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| It is I, Business Professional Pikachu |
*Note: Specific names, times, and details are omitted for privacy purposes.
A team at work introduced a new policy that would benefit our entire department. There were a lot of different key players that made this happen -- over a long timeline, there were many drafts and approvals that had to be made to implement it. Simply put, it took considerable work to make this change. Throughout that time, there were criticisms and complaints about an issue this policy directly improved on. When everything was all set and done, I remember speaking to someone on that team and them feeling dejected -- it was disheartening to hear complaints despite them tirelessly working on a solution behind the scenes. While criticism certainly is fair, it hurt seeing a lack of role empathy towards a friend of mine.
When looking at the many comments behind #BringBackNationalDex, I'd imagine the team at Game Freak might have felt the same way -- they certainly must have been working on the DLC even before the hashtag existed. They must have felt dejected seeing the same complaints over and over again despite the fact that they were addressing the core of the criticism behind the scenes. This isn't to say that the criticism was wrong, but there certainly was room from other users of this hashtag to be more empathetic.
Video games, like many other industries, is a combination of art, science, and business. While we enjoy the artistic and technological advancements of games, as fans we often forget that companies have to keep business considerations in mind. The launch of limiting the Pokedex in Sword and Shield was a business decision to make sure these games could come out during the 2019 holiday season and give time for development of an extended post-game adventure. This isn't to say that criticizing this decision is unreasonable, but as consumers, there's room for us to seek to understand and extend role empathy.
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| The world needs more empathy. |
