to handle that kind of work when it explodes into our culture again?

If your chief creative officer doesn't even know what WiFi means now, how is your agency going to create the compelling campaigns of not tomorrow, but later this afternoon?