A portrait of the company whose ‘toymaker philosophy’ stands in contrast to the tech giants that rule our lives
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hat is the highest-grossing entertainment franchise of all time? You might be tempted to think of Star Wars, or perhaps the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Maybe even Harry Potter? But no: it’s Pokémon – the others don’t come close. The Japanese “pocket monsters”, which star in video games, TV series and tradable playing cards, have made an estimated $115bn since 1996. Is this a sign of the lamentable infantilisation of postmodern society?
Not a bit of it, argues Keza MacDonald, the Guardian’s video games editor, in her winsomely enthusiastic biography of Nintendo, the company that had become an eponym for electronic entertainment long before anyone had heard the words “PlayStation” or “Xbox”. Yes, Pokémon is mostly a children’s pursuit, but a sophisticated one: “Like Harry Potter, the Famous Five and Narnia,” she observes, “it offers a powerful fantasy of self-determination, set in a world almost totally free of adult supervision.” And in its complicated scoring system, “it got millions of kids voluntarily doing a kind of algebra”.
Meanwhile, a lot of adults participated in the 2016 summer craze for Pokémon Go, the phone app that led people to walk around looking for imaginary monsters in real places. Pure escapism, perhaps, for people depressed by the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, not to mention the Brexit referendum. But at least it got people out of the house. When getting people to stay in their house became the law four years later, it was Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a delightful fantasy of village life, that enabled them to socialise remotely, selling 45m copies in 2020.
