Game Theory: Your Shiny Pokemon is DOOMED to Die!

well that's getting ready for his big flex i trained pokemon in years past now look in oz i show you my pokedex read it and weep my pokemon are shiny a red pika and a yellow pile of swine it's divine you know they're all shiny i've got rare colors coming at my wazoo it's very true don't you know i went and caught them all with my different types of pokeballs watch them shimmer my pokemon are shiny [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello internet welcome to game theory today we're going to talk about how all your shiny pokemon are doomed to die if you're not already familiar shiny pokemon are the rare variants of your favorite cuddly pocket monsters that have a different color palette than the other members of their species black charizards blue ponyta's golden magikarps cause let's be honest anything to make this useless fish even remotely cool is a welcome change but catching these guys comes with um well a catch finding shinies has truly amped up the difficulty of catching them all considering their appearance rates have been reported to anywhere between 1 and 500 to 1 in 8 192. when i say that these guys are rare i mean they are rare now it's tempting to just write this off as yet another way to make pokemon sticky for the player give him more things to chase more rare things that'll deliver a satisfying shot of dopamine into the brain yet another badge of honor that you can lord over all your poke pals and most importantly of all more things to love and cuddle and buy as merch at your local spencer's gifts but here's the thing friends shiny pokemon are real or to put it more correctly this is actually a place where pokemon mirrors real world biology throughout the animal kingdom there are real world shinies rare cases of animal appearing in unusual colors and understand why your favorite shiny is doomed to die a tragic death well we have to look into the science of what's really going on when it comes to real world shiny animals you're probably familiar with some of the more common examples like the black sheep oh dying we're two misunderstood souls everyone else is a phony but while you probably already knew that your dark colored shiny wulu was based in reality some others are so rare that not even the pokemon fandom pages have made the connection for instance did you know that clauncher is probably most directly inspired by the blue lobster an animal so rare that it has about a one in four million chance of appearing makes the game's 1 in 8 000 chance for a shiny encounter seem pretty good a little less dramatic than the blue lobster are mammals like the black-backed jackal which normally looks like this note the black colored fur on its back but there are shiny variants that look like this with a reddish colored fur same thing with giant pandas where you'd normally expect them to look black and white there is one panda in known existence that was born with reddish or brownish fur and similarly you got badgers or most commonly black but very rarely you'll see one with reddish brown fur of course it's not just seafood and mammals that'll show up with unusual pigmentation either take for instance the ball python which normally looks brown and black but occasionally appears with white skin covering most of its body a rare variant that like a shiny pokemon is highly sought after by collectors which brings us back to our original question what is it that makes these animals appear in unusual colors and why are they so rare well it all comes down to genetic mutation whether it's a mutation that causes extra proteins like in the lobster a mutation that causes a deficiency in enzymes like the jaclyn badger or mutations that affect melanin production like with the snake and other animals like sea turtles whales elk and zebras real life shinies and by proxy pokemon shinies are all caused by genetic mutations that don't normally occur in nature but that's only half the story the other factor at play here and the other thing that makes them so rare is the fact that most of them don't survive to adulthood oftentimes the same genetic mutations that cause them to be colored differently also impact crucial skills like the ability to see for instance high boldism which is the official name for the coloring pattern that we saw in that snake is genetically similar to albinism a condition that affects both humans and animals in albinism the body is unable to produce enough melanin in most places this doesn't make a significant difference however it also includes a lack of melanin in the eyes where lower amounts of that pigment can actually affect your ability to see as a result a large number of people with albinism are legally blind due to how highly photosensitive their eyes are lower melanin levels also means paler skin which in turn greatly increases the risk of sun damage but unlike humans in the animal kingdom albino and piebald animals don't have the option of hopping over to the local tesco to pick up some sunglasses in a tube of spf 50. it's not just humans that have to worry about things like skin cancer and radiation burns from too much sun exposure these things happen to animals too but unfortunately a melanin deficiency makes these animals less likely to survive and that's without even mentioning how being bright white makes you much more likely to stand out to predators relative to your much more camouflaged brethren zebras have stripes because the vertical lines allow to confuse predators when moving as a group making it more difficult for a lion to identify a target but if you look different from the rest of the herd well makes it easier for that lion to track you making it that much more likely that you become the next meal before you can pass on your genes to the next generation and the more unusual you are the harder it is to survive to adulthood to pass on those genes so being an unusual color on the grasslands not a great idea you know where being an unusual color is helpful in captivity and here again is where we see video games imitating real life unusual colors make an animal a prize for collectors which is not that different from shiny pokemon i mean let's face it there's nothing that screams throw a pokeball at me more like being a rare color there's a reason why people grind for hours to capture a shiny umbreon cause it's rare cause it's a trophy it's an accomplishment and gosh darn it it's cute like that brown little panda so while being a rare color makes you much more likely to die a horrific grisly death out in the wild pokemon or otherwise it also means that an impressionable 10 year old is gonna be much more likely to save you from that horrific death by throwing his balls in your face especially when you're compared to like i don't know the one millionth pidgey he encounters which brings us to one final and very unexpected comparison between video game shinies and real world biology as we just discussed a lot of the color variants that we see in nature are genetic meaning that they're hereditary passed down from parent to child and so to some extent the likelihood of you ending up with a different