How Pokémon Became a Logistical Nightmare of Design

pokemon [Music] yes for a vast majority of people that only have a passing interest in pokemon and don't have time to have vehemently heated arguments about video games made for children it's a franchise from your childhood that's continued along perfectly fine but if you're even remotely attuned to the pokemon discourse the grumblings have only been getting louder these past few years as many fans have grown to be disappointed with gamefreak's recent output gradually becoming more disillusioned with what being a fan of this series means talk to any pokemon fan and they'll likely tell you in excruciating detail all the issues they have with modern pokemon the games have too much feature creep the games don't keep enough features the games have deviated too far from the original appeal the games don't deviate enough they lied about the national pokedex the graphics aren't up to date why can't we get a game like breath of the wild game freaks just too lazy blah blah blah but while everyone has their own solutions for how to fix pokemon most don't entirely look at the bigger picture both as games and as a franchise because a lot of these issues with pokemon are more multifaceted than just developers lazy to be upfront this isn't gonna be your usual screeching about how this is the downfall of pokemon or game freak stole my wife type videos nor will it be a staunch defense of the pokemon company and everything it does there is definitely a metric ton of bad faith criticism directed at this series but it's not as if game freak and their parent company haven't delivered some self-inflicted wounds to cause that so you aren't getting a cathartic takedown nor a fierce defense here this is more an attempt to understand what factors are causing a lot of pokemon stagnation over the years despite its continued popularity or as best as someone that doesn't know the exact inner workings of the game's development can but hey that just puts me on the same level as a majority of pokemon youtubers on this platform also as someone who's worked in retail and customer service for over a decade and on the internet just as long i know some customers are always going to be irrationally angry about a product not being every single thing they think it should be but i hope i can speak to those who want to have a broader look at this franchise's ongoing issues without screeching like a bunch of pissed off monkeys pointing at a tree because it's one thing to know that pokemon has fallen into an enormous rut over the years and it's another to take a step back to really break down the logistics that make up this ip and how many of its smaller individual issues have slowly grown and compacted in on each other to the point it's holding everything back but before we can really get into that though we first need to understand the scale of the problem itself as a simple starter since 1996 we've had 13 main line entries over eight generations 898 pokemon not counting the hundreds of variants like mega evolutions or regional forms 826 moves with their own stats and properties over 50 spin-off games thousands of different pokemon cards over 74 sets over 1100 episodes of the anime 24 feature films including detective pikachu and we're only just scratching the surface level here without getting into the vast vast world of merchandise that comes with all of that since the humble 8-bit beginnings of red and blue the pokemon franchise has turned into this amorphous ever-expanding avaricious monstrosity that absorbs anything remotely within its reach while constantly pumping out product to be consumed on a constant schedule frankly even attempting to research this was an existential experience because this franchise has existed nearly as long as i have and there are now so many avenues of the pokemon brand to go down once you really start digging into it like did you know there are multiple asmr videos on pokemon's official channel that are strangely well produced but to fully appreciate just how massive pokemon has become in such a relatively short amount of time we only need to look at some rough estimates of the highest grossing media franchises from early 2019 where pokemon was ranked at the top of the list with an earning of a whopping 92 billion dollars plus since those tallies were created pokemon has had multiple successful ventures including but not limited to the recent boom with the pokemon trading cards that resulted in target no longer selling packs for the safety of their employees so i'd say those gross earnings are probably much closer to 100 billion than to 90 as of right now worth noting however is these earnings are made by the brand through multiple avenues and sources so not all profits are going to a singular company and are likely spread across different rights holders not all these profits are going to game freaking game freak alone and in fact it's more likely they're only seeing a minuscule fraction of those returns so why do i bring all this up well partially because i did all this research and wanted to show it off but also to give a broader understanding of what pokemon's profitability means outside of how this series about digital pet fighting being worth that much is kind of insane what's most interesting about these standings is that everything below pokemon on this graph started decades before it highlighting how exponential its growth has been as a series in such a brief period largely due to how it came at the perfect merging point of nerd and internet culture hitting the mainstream at the exact right moment also unlike most franchises on that list or any really pokemon's success has heavily relied on the fact that it's steadily ever expanding it's easy to say that all pokemon does is recycle the same nostalgia bait for gen 1 which is undeniably effective but there's definitely a vested interest from fans in seeing how pokemon continues to iterate with every new entry specifically with adding new pokemon to catch if you don't believe me just look back at how riled up the internet gets