Immers yourself in herbal essences new Moroccan argan oil elixir infused with pure argan oil. Just one drop delivers up to 100 hours of hair nourishment with the indulgent scent of a Moroccan garden. Herbal essences new Moroccan argan oil elixir. Spa quality hair repair without the price tag. Try it now. Herbal... Essences. Service repair to smoothness nourishment with the regimen use versus non-conditioning shampoo. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in-person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com slash setup. Pokemon Legends EA will be the death of the Pokemon world. Because it turns out these graphics aren't just an eyesore, they're also part of a much bigger problem that starts with this city but will likely spill out to destroy everything. Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the show that pronounces it Z when it's trademarked. You have no idea how many comments I've been getting about that on my live stream since the release of Pokemon Legends EA. Dap-Amp Mr Tom Live by the way. But my pronunciation wasn't the only thing people were divided on. The internet basically landed into one of two camps when it came to this game. It was trash because, I mean, look at the graphics. Or it's new real-time battle mechanics make it a really fun experience. As for me, both. Both is good. I was surprised by how well the new battle mechanics worked. But I also have to agree, the graphics leave a lot to be desired. I mean guys, these are supposed to be pillars. Why not just make them all bricks if you're not going to model them? But see, this is where my theorist brain kicked in. Now, confession time. I've been watching a lot of any Austin recently. I've loved his approach to analyzing game design, especially when it comes to city infrastructure like road signs, landing strips and power lines. Looking at things from that angle gives you a completely new perspective on the game. Sometimes even making things that seem ridiculous actually makes sense. And given ZA takes place in just one single city and a major plot point is about Quasar to Co Inc. and their redevelopment plan, it felt like if we used any Austin's approach, maybe we'd find some answers as to why the city is designed this way. You know, besides hardware performance and budget restrictions. Could there be an actual in-universe reason for these flat windows and balconies? Is there a reason for Lumio City's design in general? And what are the benefits or inevitable problems that arise when you build a city like this? The design choices of a city however subtle can say a lot about the people that built it and how that society seeks to shape the lives of its citizens. So grab your urban planning trollbees theorists because we've got a city to explore to see what the future holds for the Pokemon world. The first thing you may notice is the shape of this city. Typically, cities take spontaneous shapes and organically grow over time without any planned layout. That's when you get urban sprues like London or Boston winding roads, curving and crisscrossing in some misshapen mess. Alternatively, there are plenty of cities that have adopted a more uniform grid layout such as New York City, Chicago and Beijing. However, Lumio City bucks this urban planning principle by embracing a circular layout with radial roads branching out from a central point. Now, this circular layout has been present in urban design discourse for some time, with some urban planners proposing this configuration to be the city of the future. Ebenezer Howard had a book in 1898 which proposed exactly this, although he called them garden cities. Even while Disney's original design for Epcot, the experimental prototype City of Tomorrow, embodies this radial and circular design. The purpose of this style of layout was to keep the industrial district on the outer rings while your inner rings would be for residential, commerce and a lot of greenery. Howard proposed that this would promote healthy living in two ways. One, keeping you away from all the toxic fumes of the industrial district with enough greenery on the inside rings to offset those fumes. And two, put everything close together so you'd be encouraged to walk everywhere. And we do see these design philosophies being implemented throughout Lumio City. A number of the buildings on the outer ring are office buildings. And as you go further in, you find more open park spaces, apartments and shopping arcades. But Lumios actually takes the whole public parks thing one step further. Just having the green around the edges and in the parks near the center, like how Lumios was designed back in X and Y, there are now even more open park spaces throughout the city. And some of them are designated as wild zones. These spaces are designed more with Pokemon in mind, allowing them a space to live and roam within the city. With the hope being that this will encourage humans and Pokemon to live in harmony. Some aren't even green spaces, they're just cut off areas of the city for Pokemon to kind of reclaim. Like the power grid area in Wild Zone 14. This goes beyond Howard's 1898 plan for cities and actually lends itself more to the modern concept of urban rewilding. Where cities reintroduce