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Whenever I come to discuss my thesis, then I begin worldwide in this manner:"I do a thesis on Pokémon". This does not miss entertain my interlocutor. It has to be stated a priori, it is not the thing that is. People of my generation generally feel nostalgic about their youth. Others, older, think of Pokémon GO, with varied attitudes. For my own part, if I played with Pokémon a whole lot in my youth, my pursuit for the franchise had been renewed by nostalgia thanks to its emulators, and that I became what one can call a fan of Pokémon. However, my academic interest in franchising started at the beginning of my Master 1, even once I decided to compose a memoir on"ROM hacking" in a neighborhood of Pokémon fans.
A brief history of the Pokémon franchise .
Even the Pokemon franchise has been created in 1996 in Japan as a video game released by Nintendo about the Gameboy console. Even the Pokémon Green / Red matches (Red and Blue at the remaining part of the world, one or two years afterwards, at a slightly redesigned version) have laid the foundation of a franchise that has appeared on many media: animation, playing cards and collectibles... planes.
To fly into other skies including Team Rocket.
In the event the franchise has its own ups and downs especially concerning game sales, revenue are usually in thousands of millions round the planet, at least for the games of this"primary series", that is obviously say people who follow the model of the first games. Indeed, despite a continuous renewal of the franchise and video games over the years (which is one of the things of my thesis), the recipe remains the same: a 11-year-old boy belongs on an experience in a universe populated by animals known as pokémons (yes, I compose pokémons to discuss the critters, it's my site and Nintendo does not have any electricity , well, not on that). He grabs it into form a group and meet his Pokédex, a kind of digital encyclopedia, so engaging in a quest for scientific crowdsourcing for a professor who exploits his job (after all, it's he who gave him his very first pokemon). But above all, he leaves them struggle badges and take the challenge ofPokémon League, which is composed of beating an elite to develop into a Pokémon Master. And during his adventure, he's made to reevaluate an organization's plans.
The leaders of the many malicious organizations modeled to mimic the way to move the"Team Skull" caricature of"thugs" present in the hottest games.
Regarding the current background of Pokémon, even the less skillful have heard about the phenomenon of summertime 2016, I do not talk of the tune Lean , but obviously Pokémon GO. This match won't always occupy a major position in my thesis, however, has shown that the craze for the franchise is still existing (and possibly a little cleavage).
Pokemon and the search.
When I first decided to operate on Pokémon at the close of the summer of 2016, among the very first things I did was visit Google Scholar to"buy" academic articles that talk about doing it. Imagine my surprise once I found that the first connections were about a receptor involved in the growth of certain cancers (Nintendo also place pressure on investigators to alter the name, they did not had to appreciate their brand is associated with cancer). Then my disappointment once I realized that there was virtually no article or publication about Pokemon. Finally though, some posts on Pokémon GOwithin the field of public healthlawenforcement, and , at the time, it had been mostly proto-articles of two pages. Further research has made me discover the existence of one academic publication about Pokémon edited by Joseph Tobin, who, visionary, announced in 2004 the fall of Pokémon (I do not care, but kidding aside, I highly recommend it, it's in references at the conclusion of the article). Oh, and a post also, if we place those on Pokémon GO apart . How can it be, the best franchise in the world doesn't interest the academic world in any respect? Of course, this is not a legitimate cultural function, however cultural studies, especially the enthusiast studies which followed, with writers like Henri Jenkins on the front lines, are considering more popular cultural items, have attempted with more or less success to legitimize them.
An individual can discover a convincing explanation in my view in the report of a communication by Vincianne Zabban, Samuel Coavoux and Manuel Boutet, that, beginning from the observation that"game research" (in social sciences) are in fact virtually"WoW research (research on World of Warcraft), suggests that the minimal variety of games studied is largely due to 2 factors. The investigators also study the games that interest them, to start with, and so the matches they played, along with also the"path dependence", that is to say in this context the greater ease of analyzing the object / topic already well marked by study instead of advance blindly, which consolidates the position of WoW. One more factor to take into consideration is the fact that, by its MMORPG standing, WoW is a object to the social sciences. I believe this reasoning can be expanded to"enthusiast studies", particularly considering that, originally, they had been the work of passionate folks who wished to defend the validity of their object. Furthermore, if I am today studyingPokémon is partially because I grew up with this and I'm a fan of this. So perhaps if Pokémonhas been studied very little up to now, it's because the (ex) Pokémon fans were largely still studying. This could be evidenced by the recent thesis of Fanny Barnabé of the University of Liège, that deals quite extensively with activities and productions of Pokémon lovers (available at the end of the report, and that I strongly advise youpersonally, it is extremely nice to read).
Pokémon fans Online.
It's precisely to the productions and the activity of the lovers and the wider public (a distinction which I will develop later) of Pokémon online that I especially wish to become interested. Because I have the impression that it is central in its own diffusion and in this franchise's production. When I was a little isolated myself from the online sphere Pokémon being fascinated in practices Pokémon in drama on a handheld, mostly in teens to begin, the part of the net and especially the fans productions is becoming fundamental again. Pokémon is everywhere. In the sense that we could have discovered it throughout the Pokémon GO hype . However, in the feeling which we may locate Pokémon everywhere, and that as long as we are involved in certain social networks quite young, references are rather common. Anthology.