when the pokemon company starts showing off new creature designs during the lead up to the next generation dropping since the late 90s each new generation introduced an entirely new region to explore with a new cast of pokemon to catch and new mechanics to experiment with which has gradually made the series into a logistical nightmare that neither the pokemon company nor game freak have found a way to properly maintain no pokemon isn't bad because gamefreak hasn't suddenly spent the better part of a decade and a sizeable fortune to make their own gigantic open world breath of the wild game with real-time battle systems and fully rendered attack animations it's because that's become so far beyond the scope of what pokemon has ever been or could realistically be done with the deadlines the developers are routinely given the more clear issue is that the pokemon series has been able to maintain a consistent holding pattern for the last two decades without was handled while on handheld consoles using sprite assets but it's now at a crossroads for what direction needs to go in the future pokemon as a franchise has been struggling to maintain its sense of scope for all this time and it's now stuck between the pokemon company and game freak taking this step up to the level of aaa franchise that it's always been on the press of but never firmly stepped into or scale back on its approach to something that's easier to manage so that it can properly refine itself both directions that are simpler said than done when it comes to something like pokemon and it's extremely active fan base for one thing this series isn't its own league in terms of size and design pokemon has a formula that's incredibly easy to replicate just look at the sheer amount of fan games currently being put out but the company itself has been handling and developing it for so long that not anybody can stand on the main series level in terms of reach without some serious time and funds many series have attempted to capture that unique pokemon feel over the years but nothing has firmly stood its ground when it comes to its size and more importantly the consistency of releases even temtem which many have touted as a pokemon killer since it took the core formula while incorporating mmo gameplay and some general refinements that gives it a fresher feel is still a ways from being finished after 4 years of development time and multiple early access updates to add in more content and if we're being honest here isn't close to the same scale of pokemon even when the national dex is removed from the equation the only franchise that operates even somewhat like pokemon in terms of scope is obviously digimon with roughly 1 400 digital monsters as of time of writing digimon is the only monster collecting franchise that survived as long as pokemon has during the great monster taming wars of the late 90s early 2000s but aside from the fact that they're structured completely differently with how they're both handled mom one thing that digimon has done to manage itself is that it adds new monsters consistently through various source materials compared to pokemon's giant generational releases that start with new games and then spread outward to its other media this results in there being fewer expectations for new digimon games to include every past monster while adding in an entire roster of new ones the most recent titles max out at 430 digimon even after an updated version that added more content which is still less than where pokemon was at gen 4 in 2011 if we're only concerned about the numbers of it but no one's making hashtags about digimon games not having every possible digimon in its library because well there's not as many fans there but also because it's never set that as an expectation and they've done a decent job managing their own sense of scope so that it's manageable to whatever project they're handling unlike some other series for literally decades pokemon has built its brand around the idea that these creatures you catch are your buddies and you can carry them over into multiple journeys and the ultimate goal being to catch them all but as the years have crept up that sort of design ethos has started to weigh it down just as much as it keeps it relevant while it might seem like criticism of the franchise has gotten significantly more what's the point word to use here vocal over the years it's not as if soar and shield dropped and suddenly everyone had their own hot takes to share about why this unfathomably successful company is failing nearly every complaint you can find against the newest games is less about developers supposedly being lazy and more reflective of long-running design decisions that were never sustainable long-term as the medium evolved which have slowly been festering away to the frustration of longtime fans but paradoxically we're also integral to the franchise's success over the years pretty much every nagging problem in some way shape or form from the visual representation to the gameplay ties back around to the sheer amount of pokemon that are currently being juggled which was a problem that the developers were likely aware of all the way back to the first game literally from the first generation when game freak was still just a small group of friends with an idea programming every pokemon was already a struggle between the 6 year development cycle and the team's limited programming experience the first pokemon games were a trial to develop for we might not appreciate it nowadays considering the original games take up the same size as your average tick tock video but when pokemon red and green were first made it was being developed for a 2 megabyte cartridge and it used every possible bite of storage to fit as many pokemon as it could and that's after nintendo increased the size of the cartridge's memory and about 40 pokemon were cut from the original lineup but that large selection was one of the keys to the series success the idea of an rpg where you went out adventuring to discover collect and trade monsters to then battle with went over a huge once