The strange thing about Pokémon is that not all of us are playing the same game.

There’s the game put in front of us by Game Freak and Nintendo, where we accumulate a team of six Pokémon and wander around a region fighting AI trainers, getting stronger, gaining levels, learning more powerful moves and evolving our partners… and then there’s the game of our own making, the world of competitive Pokémon, where the only worthwhile opponents are other players, all Pokémon are assumed to be at their maximum level with their optimum movesets before you ever use them, and effort training is considered essential, breeding to get good genes highly advisable, and using a poor nature suicidal.  Moderately interesting, you might think, but what makes this a problem that needs to be addressed by an ‘If I Were In Charge’ rant?  Well, call me crazy, but I actually believe that a lot of arguments and misplaced vitriol in the Pokémon community stem from the fact that the people on opposite sides of those arguments are playing two different games, and that one or both parties are unwilling or unable to recognise that.  Possibly the greatest part of these problems relate to which Pokémon are ‘good’ or ‘usable’ and which ones are not, which is not what I plan to address today – that gets another rant all of its own – what I want to address now is what defines these ‘two games,’ what makes them so different, why I feel the gap should be narrowed, and how that can best be done.

Continue reading “If I Were In Charge: I will battle every day to claim my rightful place” →

Part of what I’m trying to do in writing this series of articles is illustrate possible ways of giving more time and attention to aspects of the Pokémon world that the core games tend to marginalise.  Battles are the heart of the Pokémon series; I’m not going to pretend they aren’t.  Without battling, Pokémon is a game about a kid who walks around the country listening to people talk and telling his pets to move rocks (now that I write that, I wonder whether someone could make an interesting game out of it…).  As I’ve suggested more than once already, though, there’s no reason we need to be battling just for the sake of battling – which, let’s face it, is what the game is really all about once you’ve defeated the villains of the day.  You go to the Pokémon League and become the very best, like no one ever was.  Then you go to the battle tower and fight other battling enthusiasts to hone your craft.  Your only real aim from that point is to become better at battling and, perhaps more importantly, achieve recognition for being good at battling.  Given that the whole point of Cheren’s character arc in Black and White is that these things aren’t all that important, I think it makes sense that we should look into this structure a little.  Why do we battle?  Why is defeating Gyms so important to us, why is becoming a Champion such a central ambition, and what else can we do with Pokémon Gyms?

Continue reading “If I Were In Charge: Every challenge along the way, with courage I will face” →

…and oh, how it does need defending.  I’ve discussed all of Pokémon’s past villains before, long ago, but it can’t hurt to summarise… The scale of villainy in the Pokémon universe has swelled considerably since its early days in Red and Blue, when Team Rocket’s dastardly plans nearly brought down one of Kanto’s most important corporations, Silph, to give them control of the prototype Master Ball and its blueprints.  Their return in Gold and Silver nearly reduced all the Pokémon of the nation to servitude through the mind controlling radio signal developed by their scientists.  Ruby and Sapphire saw Teams Magma and Aqua send the very balance of nature into chaos, risking the safety of the whole world to bring about their utopian visions.  Things came to a head with Diamond and Pearl, when Cyrus’ machinations nearly wiped out the entire universe, before Black and White (very sensibly) took a step back and a deep breath, thought about it, and toned it down.  As I am fond of saying, I think Black and White have, hands down, the best plot of the core series so far (and that includes Black and White 2), primarily because of the somewhat ambiguous nature of the villains.  Team Plasma’s stated goals – the goals which most of their members believe they are working for – can conceivably be seen as perfectly noble.  N is a genuinely good person, in spite of his somewhat… unusual upbringing, and he has one of Unova’s legendary dragons to prove it.  Many, if not most, of the Seven Sages are similarly enlightened.  Even some of the grunts appear entirely sincere in their desire to ‘save’ Pokémon from human oppression – and even at the end of Black and White 2, N still has a vision for a new world; a world where humans and Pokémon live together, but without Pokéballs.  It’s only Ghetsis, with his lust for power, who is truly irredeemable (well, and possibly Zinzolin, but I have an unaccountable soft spot for Zinzolin; so sue me).  Ambiguity like this is good.  There are very, very few people in the real world who do things for no other reason than ‘because I’m evil, damnit.’  People who do bad things very often believe they have good reasons – from time to time, they’re even right.  Maxie and Archie in Ruby and Sapphire flirt with similar ideas, but their plans are so far-reaching and so insane that, although they believe they’re working for the good of all, it’s difficult to sympathise (although it’s worth acknowledging that they were a clear step forward).  What I’m going to do here – or try to – is create quick sketches of two villainous factions, not entire storylines, but enough to give some idea of how they might work, what their goals might be, and what kind of conflicts might feature in a game that included them.

Continue reading “If I Were In Charge: You’re my best friend in a world we must defend” →