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Help the hobby - Why Pinball is better than Pokemon Go

johnwhitfield said:
Not directed at PeteB at all but the whole negative media coverage of Pokémon Go and criticism of children/teenagers really pushes my buttons.

We live in a world that seems to delight in reporting negative stories about children. I fully admit to being biased but there is a perception that kids today are far more badly behaved than we ever were :mad:

Really? I grew up with some real ****ers. It wasn't down to video games or video nasties . They were just ****ers. Same as their parents probably were. Playing Pokémon Go is no different to playing Space Invaders, Monopoly or even pinball. It's fun and if they enjoy it then more power to them.

When you see kids who turn up at pinball meets such as Dan, Melissa, the Raison clan etc they are all really nice, well adjusted kids. I'd hope my two would be viewed in the same way even if they are currently addicted to the current Pokémon ********.

I live in an inner city borough and work in another. Some of the kids I meet are little ****s. However, the vast majority are really nice but we never get to hear about that. If I arrange a school trip I have to do a risk assessment. One of the top risks is always verbal and physical assult by adults. Seriously, what kind of ****wit hurls abuse at 14 year old kids or throws stuff at them from cars? However, this happens depressingly often. After the London bombings some people refused to share the same tube carriage as the kids I took out on a school trip.:(

This week I took my two to the local swinning pool in Lewisham. Within 5 mins Matt had met another teenage lad and was playing in the pool and a teenage girl came over and asked if she could help my daughter learn to dive. Nothing especially unusual in that but it goes to show the media's perception of London kids as mini gang members isn't correct.

I've seen my two go through various fads. I've got ****ing buckets of Go-Go, Trash packs, Shopkins etc. I suspect Pokémon Go will go the same way but why do so many people feel the need to knock it? I'm no fan of Tayor Swift etc but I'm pretty certain my parents also hated punk, goth etc.

Sorry gone off at a bit of a tangent..... It's a game played by kids. Maybe I should stop looking at the Daily Mail website:oops:
Click to expand...

These days the most likely kind up person to push in a shopping queue/fail to say thank you/complain to an underpaid harassed assistant/be rude and ignorant is......

An OAP

They have had a charmed life - aspirational post war parents who could give them ever increasing opportunities. Their post war parents also were grounded and knew the value of money and family. Then these current OAPs had a career full of opportunity - they could leave a job on Friday and get a new one on Monday. Their salaries were good enough to buy a nice house and the world opened up to them as they went on foreign holidays their parents could not have afforded . Their pensions are good AND they retired early.
Now they wander around garden centres eating endless cream teas and Sunday lunches before going home to their houses that they finished paying for before retirement, and complain about the 'younger generation' whilst voting Brexit cos they don't want Polish immigrants anymore despite the fact that most of the Poles that live here fought for the right for them to say just that.

Old people - they're not hat they used to be.


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Ah, but isn't that the same as older people moaning about younger generations? The current batch of pensioners have a lot to be proud of. There was huge progression in terms of equality in the 60s. Music/art, culture etc were all touched by that generation.

Pinball in the 90s wasn't being led by my generation. How old is Steve Richie? Or for that matter Gary Stern?

Each generation has it's own challenges and there are good and bad at every age.

I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking it was "all better in my day". I remember a lot of the 80s and 90s as being a bit crap really. I'd take the modern kids internet world or the 60s psych scene anyday over growing up with 5star and Kylie.

****ing hell, if I become any more of a hippie I'll turn into Ive:oops:
 
PeteB said:
10 Reasons Why Pinball is Better than Pokemon Go
Click to expand...

Just found this thread, thought I'd add my two cents worth ;)

I'm in an interesting position. Being the age I am (43) and growing up in the 70s/80s with a father who was a computer engineer at ICL, I can't remember not having computers and/or whatever the latest gadgets were. I remember my Dad spending way too much money on a VHS video recorder with a video camera when some people still had black and white TVs. My teens were spent on the family Apple 2 or my Commodore 64, and later my little sister's SEGA MegaDrive. But if I wasn't doing that it was BMX or skateboarding. And at every opportunity, either on holiday or when the fun fair came to town, I stuffed 10ps into arcade games, most memorably TEMPEST, GALAXIAN, 1942 and Q*BERT. I only remember playing playing a pinball machine once as a kid some, probably on holiday on Blackpool, and I've no recollection what it was.

Right, that's my background out of the way. I also have a 13 year old son and 8 year old daughter. My house is also stuffed full of gadgets: iPhones, iPods, iPads, laptops, computers, Apple TV, You View, 50meg fibre broadband, Nintendo DS, Gameboys, Wii, Gamecube, PlayStation 3, N64, NES, SNES, MegaDrive, a table-top arcade game (ASTRO FIGHTER) and of course 3 pinball machines. My kids both have gaming PCs in their bedrooms (mainly because there's nowhere else for them to go in my tiny house).

My son is a total gamehead. He will spend every waking moment on his PC given the chance. He loves being online with his cousins and school friends, chatting and laughing, as they team up in the latest multiplayer. He's happy, friendly, social, funny, respected by his peers and smart - super smart - and doing brilliantly at school. I am utterly unable to convince him to learn to ride a bike or climb trees but he's living his childhood not mine. He's got an iPhone 4 with Pokemon Go on it because he wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. He thinks it's pretty boring as there's basically no skill or mental challenge. You just collect Pokemon from wherever you happen to be and pit them against each other in the most basic RPG system.

My daughter is not a gamehead at all. She likes watching YouTube and will play games like Minecraft, Hammerwatch and Terraria but usually less than an hour at a time. Even though she has access to exactly the same electronic entertainment she's more interested in rock climbing, learning to ride her bike, singing in the school choir and cross-country running! She's super-bright, happy, cheeky and doing super good at school (first "Free Reader" in her year). She also has Pokemon Go on her 6th gen iPod Touch and although she finds the Pokemon characters cute and adorable, it too has failed to capture her interest as it's not sufficiently engaging or puzzling enough.

Basically, there's no mental challenge to Pokemon Go.

So who is playing Pokemon Go? As it requires GPS it really needs to be on a phone (my daughter plays on her iPod via hot-spotting with someone else's phone) which means that a lot of young kids are going to be excluded. From talking with my son, very few secondary school age teens are playing it either. They might have it, or have tried it, but they're not spending every break time hunting Pokemon around the school grounds. It seems to me that the most engaged age group are the older teens and the twenties. Young people with their first jobs playing on their way to work or at lunch. Something simple they can dip into quickly that has a current social buzz. Or possibly housewives bored with Bejewelled on Facebook.

Me? Even with all those Nintendo consoles I've never been into Pokemon. And I thought Pokemon Go was lame in the extreme. It's also an evil battery killer!

Enough waffle... back to pinball...
 
Interesting, do they play your Pins? My brother brought his 8 year-old round and he did play my Pins. However, he seemed to get bored pretty quickly.
 
We don't have kids but have had groups of friends kids and family kids round. They love the pins for about 20 mins then disappear once they have worked their way round each one interest quickly wanes. I do think for youngish kids they are actually bloody hard to play, let alone get their head around rules.

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