by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London
Satoshi Tajiri created one of the biggest money-making media franchises of all time. It all started with his love of nature and, in particular, mini-beasts. It also eventually took gamers back into the fresh air.
As a child, Satoshi Tajiri, loved finding and collecting minibeasts, so spent lots of time outside, exploring nature. But, as Japan became more and more built up, his insect searching haunts disappeared. As the natural world disappeared he was drawn instead inside to video game arcades and those games became a new obsession. He became a super-fan of games and even created a game fanzine called Game Freak where he shared tips on playing different games. It wasn’t just something he sold to friends either: one issue sold 10,000 copies. An artist, Ken Sugimori, who started as a reader of the magazine, ultimately joined Satoshi, illustrating the magazine for him.
Rather than just writing about games, they wanted to create better ones themselves, so morphed Game Freak into a computer game company, ultimately turning it into one of the most successful ever. The cause of that success was their game Pokemon, designed by Satoshi with characters drawn by Ken. It took the idea of that first obsession, collecting minibeasts, and put it into a fun game with a difference.
It wasn’t about killing things, but moving around a game world searching for, taming and collecting monsters. The really creative idea, though, came from the idea of trading. There were two versions of the game and you couldn’t find all the creatures in your own version. To get a full set you had to talk to other people and trade from your collection. It was designed to be a social game from the outset.
It has been suggested that Satoshi is neuro-diverse. Whether he is or not, autistic people (as well as everyone else) found that Pokemon was a great way to make friends, something autistic people often find difficult. Pokemon, also became more than just a game, turning into a massive media franchise, with trading cards to collect, an animated series and a live action film. It also later sparked a second game craze when Pokemon Go was released. It combined the original idea with augmented reality, taking all those gamers back outside for real, searching for (virtual) beasts in the real world.
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