it's her picking up traction and without realizing it the developers at gamefreak had fallen into the perfect formula for a multimedia franchise that would sell like gangbusters for those who weren't around in the late 90s if you think that pokemon is tough to avoid now you should have seen what it was like when it first popped off we all collectively kind of went insane for a bit before there was even a sequel out there was already the international game releases multiple spin-offs in production the trading card game the full anime series a manga and the previously mentioned boatloads of merchandising deals i can personally state that the reason i got good at math in grade school was because i completed multiple pokemon math challenge books solely due to the branding slapped on it nintendo had struck such a gold mine publishing pokemon that they had to make a deal with game freak and creatures inc to form the pokemon company in order to manage the brand so that it didn't slowly tear itself apart with how many directions it was being pulled in but the core appeal of pokemon was to catch them all according to the ads so what if they were all caught already i mean there were only 151 pokemon so it'd be pretty boring to continually recycle the same ones over and over again when the series is all about exploration and discovery so the obvious decision when making a sequel was to add more now i'll spend a lot of time in this video criticizing how they've handled their unsustained growth over the years but that initial decision with pokemon gold and silver was a genius move on gamefreak's part 20 years later generation 2 is largely defined for polishing some of the rougher edges that held the first game back in terms of quality but speaking of someone who was huge into pokemon when silver and gold were being advertised the big selling point at the time was the promise of even more pokemon to discover like who remembers the whispers of peek-a-blue on the school grounds before the internet had any news translated the instant it dropped everyone was dying to know about any hints of new pokemon that we hadn't learned about yet but the second generation wasn't just adding new pokemon either because gamefreak were taken the extra step to include every species from the previous games too allowing for cross-generational transferring at the time each pokemon was a rough algorithm of pixels so this wasn't exceedingly hard to implement even if it required satoru wada to help with the programming to get it all working right since the original coding was held together by duct tape and a dying child's dream but it's worth noting how unique this approach was hell even now we take it as a given since the series has made it part of their brand but pokemon is pretty much the only franchise around that attempts to carry over progress from previous games to such an extensive degree namely in a monster collecting rpg resulting in a sizeable amount of coding and planning being done for something only a small percentage of players would actively be using pokemon quite easily could have taken the steps that series like digimon or monster hunter took where the most popular monsters would be cycled through along with the new ones but never set the idea that every monster ever was attainable or in the game's code for you to transfer over older ones because that feels like it could cause problems down the line maybe hold the series back a bit to gamefreak's credit this is another idea that was legitimately clever when they first came up with it but it wasn't something that could be sustainable forever without careful planning and consideration and was immediately tested how viable was long term with the release of pokemon ruby and sapphire because of the changeover from the gameboy color to the game boy advance along with some fixes to the game's coding the third generation of games didn't allow any cross-generational transferring with the previous titles resulting in the first gen 3 games only having 202 of the 386 pokemon attainable as they couldn't have every single previous pokemon be catchable within the game without bloating their development time or vastly reworking the design approach they had already established some seem to think that sword and shield were the first generation to cause a storm for game freak failing to allow every pokemon to be transferred over but three generations in and it's already a tedious hassle to even attempt to catch every pokemon if you want to maintain that living dex by this point it would require you to have access to all the generation 3 games plus a game cubelink cable with pokemon coliseum and xd so that you can get the legendary from those games by this point catching them all was already unfeasible for a significant amount of players which is why it's no surprise that this is when the catchphrase gotta catch em all was silently retired from the marketing and box art because game freaks seem to understand that this was already becoming a challenge to manage the problem was that they went so hard on the branding for so long to the point of ingraining the words into our brains with catchy rap songs that there was no going back despite those technical issues though the third generation sold like crazy to the shock of many who were certain pokemon was a flash in the pan fad that was about to die out in fact this is when the series went into production overdrive because from ruby and sapphire we would begin seeing a new mainline game released every year or two either a new generation upgraded versions or remakes of older entries however in order to maintain that constant growth at this pace they need some reliable framework that they could keep to while consistently pumping out new pokemon characters and any unique content specific for each game which is where the pokemon formula became etched in stone at game freak's offices and while this standardized formula is what's causing the pokemon series to stagnate over the last few years with how predictable it's become it's additionally what's kept it standing i'm sure there's