Pokémon Go! How far are we really willing to... go?

Codraroll

The pros and cons are both quite apparent here. The idea of "Pokémon in real life" is intriguing, and I'd love to be able to go for a stroll and encounter Pokémon with my mobile device wherever I go. How many of us haven't grown up wishing for a similar concept? It might also make it easier for Pokémon fans to find each other, and it gives kids an incentive to go outside and play. The idea is certainly good.

However, there are downsides too. Augmented Reality is still reality, and real-life environments are rarely optimized around a gaming experience. The Pokémon games take you into a varied and immersive world where you can explore caves, swim the sea, and trek through deserts, snowy mountains, rain forests, haunted houses, and the lairs of villainous teams. In real life, though, players tend to be restricted to a small handful of such landscapes at most. Personally, I can reach urban areas and forests quite comfortably, but I'd have to drive for hours to get to a mountain, and the nearest desert is thousands of kilometers away. Without a nearly unlimited travel budget and the time to do so, it's impossible to experience the variety of landscapes contained within a normal Pokémon region. And even if you do travel to such places, you'd probably do other things there instead of playing Pokémon. An Augmented Reality game might try to fix the problem by declaring certain areas within travel distance to contain this-and-that landscape, but I really doubt a handheld device can provide enough immersion to convince me that the parking lot behind the supermarket is a rain forest. It can make me believe that the landscape I see on screen is a rain forest, but when the gameplay is set in the real world, it has to act accordingly.

The world of Pokémon, as presented in the games, wouldn't be possible to recreate in the real world. The designers can create marvelous landscapes and intricate dungeons, utilize the game locations to provide fun gameplay (Gym puzzles, anyone?), and optimize the whole thing around the story they're trying to tell. That's not something that can be done in an Augmented Reality game. All in all, I can't see a Pokémon Go-style game compete with the main series games any time soon. They work well for different reasons, and the "epic journey" aspect of the games will always remain better in a world made for traveling.

Codraroll

This is difficult. As shown repeatedly by the game designer YouTube channel "Extra Credits", micro-transactions can be a good thing in games. They can also be horrible if not done correctly. For us players, the dangerous thing is that both ways will usually make money. Financially, it could make sense for the developers to "milk" the players and try to squeeze out as much cash from them as possible. Pokémon is a very strong franchise, and there would always be players willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for content. It would ruin the reputation of the developer and eventually the franchise, but it would make money in the short term. I dare say almost anything with the Pokémon stamp on it will sell these days, and that is pretty dangerous, as it makes it hard for Game Freak's studio executives tell the good choices from the bad ones. Profit will come either way, so one might as well go for what makes the most money the quickest. However, this option usually gives a poor gameplay experience, and the games will easily start to feel like they're there only to take your cash. In the long-term, a bad micro-transaction model might ruin a franchise completely.

I'm going to paraphrase Extra Credits when presenting my primary wish to the developers: never sell advantages. Paying players should not have unfair advantages over non-paying players in an environment where the two groups meet and battle one another (and separating the two groups is not a good idea—ideally, the paying players flaunt their perks to the non-playing ones as a way to advertise the paid content). Let all the game content be available to all the players, whether they pay or not. A determined player should be able to unlock everything if he's willing to invest the time and effort into it. Whether that is catching all the Pokémon (or acquiring them through trade), teaching them all the moves, or training them to the highest level, putting any such features behind a pay wall would severely hamper the game experience. Imagine the frustration of not being able to trade a Pokémon from your friend because you haven't bought the right Creature Pack. Or losing a battle because your opponent had a Pokéémon twenty levels above what a free player could access and moves that you'd have to pay to use.

What they really should sell is convenience, whether it be PC box space, better Poké Balls, immediate egg hatching, or maybe even Rare Candies—stuff that makes paying players progress faster or opens up different paths of progress, but not beyond a level reachable by free players. The prices need to be reasonable; the transactions are "micro," after all, and the items we buy have no manufacturing or shipping costs on the developers' side.

I'd be fine with selling "cosmetics" as well. In a main series game, these would be player outfits, Poké Ball seals, and possibly Secret Base items. Alternate skins for Pokémon would also be fine. Not only shinies (if the kids want them so badly they'd pay for them, I see no reason not to provide them that way), but also selling alternately textured Pokémon, like you occasionally see in the anime, would be totally okay in my book. As long as the difference is purely cosmetic or doesn't provide any unfair advantage to paying players, I'd actually welcome the option of paying for some extra bling. I could also trade it away to non-paying players if I wanted to. Giving a friend an alternately-textured version of his favorite Pokémon for his birthday would be a nice gesture.

Just to make this far-too-long-already essay even longer, I'll also chime in that Pokémon is not a game that can be infinitely expanded with new content in the same adventure, unlike, say, World of Warcraft or the Souls games. Much of the fun of the game is in the progress you make, going from a rookie trainer to the top of the Pokémon League, and that's a journey you can only make once every playthrough. DLC can provide fun sidequests for the post-game, but the "trainer's journey" is a one-time thing that can't be emulated that way. As fans, we love to make that journey every now and then, but we don't want to set aside the progress we've made, delete the Pokémon we've trained (and that we might grow very fond of), and reset all of our achievements to make a new adventure. Nor can we ever get quite the same feeling of exploration and surprise when playing through the region again after the first time. As such, we want to buy entirely new adventures every now and then, not just pad on the old one with DLC chapters. Even in a world of micro-transactions, macro-transactions are sometimes desirable too.