green zones into the city for nature to essentially reclaim it. It allows for diverse plants to grow and for animals to find safe havens within the city. This means better safety for those animals as they now have somewhere to go and stops them wandering dangerously around the city. It encourages education and awareness as now there's a place to study and observe these creatures rather than just to be afraid of them. And it means less conflict between animals and humans, especially when it comes to things like food. As those animals now don't need to rummage around through trash or steal from tourists, there's an ecosystem of other creatures for them to feed off of. That sounds just like what the Wild Zones in Pokemon ZA are all about. And actually, there's other parts of the city that clearly are putting Pokemon at the forefront. I mean, besides the fact that the whole place is designed in the shape of a Pokeball. Like, their roads. Even though Lumios does have roads, look around. What don't you see? There's no cars anywhere. There are cabs occasionally seen around the place and there's one trainer who wants to make it illegal to use other forms of transportation. But honestly, why would you bother with a cab anyway? It takes less than 10 minutes to do a lap of the city. Six if you're running. By making a city so walkable, discouraging the use of cars, it makes it a safer city for Pokemon and also people to wander around the city without the fear of becoming roadkill. Now, this was also true back in X and Y, five years before the redevelopment plan was even a thing. However, what wasn't a thing was the amount of Pokemon centers around the city. In X and Y, you just had three. One in the north, one in the south and one in the center. Now, they're practically on every corner. So, even if a stray Pokemon was hit by a random cab, now it's only a two minute walk to the nearest free health clinic. How nice. But Pokemon centers also come in handy for the other major Pokemon activity, Pokemon battles. And those are happening a lot more thanks to the newly designated battle zones that have been implemented as part of the big tournament, the ZA Royale. Naturally, more battles means more trips to the Pokemon Center. So, it's useful to have more of them around. But these battle zones are also just in the city. It's not like they could have built, oh, I don't know, gyms for this kind of thing. We're just gonna have it out here in the street. Even outside of the battle zones, you can just fight Pokemon wherever you want. And this is one of the places that these awful looking flat facades come into play. In the real world, after the destruction caused by World War II, we actually saw a lot of architecture in Germany fall into these much flatter facade designs. The ornamental and detailed buildings of the past had been completely ruined. And these flatter facades were able to be made of materials that were a lot cheaper and easier to use, which also meant that labor was less expensive. In Pokemon ZA, by designing walls with flat exteriors, it minimizes the risk of any ornamental facade elements getting damaged from Pokemon battles or your Pokemon getting injured by said facade when they're flung across the street by a machamp with seismic toss. Most of these windows also appear to have metal strips built into the panel in some kind of nifty pattern, which might be to make it look nicer because, again, flat. But it might be because these are actually reinforced windows, which would stop glass flying everywhere when said Pokemon is thrown at your window day after day. It also means that any damages that are incurred is going to be much cheaper and quicker for the citizens and the city to repair. So as you can see, a lot of Lumios' design does seem to make sense, especially if you're a Pokemon. But it does also have some benefits for the people of the city too, or at least it would appear that way at first. I mean, it's not exactly great to have Pokemon battles happening outside your window every day, even with the cheaper renovations. And the more I looked at it, the more I began to see that while Pokemon and Pokemon battles are at the front of mind for this redevelopment plan, humans are actually way in the back. Some are small things, like the rooftop terraces are nice and all, the Pokemon seem to really enjoy them, but there is a considerable lack of railings across many of these roofs. In Paris, the city which Lumios is based on, any drop taller than one meter requires a guardrail to be installed, and that guardrail must also be a minimum height of one meter. And yet, there are very few on the roofs of Lumios, and those drops are definitely higher than one meter. Using Pikachu's height, I was able to calculate that this nine-story building is around 12 meters or 40 feet tall, just a little over the height of your average telephone pole. And if you were to fall off, you've only got a 50% chance of surviving. Fortunately, there's anti-gravity technology, or I suppose an anti-gravity Pokemon inside of your smartphone, so that's nice if you have a smartphone, but if you don't, good luck, I guess. Although I'm also not that sure that being yanked up at the last minute from a nine-story fall is