probably a layer of the developers being set in their ways and not wanting to change after all these years but another layer to it is that they have strict deadlines that need to be met leaving them little wiggle room to expand on new ideas that might cost time that they don't necessarily have especially once they're pushed into the 3d era and development grew more complicated which is its own issue entirely that we need to get into now let's be honest when it comes to the first games pokemon looked not great granted they were made for a handheld in the 90s that could barely do color but going back to them nearing 30 years later the pixel art's a bit rough and some of the pokemon themselves look like pablo picasso was doing an abstract art piece of the designs however after a lot of incremental trial and error refining their art design by the end of the ds generation game freak were masters of getting the most out of their pixel art they had been doing it for so long that by using simple tricks that manipulate the model along with some dynamic posing they were able to give even the simplest designs life however after years of 2d handheld games a vocal portion of the fans had started questioning why mainline pokemon had still not made the jump to 3d consoles like every other major franchise something people back in those days attributed to laziness too despite the gen 5 pixel art now being something many highly praise and wish to return to but you know the grass is always greener the reason the development stuck with 2d assets for so long according to junichi masada was that the pixel art has so much personality based on who draws it allowing them a lot of freedom in the way pokemon are presented at first glance where with the 3d models everything has to be uniformly consistent which sucks out a lot of that visual personality to the art until you get into animating it something that takes a lot more work to bring to life to that same degree but with nintendo pushing their 3d hardware game freak didn't really have an option to stick with the pixel art aesthetic forever even if they wanted to stay on handhelds so after three and a half years of development in translating 720 pokemon into 3d models by creatures inc who they outsource the work to since a vast majority of the artists at gamefreak were pixel artists we got to pokemon x and y and since then it's felt like the franchise has been struggling to maintain that consistent visual progress that had been seen going from the first generation all the way to the fifth it's not as if they haven't tried to keep a visual flare to their animations and presentation the z moves in particular being some of the best animation on the 3ds but those cute looping animations are a significantly bigger challenge with 3d models especially when every pokemon needs a bare minimum of about 6 animations for simple basic movements attacks reactions etc where the 2d sprites only relied on a couple animations for each facing and some clever manipulation tricks to imply movement this is why i bring up the pixel art from gen five because it's quite obvious they knew how to give a ton of charm and personality to those designs because they were drawn with a 2d aesthetic in mind so you have to assume this major stagnation problem here has to do with the transition to 3d and the amount of work and time that's required in getting that same level of life out of them resulting in game freak being stuck between focusing on polish or scope and this brings us to one of the most contentious points for pokemon fans that could have been predicted with a bit of foresight since animation struggles were a complication that was seen all the way back with gen 1. during the first game's development it was quickly realized it would have been impossible to give every pokemon sprite unique animations for every attack it could possibly do so gamefreak had the rather smart idea of having the attack animations placed separate from the sprites which was much simpler to implement across the entire game since they weren't dependent on the sprits themselves allowing for any pokemon to hypothetically be able to use any move but still remained visually distinct and this worked incredibly well for them all the way up to gen 5 where again every generation they would gradually improve the attack animations and how they manipulated the models it isn't just pokemon who've relied on these animation tricks either since nearly every monster taming rpg ever since have used a similar approach to save time on animating the same attacks differently from various creatures but then we return to that pesky third dimension and suddenly all those move animations are about 10 times more complicated to look well polished compared to the franchises who had already been doing it for a decade like someone going through their awkward puberty years in their mid-20s while working at a high-end law firm ultimately the developers chose to continue animating moves using the same principle as before as it would be unreasonable to expect that they give every pokemon a dedicated animation for every move not just with how many there were by gen 6 but the amount of moves along with it the problem however was that with the camera no longer locked to the back of the player pokemon the disconnect between the move animations and the models was much more noticeable resulting in some fans smashing their head into walls because blastoise's hydro pump doesn't come out of their cannons what the developers did to make up for this was to give most pokemon a signature move that had a more detailed unique animation specific to that pokemon's model and rigging and then giving a couple basic universal animations that trigger for everything else or have the attack animations themselves manipulate the models granted some of these moves clearly got more attention than others but the principle still stands even if you're copying over models into every new game that doesn't negate the work that has to go into rigging animating and coding in the game logic so that it doesn't break itself