Codraroll

Real-life interaction with Pokémon? It's cute, but I've got a feeling that it would also be a little uncanny largely due to Pokémon's art style. Pokémon was conceived in a hand-drawn art style that later translated to the distinct style of anime and manga. They're meant to be portrayed in two dimensions on flat surfaces, and that's where they look the best. Nintendo has tried to portray Pokémon in "realistic" art styles before, with various degrees of success. It's easy for the Pokémon to look very out of place in a detailed environment. Many Pokémon have never had more complex textures than simple coloration. This does not work in a high-definition environment, as it has a tendency of making the creatures look like they're made out of plastic (see the Pokémon trophies in the Super Smash Bros. games, for instance). At some point, the designers would have to make certain choices, adapting their detail level to match the surroundings. Should the skin of a Pokémon be scaly or slimy? Is this mane furry or feathery? How does it reflect light? However, making these choices would mean alterations to the Pokémon's appearance, which could alienate certain players. For instance, I've always pictured Charizard as having leathery skin, so when the Pokémon Stadium box art showed it with scales, I immediately thought, "That's not what Charizard looks like!".

The sixth generation of Pokémon solved the dilemma by dropping the realistic art style completely, instead making the environment and the Pokémon more cartoon-like. This was the best way to utilize the existing art style in a more complex and detailed 3D environment. However, outside that environment, the art style of Pokémon would still look uncanny.

I can see holograms working reasonably well, though, if the artists manage to find the right compromise between styles. It'd be fun for things like Pokémon-Amie and battles with friends. It ideally shouldn't affect gameplay too much, and it certainly should not be mandatory. The games work best on-screen; holograms would be better as a feature for side activities.

Codraroll

With the technological advances of mobile phones, which, in later years, have become more like handheld computers with phone calls being only a minor feature, dedicated handheld gaming devices are facing challenges. They're dependent on their own software and hardware, are often too large to fit comfortably in a pocket, and most of their features can be emulated quite comfortably by a mobile phone. Plus, of course, the cost of hardware is high.

They do have one advantage, though: their interface is optimized for playing games. The buttons give very intuitive controls and immediate mechanical response, your hands won't block the screen, and the screen will always have the right resolution to play on—the games are developed around the resolution, after all. Because the device has gaming as its primary job, it does that job pretty darn well. It would take a real change of controls and interface for a Pokémon game to work on a smartphone. But I have no doubt that it is possible.

It should also be noted that the hardware costs of handheld games are becoming a bit of a liability. If parents have to choose between dropping $150 for a handheld device plus $30 for a game and paying $50 for a game to be played on a device the kid already owns, the choice seems clear. And while $50 is quite an outrageous sum for a mobile game, they often won't even be one-tenth of that. Another issue is that one of the main factors that made handheld games popular—portable gaming—is no longer monopolized by dedicated devices. You don't have to buy a Game Boy to keep the kid occupied on long car trips anymore if he has a phone with some games on it. This is not a fad that will go away soon. Phones are becoming dominant in the portable gaming environment, and they will keep challenging the dedicated devices in increasingly numerous ways.

Codraroll

As Nintendo has signaled that another handheld device is on the way, I guess Pokémon will continue as a handheld game for the foreseeable future. Twenty years of successful games have shown Game Freak that following the same old formula will keep making money. As the focus of this article seems to be about hardware and metaperspective rather than gameplay and game content, I have little to say about that. The same formula will probably keep working. However, I don't think Pokémon will stay confined to dedicated devices and game cartridges for much longer.

I think Pokémon will eventually start featuring a cloud system similar to Pokémon Bank (and maybe the Dream World—I never used that, unfortunately, so I don't have much to say on that). Its primary purpose would be storing your Pokémon off-device, but I also see trading and everything having to do with Friend Codes being incorporated here. Trainer customization options would also be connected to the Cloud account rather than each individual game. There could also be a Secret Base-like social media system for showing off your Pokémon prowess to friends. Your Pokémon adventures will be tied much more closely to your Cloud account—for instance, connecting directly to the in-game Pokémon Storage System. This would require the account to potentially keep track of thousands of Pokémon across different games, which seems like an expensive service to host without a subscription system, but remember what I said about buying box space in the micro-transaction section? Or decorative items for your Secret Base? Funding the service with convenience and cosmetics doesn't seem too unreasonable, and I also think we'd be willing to pay for it while Game Freak makes a tidy profit. It would also be a simple matter to back up the fruits of your adventure should you decide to start anew in a region. You won't buy new Pokémon games in brick-and-mortar stores (or the Nintendo eShop, for that matter), but rather via your Cloud account. Just hand them some money in your favorite currency, and poof—a door to a new adventure opens in your "base", ready to be accessed from any device you own. It would require ubiquitous Internet, but that's a road we're heading down already, and it'd be much more practical than dragging a bunch of cartridges and a dedicated device around. All in all, I believe it will be more convenient for us to play Pokémon in the future, and if Game Freak keeps making content I'd be happy to pay for at reasonable prices, I predict that a fair chunk of my future salary will find my way to their pockets.