Pokemon (Day and Night/ Good or Bad?)

Kevin briefly made note of this while discussing addiction and games in the lecture on Wednesday. As he said, recent Pokemon gameboy installments have begun to incorporate time clocks into the game mechanic. This helps the player to monitor their play-time, and allows them to find suitable durations of rest and play. However, a further inclusion to the addition of the clocks come in the form of the game's function itself. Pokemon Gold and Silver allowed the player to synchronise their game-clocks with the actual time, and thus, notice shifts in day to night as it would realistically occur at the same time. Furthermore, particular Pokemon would appear in particular times or even on certain days of the week.

It can be argued that the inclusion of this feature further makes the player aware of their time-use in playing Pokemon. To a certain degree, loss-of-time would be less likely to occur as the player is able to witness the change in day happening in real-time within the world of Pokemon. As AI characters retire for the day and return to their homes, the player is made more aware of their situational surroundings in relation to time.

However, this is not fully the case in particular areas of play. As mentioned above, players have to commence gaming at a certain time of the day or night in order to capture particular Pokemon, or activate certain events. In my personal playthrough, I found myself playing during the daytime capturing Pokemon (which were only found between 9am and 6pm), and then switched to nocturnal mode by capturing the Pokemons that came out during the night. Before I knew it, I combined both the day and night play into one continuous playthrough. I only became aware of my 12 hour gameplay when I saved the game, and the saved file alerted me to the amount of hours I have been "in-world".

Goes to show that, on the one hand, yes; the inclusion of the clock does help the player regulate the amount of time spent gaming. On the other hand, no; by intergrating real-time with game mechanics, it is very easy to see both the sun rise and set ingame and out of it.