so this is easily the most efficient way to do 3d animation work for hundreds of pokemon and before anyone starts getting heated under the collar and furiously typing about how games like pokemon battle revolution or new snaps animations look so much better of course they do frankly i expect that they should these games are always incredibly narrow in scale by comparison focus solely on their main gameplay style and typically with a fraction of the pokedex of the modern games yes new pokemon snap looks gorgeous as you get to watch pokemon interact in cute ways never seen before like the score bunny doing a little show for their friends before having a snooze on a torterra but using it as an own on the mainline series isn't exactly the gotcha some seem to think it is when you only have to make 11 stages and animate 200 pokemon with a handful of animations that will only be viewed from a single lane perspective in highly scripted events it's noticeably easier to make it look really good don't take this wrong this isn't a on bandai namco because they did a fantastic job with the art direction and animation of new pokemon snap but comparing the work that they did with what game freak has to do is not apples to apples considering the more involved work that has to go into a major jrpg compared to what is effectively an on-rail shooter that you'll see everything of in sub 15 hours this is what i mean by pokemon being stuck between a decision of polish versus scope i'd love if all the games had the subtle details and polish that new snap had when it comes to its aesthetics but if you want every pokemon to have highly detailed animations for all their attacks and interactions while still being an open world rpg it would likely require a vastly reduced sense of scale in order to compromise for that meaning the first thing that would need to happen is cutting down on the pokedex and this is where we get into the whole national dex crisis thing for those unaware with pokemon sword and shield the developers stated that they weren't going to be including every pokemon going forward so that they could focus on the models and animations that were going in the game along with better balancing the game itself meaning over half of the 900 pokemon currently existing weren't going to be included at launch and couldn't be carried over from previous generations which caused a bit of a stir and what made it worse was when it was shown how lacking some of the animations were in places and that the models were reused from previous games now honestly for whatever reason they did this whether it was the amount of time it takes to rig and animate older models on a completely new engine or the time constraints that the team was on i'm of the opinion that the national decks isn't something needed for this franchise after all these years and it being cut was a long time coming which junichi masuda set himself so the leap to home consoles was the best time to tear off that band-aid and look i get it it's completely understandable that people like shiny hunters or those that have living dexes going all the way back to gen 3 would be frustrated about this considering the time they've spent cultivating all their work but let's be realistic if the developers are spending a decent amount of time rigging animating and coding over 400 pokemon that only a small fraction of players will ever see or use that's frankly a ton of resources that could be better directed elsewhere this was a lot simpler when it was sprites but when those 3d models have to be carried over into every aspect of the game that same amount of detailing work has to be done for all of them now to clarify this doesn't mean i don't appreciate when a little extra effort is put into something only a few players will see honestly that's sometimes my favorite stuff but when that effort is likely taking months of development time that could be better put into polishing up the work that will be present to all players that's probably a better use of your development team personally in my opinion using the revolving door system that the devs have proposed for future games where the roster is a mixture of new and old pokemon that alternates with each game is probably the easiest way for the series to maintain in themselves going forward especially with systems like pokemon home being put in place to store your collection uh of course game freak you're really not making it easy to see your side and all this look all i'm trying to say is if cutting down on the pokemon that each game has to manage means better attention can be given to things like the story presentation and game design i'm all for it which actually brings me to yet another issue pokemon has been facing the last few years one of the most frequent talking points you'll see when discussing the mainline pokemon games is how stagnant the core gameplay has become which is valid since the first generation the turn-based rock paper scissors format hasn't budged in any remarkable ways after 25 years and there is an undeniable comfort to that in a eating that same peanut butter jelly sandwich you would have for lunch as a kid sort of way but it also means that if you've played one pokemon game you've essentially played them all there have been refinements over the years but at the end of the day the series has moved at a snail's pace when it comes to evolving on its core systems the pokemon formula has become so cemented into the brand that any attempts to change it or revamp it would likely require a complete overhaul to everything so the way gamefreak has attempted to cover for this is by introducing new gimmicks each generation this has worked relatively well in pokemon's favor when it comes to keeping general interest in the series but whether it's mega evolution z moves or dynamaxing gamefreak appears to be extremely apprehensive to firmly establish anything as part of the core design going forward and would rather toss aside anything that isn't part of the original combat system after a game or two now i personally like the idea that every region has