The Joys of Pokénomics and Quandaries of the Pokécare Industrial Complex

So what’s up with the economics of this whole thing? How do Pokémon Centers — which ostensibly provide trainers with full medical services to heal their injured Pokémon for free — manage to stay solvent? Assuming they’re funded by some sort of public and/or non-profit subsidies, just how does that structure work? Who pays for it? How do its policies inform how medical services are rendered? And how are providers incentivized to administer that care? In other words: Is Joy really a sociopath or is she merely adhering to the rulebook propagated by a broken Pokécare system?

Breaking of the Wild, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Runes

It’s a tad inconvenient (and understandably frustrating) when your spear shatters into dust right when it’s needed most. However, at some point, I realized those moments of dread and panic are exactly what Nintendo likely had in mind when designing the game’s fragile weapons the way it did. In effect, the adventure truly begins when Breath of the Wild asks: “So now what?”