the most safe thing either, probably a short for another day. Or there's the park benches. You see those little bars dividing it up? Those aren't just fun design, they're actually an anti-homeless design feature to prevent people from sleeping on benches. So sure, gotta clean out the sewers to make sure that the Pokemon are comfortable, but heaven forbid if a human needs to sleep in a park. Benches are for watching Pokemon battles only, but then there's the bigger reason this city is bad for humans. The map. While this map is designed like the utopias from Howard's book, take a look at the differences between the original map from X and Y, and the new map from ZA. Sure, there's the obvious additions like the Pokemon Centers and Wild Zones, like I mentioned previously, but notice where those additions are. They weren't empty spaces originally, they were houses, apartments, businesses. They physically removed what was there for their new expansion. In France, this is known as, oh lord help me, Duart, d'ex propriation. My poor French teacher, you tried so hard and I just wasn't good enough. Anyway, fortunately the US also has something like this called eminent domain. This is where the government steps into seized land and or private property with the public interest in mind, paying the owner what the government deems a fair amount for that property. Historically, governments and cities have sometimes invoked this power to wipe entire neighborhoods and communities off the map, like to make way for a highway or a landing strip. Clearly, the redevelopment plan in ZA to integrate Pokemon into the city didn't just add Pokemon to the city, it required them to reclaim land from the people already living here, kicking them out without anywhere to go. Sure, they'll have been compensated, but now you have the stress of figuring out where you go next, and you can't exactly sleep on a park bench. Although, it's not just for the benefit of the Pokemon. Look at the fancy HQ for Quasar to Co Inc, the company in charge of the redevelopment. That building wasn't there in X and Y. They bulldozed homes to build this isor, which makes me more and more suspicious of them if I'm honest. And for those who weren't kicked out, remember those flat facades? The ones that I said could be a benefit due to the lack of things being able to be broken off during a Pokemon brawl? Well, that was true, but it also comes with other problems. Seeing flush against the wall like this means that they become susceptible to different kinds of weather damage. Rainwater, for example, has no lips or raised edges to be diverted away, making it easier for rain to penetrate and cause leaks. Flush windows also absorb heat more directly, which increases the amount the glass contracts and expands, loosening the seals, but also making the glass weaker over time and more susceptible to smashing, even with the reinforcements. Finally, by being flush, the windows can't effectively counteract changes in wind pressure, meaning they're more likely to break if there's ever a strong wind. And in the Pokemon world, heavy amounts of water, direct heat or strong winds are just weather problems. Those are pretty direct threats. All it's gonna take is one emboors flamethrower or a Feraligators Hydro Pump and you're in for a world of hurt and costly repairs. So then that brings us back to the original question. Why design the city like this? Why make the buildings look awful if they cost loads to repair? Why kick people out of their homes to only make life better for Pokemon? Quasartico Inc. in the game says that things like the Wild Zones were included to protect the city from wild Pokemon who were rogue mega-evolving, but that only explains the Wild Zones and not the rest of the weird design choices we've talked about today. Plus, let's be honest, when has Game Theory ever trusted the word of an in-universe corporate entity? No, I believe I've uncovered a different reason for this approach. During X and Y, we are introduced to Team Flair, the villains of that game, with their goal of creating a quote-unquote beautiful world. We then bump into some former Team Flair members during ZA, who are trying to fix the team's reputation and move forward. In one of the game's many missions, we are then tasked with going to explore Team Flair's old hideout. And while there, we are told the true reason for Team Flair's former goals. They were afraid of overpopulation, and so needed to wipe out a large chunk of humanity to save the rest. How very... Thanos of you. Now, obviously, Team Flair failed in that goal, and their leader no longer has the same level of authority within the city. But that doesn't mean that overpopulation isn't still an issue across the Pokemon world. If this isn't an issue to worry about anymore, why bring it up in this recent title at all? We've gone this long without knowing the truth behind Team Flair's schemes, so if being brought up now, must be relevant in some way. And so, what if, rather than taking the blow everything up approach, a company came in and decided to take a less dramatic approach to the same problem? Going back to Howard's designs for Circle-shaped cities, one of the big benefits he cites is that by default, the shape