Put away your phone and play Pokémon on your Nintendo DS instead

If you don't regularly take public transit, you may not have the daily experience of bounded slices of time where you have nothing to do but sit and briefly wait. If you do, you'll notice that most people are looking at their phones.

When one is on their phone, they are largely removed from the world. A phone is not a dedicated device, and you don't really know what someone is doing on one unless you are positioned behind them, or snooping. All activity is squished together as "phone time" — phone users are usually not fully doing one thing, but rather a general activity, one of many on the everything box. Many people have an adversarial relationship with their Phones, whose apps' business models, as it is well-understood at this point, are based on monetizing a numbing of one's attention. Apps like Brick or Opal will lock down your phone, and heavily guilt you for trying to evade their restrictions. Few feel "good" after "phone time", and "rotting" is enjoyable probably primarily as the enjoyment of abandoning resistance to a vice.

An experience I had living in New York is the extent to which I was constantly being perceived by an incomprehensible number of people each day. I came to understand, for example, New York's obsession with fashion. At a certain point, I viewed presenting myself well to be a sort of civic good, contributing to the character of the city. Rajiv Surendra describes, for example, even walking in New York as an activity that demands his full attention, a skill to be practiced. While I no longer live in New York, I try to maintain this orientation towards public space everywhere.

Looking at one's phone is, to a small degree, aesthetically distasteful, in a way that other activities are not. Someone on their phone is removed from public, not properly "there." It degrades, in a small way, the public space — both your attention of it, and others' attention towards you (which are really, in my view, one and the same). Mass transit in particular is a highly public activity where one has nothing to do, and while one can certainly do nothing, I also don't think there's anything wrong with light non-phone diversions, such as reading a book, writing, sketching, or, I propose, playing Pokémon on a handheld console.

Lately, I have been replacing phone time on the train with Pokémon time. I don't have the phone scrolling sensation of being "removed from the world" when I'm playing Pokémon on my DS in public; I remain both in the world of Pokémon and the real world. This activity, unlike phone time, is striking, invites curiosity, even conversation. No one has ever remarked to me in public about how cool my iPhone was like they have with my DS. Perhaps this is a result of the latter's relative obscurity, but (to my dismay) I don't think we are at risk of eliminating smartphones from public spaces.

I have recently encountered the concept of "slow gaming". Many video games drive progress through a stimulating, fast-paced experience that rewards achievement and mastery. "Slow Gaming" is about exploration, consideration, and play. It is about taking a breather, being in the moment, and not rushing to the destination. A related concept is that of "longplays" — where people try to play games as comprehensively as possible, almost an anti-speedrun. YouTuber Justin's Game Corner discusses this idea specifically in the context of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. These 2004 games are remakes, and retain the 1996 originals' story and Pokémon, with updated color graphics, and are particularly suited to spacious, patient play.

Much of Pokémon consists of walking, exploring, doing repetitive activities, talking to people, and figuring out what to do next. It does not generally suck you in; rather, it calls for your attention. It's possible to "optimize" Pokémon, trying to squeeze out every point and move through things as quickly as possible. But Pokémon, especially the earlier games, is structured in a way that rewards a different kind of attention. A lot of the game is seemingly "pointless" — many of the characters have dialogue that lacks utility but adds color to the game (I liked this quote from a Team Rocket grunt: "how can you not see the beauty of our evil?"). The game rewards exploration: going to new places or talking to new people is both decorative and how you progress the story. The scenery and music alone are nice to look at. Pokémon in its unmodified form is relatively easy, and there are many ways to complete it. You can even set up challenges for yourself to test your creativity.

The earlier Pokémon games have no such adversarial relationship. Structurally, their economic model is dramatically different — they don't need to make their game addictive or sap your faculties, because they're not trying to maximize your engagement. Once you've purchased the console, your economic relationship is complete, and you are free to play. The game is designed to give you a sense that it is worthwhile — that there are a lot of things to do. Adult former Pokémon fans can still speak with fondness of their childhood experiences. The irony is that in another time, video games were sort of thought to be a vice. My parents limited my "screen time", encouraging me to read instead. Interestingly in retrospect, in comparison to "phone time", a game like Pokémon doesn't seem particularly pernicious, nor addictive.

My favorite Pokémon games, and the ones I suggest if you are getting into it for the first time, are the "Generation 3" games (Pokémon FireRed, LeafGreen, Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald). These games received no updates after they were released. FireRed and LeafGreen recently came out on the Nintendo Switch, and have become enormously popular, even among people younger than the games themselves. Community consensus seems to be that these are the best games for your first Pokémon adventure.

There are many ways to play Pokémon. The cheapest one, and the one I do, is via a hacked DSi (follow this guide). Used DSis cost about $50, and by running an emulator off of cartridge roms, you can avoid spending $150 to $300 on physical cartridges.

Unlike other "train" games (like The New York Times's), Pokémon games take a long time to play! Like 20ish hours, but they can be chopped up very well into small pieces. Just make sure to save often.