The whole world is in a Pokémon frenzy. The whole world? No, in Russia, some parts of the political elite view the whole thing critically.
Is the CIA planning something?
So suspects the Russian Minister of Communications, Nikolai Nikiforov, dark intentions of American intelligence services behind the Pokémon app.
Source. Wikipedia
He does not support a ban on the game but suspects that intelligence services may have contributed to the app. The minister believes that the intention behind it could be to gather information on where people are around the globe. This is reported by the Moscow Times.
… or is it the devil after all?
Another politician from the Russian parliament, Frants Kilntesevich, sees the arrival of the devil in Pokémon GO. And that it eats at the moral fabric of the country. If it were up to him, restrictive measures would be enacted to protect players from falling under the corrupting influence of Pokémon.
The head of an ultra-conservative group from St. Petersburg also believes this. Andrei Polyakov says: “We must lead people out of this virtual world. It smells of Satan’s work.”
This group advocates for a ban on Pokémon GO in Russia. They want to engage consumer protection groups to check what possibly harmful effects the app has. They also want to contact the antitrust authority and Apple.
Banks, game developers, and the public react as in the West
Meanwhile, the “Augmented Reality” system is not viewed unfavorably in Russia. The Russian tech and communications giant Mail.ru recognizes the success of Pokémon GO, registering the nostalgia factor behind Pokémon as the secret to its success. And they believe at Mail.Ru that many things will be possible with this technology in the future.
Russian banks capitalize on the Poké hype for their own purposes, opening Pokestops at their branches and offering players accident insurance.
And the Google searches in Russia are also considerable, it is said. Since Pokémon GO, there have been 50 times more searches for Pokémon than on Pokémon topics in the last years.
The Russian public is thus playing.
I caught Ivan the Terrible!
Even the politics seem not entirely averse to the principle of the game. The city government of Moscow is said to be developing its own app, which is to be released in Moscow at the end of August. With the app, players will not catch Pokémon, but figures from Russian history such as Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, or Napoleon.
The title image for the article comes from the Moscow Times.
The Pokémon GO app fulfilled a promise in the summer of 2016 that we were given as children. Instead of controlling a trainer, we can now be a Pokémon trainer o...
