Where I Go: Becoming a Pokémon Champion

For the Last 15 Years, These Cute Digital Creatures Have Helped Remind Me That I Can Overcome Any Challenge That May Come My Way

Most kids are obsessed with things—fantasies, foods, films—that they eventually outgrow.

It’s only natural. Our taste ages as we do.

But for me, it’s been 15 years since my parents got me my very first video game, Pokémon Platinum. I’m 22 years old now, and I’m as obsessed as I’ve ever been with the elemental creatures that I first met on a Nintendo DS screen in second grade.

Since then, the franchise has provided me with a place to go to find stability when my life has felt most chaotic—whether that happened to …

When Pac-Man Started a National “Media Panic”

Video Games Revived a Perpetual Debate Over the Virtues and Vices of Technology for Kids

In the early 1980s, spurred by the incredible popularity of Atari, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man, everyone seemed to be talking about video games, if not obsessively playing them. A …

Will Pokemon Go Put an End to Gamer Stereotypes?

The Wildly Popular Augmented Reality Game Brings Players Into Their Communities and Helps Them Connect

The sensation that is Pokemon Go has gotten millions of players off the couch and into their neighborhoods. The game’s artful use of augmented reality (AR) has demonstrated perhaps more …

How a Refugee from the Nazis Became the Father of Video Games

Ralph Baer's Life Is a Classic Tale of Scrappiness and Perseverance

It’s perhaps fitting that the man recognized as the father of the video game, that quintessential American invention, was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, whose personal story converged with …

Three Reasons Why I Bought My Kid an Xbox

I Thought Gaming Was a Gateway Vice to a Life of Ruin. Now I’m Grasping to Find Some Redeeming Educational Purpose.

The purchase was so out of character for me that my credit card company wanted no part of it.

“Martinez is buying an Xbox? Sure he is … This’ll be the …

This Is Your Brain On Apps, ‘Minecraft,’ and Fracking

The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis

The nutshell: Risk-averse. Dependent. Superficial. Narcissistic. All of these are …