Viva Pokemon

I've recently gone back to playing Pokemon, usually on the bus. One gameplay feature that has always concerned me is how the human characters treat Pokemon. In the game players are a "Pokemon trainer" who catches Pokemon creatures by attacking them with other previously caught Pokemon. Then they are stored in small containers named "pokeballs". To make things worse the player then fights other trainers with the now enslaved Pokemon. Ok so enslaved sounds a bit extreme but what about the poor innocent critters?

Pokemon has clearly influenced another creature catch em all type adventure. Viva Pinata released in 2006 is a garden simulator where players interact with paper, candy filled Pinata. In 2008 its successor Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise took the Pokemon aim of catching critters to a new darker level. The game introduces hunting grounds where Pinata can be trapped using bait Heres my own personal account of a Pinata "hunt".

First, I laid down a trap on the floor, then placed the correct bait on top (apparently Pinata have different tastes, weird ones at that). Then I wait...

...aha! the penguin Pinata, named Pengum (all the Pinata have candy related names) walks upto the trap. Learning that the trap activates automatically I wait for the Pengum to eat its bait. Bingo, the Pengum eats the bait, but jumps away before the trap transforms into a FedEx like box (to be posted back to my garden, via the local neighborhood postal service). So essentially I tried to catch a wild animal, then take it back to my garden away from its friends, Is this a bad example of how not to treat animals?

I was glad I didn't catch the poor thing! I felt sympathy for the innocent Pinata! I must be getting soft? That or Rare (Viva Pinata's developer has done an amazing job!).