its own unique gameplay features to keep things fresh and set them all apart as their own distinct areas but now that we're in dedicated console territory having mechanics be brought up and then dropped after a single game feels like a bad use of resources and not to mention frustrating as hell when it's a feature fans adore like walking pokemon seriously how has that not become a core feature at this point this is an entire series about creating a bond with your partners in which nearly every piece of marketing material is all about going on a journey with your favorites and yet the games never commit to this okay i'm getting a bit off track well i could continue on about the annoying way gamefreak seems to regularly throw away new features at an alarming rate the bigger concern in regards to this topic is how thin they've spread themselves in terms of their core battle system looking at the various splits in the fan base the developers are constantly threading the needle of indulging the existing aging fan base while not alienating their target demographic of children and casual fans which is admittedly not an easy balance to keep actually another point i'll give in game freak's favor is how the core design of pokemon's battle system is so simpler a toddler could learn it and granted the games do treat every player like that's the case but it's complex enough under the hood that you need a goddamn accounting degree to fully appreciate all the subtleties going on enough so that there's an entire competitive scene built around it that the developers are also attempting to cater to now when it comes to jrpgs there isn't anything remotely like this and definitely not to the same level as pokemon however this circles us back around to the original point of this video as this layered simplicity was central to pokemon's longevity but it's also keeping it chained down with how it's now committed to it hell between the 18 types eevees ivs natures abilities held items general team composition and the entire eugenics discussion involved in breeding there are a lot of smaller components that make up pokemon's battle systems beyond its gargantuan roster both on a casual or competitive level so i can see how tinkering with it too much might feel like playing a game of kerplunk it's pretty clear that the battle designers at the studio have been spending the last few generations trying to balance this house of cards so that it doesn't completely fall apart which is the most likely explanation for gimmicks like mega evolutions or dynamaxing as it's an add-on to the formula to spice things up without having to mess around with the core systems that fans have an attachment to and can be easily removed if needed however don't take that as me saying pokemon's gameplay can be improved as there is a laundry list of extremely simple ways they could bring new life to it that don't boil down to oh make it real time combat from someone who hasn't touched pokken tournaments since launch for starters let pokemon swap around move sets on the fly so that you can experiment with different builds rather than committing to one alone why are we still messing around with this whole forget move and it's gone how about incorporating difficulty scaling systems so veterans don't feel like they're crushing through the game on easy mode but newcomers are still able to learn at a comfortable pace even just having better in-game explanations for how core mechanics like evs and ivs are handled would go a long way so that players don't have to find a back alley smog on dealer to teach them how to get the most out of these systems the point i'm making here though is that while it's completely understandable that some are exhausted of the same exact formula year after year that pokemon battles have relied on for decades it's a more complicated issue than one might think leaving game freak stuck between a rock and a hard place on how to approach it going forward i think it's a fact that if game freak reworked their gameplay at this stage beyond some generalized tweaks and quality of life improvements it would very likely lead to rioting amongst fans whether it changed the way casuals approach the game who simply want their comfortable simplicity or it screws the balance of competitive even more than it already is both sides of the fan base they want to keep happy but tend to want contradictory things again i don't think it's impossible to shake things up a bit but when you're dealing with such a vast player base you're never going to please everyone especially when it comes to pokemon which is likely why the developers seem to prefer sticking with safer design choices that are tried and true that they can make gradual improvements to rather than going for big risks that could potentially damage the brand frankly i could go on forever about all of this because even digging into this topic poetically became its own nightmare with all the various routes you can go down when it comes to the design problems pokemon is cultivated none of this was meant to ignore or forgive the obvious flaws of the pokemon series either i'll be honest it's frustrating seeing pokemon languish this last decade because it has so much untapped potential left that the series has yet to explore but it's clear that its issues aren't exactly black and white most the common complaints i've seen about the series and gamefreak specifically as the developer are far more rooted in bigger issues than just making games as hard itself not being an untrue statement i'm sure another studio could come in and fix things like the glaring optimization issues the pokemon games have but i don't think any developer could pull a complete mainline pokemon game out of its ass with the gordian knot of design game freak and the pokemon company have tied themselves into over the years where a lot of these ongoing problems are interconnected and overlapping with each other honestly the simplest way to fix all of them is to scrap everything and go back to square one something that would never happen with a series like this what