and lack of housing compared to the amount of land forces the population of said city to reduce. This then allows those who do remain in the city to experience a better quality of life with more space and no lack of resources. Quasar to Code then expanded upon this idea by introducing the Wild Zones. While they claim it's to protect humanity, by introducing Pokemon to the city, we hear about how many people are leaving because they fear it's too dangerous. So it seems like they succeeded, right? The population of Lumios is saved from the overpopulation disaster. The shape of the city means there's less people living there, and by introducing the Wild Zones, more people are leaving, again lowering the population. And that's true, but it actually keeps going. By creating a small enclosed city with a lot of wild animals, you invite one other big problem, disease. As I said earlier, this is a very small city, and with the increased number of Pokemon thanks to the Wild Zones, it puts all of them into very close proximity, which could result in something known as zoonotic spillover. You may not have heard of this exact term, but I'm sure you're aware of the actual effects. It's where diseases jump from animals to humans. Diseases which to animals are either harmless or at worst a mild inconvenience, but for humans, they can be fatal. Think things like avian influenza, swine flu, or rabies. And if you want to stick to the lore of the Pokemon world more closely, there's the mysterious virus called Pokerus. It's harmless to Pokemon, in fact it's actually a benefit to them boosting their EVs. But if the virus was able to mutate and then jump to humans, we have no idea what damage it could do. Most of the time, these viruses become fatal because of the simple truth that an animal's body is different from a human's body. We have different physiologies, body temperatures, cell receptors, metabolisms, and Pokemon are incredibly different from people. While they may have originated from the same thing at some point according to the lore, it's not like a human can now maintain 100,000 volts within its cheeks. These diseases are able to make the jump through a variety of methods depending on how the virus evolves. Sometimes it's through oral transmission, like eating the meat or product of an animal. It can be transmitted through moisture in the air, or it can be from direct contact with the animal, or it's bodily fluids like blood, saliva, urine, and yes, poop. And I bring that last one up because this game has a weird fascination with Pokemon poop. Like, it's not just one or two mentions, it's a few times. And then there's this guy who's asking questions none of us want the answers to. With all this unsanitary material around Lumio City, and with it being apparently up to the citizens to clean it up, citizens who are not wearing the correct protective gear, this place is prime for a viral outbreak. Plus, you have missions where you're asked to clear out the sewers of rocks to make it a better place for Pokemon to live. This is a viral incubator in the making. Pokemon live down here, contract whatever disease, and then transfer it to us. And yet, what are the people in charge doing? Not only are they making the problems worse by making more wild zones to increase the Pokemon population, but they're also operating events like the Z.A. Royale. If a trainer can climb the ranks, they don't just get a lousy gym badge like normal, but rather, Kwisartiko Inc. promises to grant one wish. I'm sure it has a lot of fine print, they're not genies like Shadow the Hedgehog after all. But this incentivizes trainers to converge upon the city and stay for an extended period of time. Enough time to potentially contract this fatal disease. Now, you may be saying that I've lost it. There's no way Kwisartiko Inc. is doing this on purpose. That is just way too conspiratorial, and maybe it is, but then why is it that they have blocked all of the exits to the city? Back in X and Y, there were five exits to this city. Now, all the gates are firmly sealed shut, making the outer wall an unbroken enclosure of buildings with no openings whatsoever. The only way you can leave now is by boarding the train out of town. Limiting the amount of exits makes it much harder to leave. And if you even try to take the train out of town, you lose consciousness and wake up back in the city on one of those anti-homelessness benches. But we've seen people saying the townsfolk are leaving. What's the difference this time? The difference is that we've not been here long enough to contract whatever deadly disease is being cultivated. Then, and only then, are we going to be allowed to leave like the original citizens, so that we can spread it across the world and help with the overpopulation issue that is facing the Pokemon world. The choice to make this city shape like a Pokeball is more appropriate now than ever, because Pokeballs are built to keep living things trapped inside, until of course you're ready to be sent out with your newfound power to bring destruction to everyone else you meet. That or the graphics are bad because the budgets were super low and I'm just in complete denial. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching.
