| Game |
November 26, 2016
|
| He was walking in the downtown area. He touched the icon of the application on his smartphone, and the game started. He looked at the screen which showed a map that showed his surrounding area. On the map, there was a cool young guy's animation character, it was him. After a while, he noticed a red icon was approaching him. He looked up. It was a young woman coming in his direction. She also looked up and in her face he could see a mixture of disappointment and respect. The disappointment was probably from his age. He was in his early 60s. He started this game recently. He retired from his job a couple of years before. After that, he played various sports, went traveling often, read various books, watched various movies, but got bored of all of them. Then, he found this game. When he found this game, he thought that these types of games were games for young people. But, soon he realized that these games are good for elderly people. She came to him smiling, and said, "Can I exchange our points?" He said smiling, "  Sure." They closed their phones and shook it two times. Then they made sure one point was added. She said, "I've never met a person with so many high points!" He laughed and said, "A person of my age has a lot of time." They parted saying good-bye. One of the reasons that he liked this game was of its simplicity. If the gamer could find another gamer (blue icon: man, red: woman) on the screen, he or she could approach each other, and ask to exchange points, like what they just did. If they exchanged points, both of them would get one point each. That's it. The points that the gamer had were shown on the icon, so the young woman respected him. This encouraged the gamers' motivation. Soon after he started this game, he realized that this game had several good points: EThe gamer has to go out and walk around so it's good for their health. EIt becomes a good chance to communicate with others. Especially elderly people like him who had few chances to talk to young people. The more the gamers thought to increase their points, the more they had to spread their playing areas. Since each gamer had his/her own ID number and their machine recognized it, after the meeting, the same person wouldn't be counted twice. The icons that already had a point exchanged were displayed as light-blue for men and pink for women. So if they saw this color, they would just nod to each other lightly smiling. As he was a type of person who did things seriously and intensively, he would walk around and got points every day, everywhere. After a couple of months, he spread his area to the neighboring cities. He made some friends with this game. When he talked to them, he soon found out that they were in the same situation as his -- having a hard time to use time. They exchanged information to where there were many gamers. It was fun for them to get drink and talk about their own strategies. One guy said, "I wonder how this application company earns money. This is totally free and we don't need to buy any special items." Another said, "They gather our information, age, sex, living area, action patterns, etc. Maybe they can sell this information to others." "So, could it be revealed in the information that I went to my girlfriend's house?" "Your wife would willingly pay for that information." "What a world! They get money from not the owner but their partner!" They laughed. On this day, the company of the game held a competition. The rule was simple. From 10 am to 3 pm, the gamer should gather as many points as possible. The highest point getter was the winner. The rule was the same but the points were given for just this race. The IDs the gamers already had were disregarded for the race. At 10 am it started. At first, it was thought that the gamers in the big cities had an advantage: it was easier to meet other gamers. However, in the big cities, there were many problems. For example, in a big park: There were so many people that gathered, and at 10, they started to exchange points at the same time. They moved around looking at their phones, and bumped into each other and fell down. Sometimes, when they shook their phones, they would hit each other. Some of them felt stress to continually check the screen and would just shout, "Is there somebody who has not exchanged with me?!" So the park became very noisy and the pedestrians passing by thought it was a riot or something and called the police. The police came and looked for the organizer but there weren't any. The police wanted to stop the gamers to play. But the gamers started to leave the area. As the police attempted to stop their movement, they had quarrels. This type of situation occurred in various places. The old guy's group predicted this, so they walked around on large streets looking for icons. They didn't stop moving and avoided crowds. They earned many points. But, before noon, because of the chaos around the country, the government asked the organizer to stop the competition, and they obeyed. The company sent a message to each gamer's phone that the competition was suspended. They added that they would keep their points and restart it someday. There was a big commotion all over the country at the same time. The old guy's group entered the nearest restaurant. One said, "What a pity! I was going to win!" Another guy said, "I had a good strategy. I was waiting at a gate at a train station, waiting for people." "That was good! I had been running around this whole time and am very exhausted!" They laughed and laughed. |
| |
*disregard: ³·ιAlΆ΅Θ’