would help these games just as much however is actually the same thing that could improve literally any game more development time giving more time for the developers to work by pushing back the strict deadlines being set would allow the team to experiment and workshop their ideas instead of having to rush everything through production or at the very least polish the games up a bit yes the pokemon brand is one of the most profitable ips ever so the company could easily toss a dump truck of money at the problem and still make millions but even if they double their staff yet again like they've done twice already going by reports it's not gonna matter much because no matter what size of studio attempting to pump out these games every two years as if they're developed in the same way as they were on the game boy advance is beginning to hurt the series more and more the sad truth however is that it ultimately doesn't entirely matter it doesn't matter if the games are up to fan standards or not or if the new pokemon aren't as good as the older generations or if the competitive scene of the new games aren't as strong i'm certain most the developers and artists who spend years working on these games genuinely do care no one pursues low-paying creative work to be lazy and uninspired but at the end of the day these games are just vehicles for the pokemon company to sell merchandise going back to that earlier graph showing how much pokemon has earned as a brand video games only make up a fraction of that almost 100 billion profit total like most ips the real big earner is in the merchandising even if the video games don't make up the large chunk of pokemon's earnings though they are at the center of it all because every new mainline entry especially a new generation is an entire new line of cards anime plushies etc every time a new generation comes out that's at least 70 to 80 new pokemon being brought to market even if only 10 new pokemon become fan favorites and the rest are just mediocre garbage that's still a huge amount of merch potential that can be sold mimikyu's only been out since the last generation but they couldn't be more over with the fans probably because it speaks to how we're all a little lonely this is why new pokemon games are put out at such a frequent rate consider again how we've had 13 mainline games not counting upgraded versions since the series started in the late 90s which will be 15 as of this time next year as things are going nearly all of which were handled by the same company there's no franchise that has had that sort of output outside of yearly sports titles that's because pokemon's entire corporate infrastructure is built around consistent new game releases to maintain their bottom line across all its different revenue streams so slowing down with the games means everything gets halted along with it so if change is gonna happen it would likely require an entire corporate restructure and not just the games themselves that's why when we see changes with the pokemon brand it's always been in these smaller increments rather than sweeping overalls long time fans might have their gripes with them but you can see the gradual attempts to mix things up with the last two generations with the island challenge format to sun and moon and the wild area of sword and shield because it's the safest way to handle it with the time constraints they're under and the expectations over them when developers don't have much time to test new ideas it's hard to expect them to make daring design decisions and i know this all sounds very defeatist oh this franchise i love is yet another victim of capitalism but it's not entirely that i do actually have hopes for the sinnoh games that got recently announced especially for whatever legends arceus is going to be hell i enjoyed sword and shield despite some of its flaws this is more about critically looking at what pokemon success means for it as an ongoing franchise video games or otherwise and coming to a better understanding of how that influences the product and those that make it i think it's gotten very easy to be upset with game freak for making a mediocre game that wasn't everything you wanted and as a consumer you have every right to be frustrated but when you realize the overwhelming pressure they're put under both by their fans their corporate overlords and yes their poor planning you sort of feel bad for them but in spite of its issues i think what's most amazing about pokemon is how it still remains culturally relevant to this day many expected pokemon would burn out hard after the turn of the millennium but the promise of a new game still reignites millions of fans passions every time it's not just the mainline games either working on this video made me really appreciate just how far pokemon's reach has become from fan animations to fan games pokemon has become so ever expansive that it'll be years before we can fully appreciate the cultural impact it's had with how much it's spread across the internet frankly there's not many franchises that have been as reliable with their output as pokemon across so many mediums while balancing an entire online cottage industry along with it so while frustrations have been raised regarding the series it's clear a lot of it comes from a deep place of love held by many and i think it's still going to be a long ways off before people ever truly stop loving it anyways thanks for watching this was originally going to be a short opinion piece that sort of spiraled out of control on me so i appreciate anyone for making it all the way through thanks also to the channels nintendo unity and a mixely who were a huge source for animations for the pokemon games i couldn't get proper footage of without spending weeks on emulators links to their channels are in the description and a special shout out to my patrons who helped to support these ramblings i call videos if you want to help financially back my crippling caffeine addiction 2 you can find me over on patreon alright i'm going to go pass out now you all have a good one and i'll see you next time