fur or skin color is dependent on who your parents are that's not entirely true in the pokemon universe two shiny pokemon parents getting together does not increase the likelihood of a shiny baby unless you count gen 2 where pokemon shininess was determined by something that was called dv's in a way that hasn't been a part of pokemon games since however if you're looking to breed a shiny pokemon there is one thing that you can do to increase the chances of a special egg you breed using two parents from different regions and i'm not talking different regions in the pokemon world like breeding in a lowland raichu with a galerian pikachu to have a higher chance of getting a shiny pichu i mean caught in different real world regions or more accurately different languages of the game if you take a pikachu that was caught in an english language version of the game and breed it with a pikachu that was caught in a japanese language version of the game your resulting pichu is five times more likely to be shiny than if you just spread two pokemon caught in the english language versions this method of shiny hunting is informally known as the masuda method named after game freak director junichi masuda who programmed the mechanic into the game starting with gen 4 and documented it in his blog it's a lesser known mechanic that was designed to bind international pokemon communities together encouraging you not only to trade pokemon with your friends but to make new friends with people who play the game in different languages and trade with them pro tip by the way if you got a friend who does have a different language version of the game from you get them to trade you a ditto specifically for shiny breeding purposes the masuda method seems to suggest that pokemon that are more different from each other are more likely to produce a shiny pokemon that a spanish charmander and a japanese charmander have a special certain chemistry that makes them five times more likely to produce shiny charmander offspring but does that square with reality as it turns out no in fact it's quite the opposite a lot of real-life shinies are the result of inbreeding for example remember the brown panda that i mentioned earlier according to scientists who discussed the brown panda in nature magazine one of the most plausible explanations for the brown panda's origin is inbreeding a lack of genetic diversity as pandas become increasingly rare there's less and less variety in the gene pool and so it's harder and harder to find pandas to breed with that aren't in some way related to you from a few generations back that whole lack of genetic diversity leading to a weird coloring is actually something that's happened in humans the fugates are a family that lived in the hills of kentucky and were commonly known as the blue fugates or the blue people of kentucky because for many members of their family their skin was literally blue no this is not photoshopped no this is not distorted in any way this is the actual color of their skin you see they have a rare genetic trait that leads to the disease methymoglobinemia which causes blue skin the cause for this genetic abnormality well for a period of about 200 years the fugate family was largely isolated from the outside world in a remote part of the appalachian mountains leading to predictable lack of genetic diversity let's just say that their family tree looks a bit more vertical and less wide than you'd expect as we've discussed unusual pigmentation is usually the result of adverse genetic mutation and as you're probably aware birth defects become more common when the parents are too closely related in short the fugates are a real world example of humans that are shiny it's actually a lack of genetic diversity that causes the sort of mutations that result in unusual colors if the masuda method were trying to be biologically accurate breeding a japanese squirtle with a french one would probably have a reduced chance of producing shiny offspring luckily this is the one part of the pokemon game mechanics that isn't true to real life so if you happen to be a shiny hunter it might be worth your while to start making some international friends if not well let's just say you're going to wind up blue d but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching i don't know how it's been for you guys but this winter has been brutal i mean sure maybe it's the fact that this is my first real winter in almost a decade since i moved out of la but that doesn't make my numb digits any less legitimate which is why i've been turning to today's sponsor audible so i can keep my thingies snugly while getting a head start of my new year's reading challenge audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks they make it fast and easy to listen to everything from audiobooks to podcasts to guided meditations and more and with thousands of titles to choose from audible is the perfect way to pass the time while your limbs thaw no frozen fingers here my friends those pages turn themselves in your ears while being read to you by expert voice actor reader people sure that works speaking of passing the time i'm actually revisiting the lord of the rings trilogy all 54 hours and six minutes of it love the extra six minutes which for a guy whose principle weekly reading is the fnaf log book is no small feat nonetheless i am determined to make my way to the top of mordor and fist fight ian mckellen or whatever sorry i haven't gotten to that part in the book yet if you'd like to join me on my journey there and back again you can become an audible member like myself and access one credit every month good for any title in audible's premium catalog which you can then keep forever members also get full access to the plus catalog with thousands of select audio books podcasts audible originals and more you can get started with a 30-day free trial right now at audible.com matpat that's audible.commat or link is right there down in the description below or you can just text matpat to 500-500 thank you again to audible for sponsoring this episode and also for sponsoring my new year's resolution to be better read and as always folks remember it's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 3,373,547

Rating: 4.9045734 out of 5

Keywords: pokemon, Pokémon, pokemon shiny, shiny pokemon, pokemon go shiny, pikachu, ash ketchum, pokemon sword and shield, pokemon journeys, pokemon crown tundra, pokemon go, pokemon sword and shield crown tundra, pokemon sword and shield episode, pokemon cafe, pokemon sword, pokemon shield, pokemon full episode, pokemon movie, pokemon song, game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory pokemon, pokémon, pokemon cards, pokemon shining pearl, pokemon y, pokemon brilliant diamond

Id: 4lDg8OtgvVU

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Matthias720]

I feel like I am rapidly approaching a state of pure MatPat. As soon I saw the title of this episode, I knew what the conclusion would be. Perhaps I need to wear more jackets to achieve the next level: anticipating MatPat's cringy intro jokes (which I love, unironically).

[u/VaughnanB]

Pokemon are immortal