Channel: Foxcade

Views: 628,260

Rating: 4.8280802 out of 5

Keywords: Foxcade, Video Essay, Analysis, Pokemon, Pokemon Shield, Pokemon Sword, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Gameboy, DS, 3DS, Junichi Masuda, Mega-Evolution, Z-Moves, Dynamax, Gigantamax, Animation, Game Freak, The Pokemon Company, Pokemon Trading Cards, TCG, Pokemon Go, Pokemon Let's Go, Generation, Anime, E3, New Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, Pokemon Shining Pearl, Digimon, National Pokedex, Dexit, Pokemon Fan Game, Trailer, VGC, Smogon

Id: zi3_A1Oj6Nw

Length: 40min 51sec (2451 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Bubblegumking3]

I forgot that this might not be allowed. Is it? u/Cynical_Toast

[u/MrEPersonlol]

An actually good Pokemon video? Is that allowed?

[u/EmilianTheRed]

I watched that video yesterday too. It was pretty good.

[u/InfinityOverdriver]

So what is this video lol.

[u/Kremling80]

Summarise pls, it's one in the morning where I am rn and can't be bothered to force myself to sit through the whole "Masuda's cash-grabbing antics are killing Pokemon so we should kill him" thing for the gatrillionth time in the past two years.

[u/LUNI_TUNZ]

I was actually going to post that, but did something else instead and forgot.