I mean just because cases like Brady can afford the multiple games without issue doesn't mean that isn't a concern for other people playing: in TPC's world, you wouldn't see the player for whom this is an issue because they don't get to build the teams that let them participate at a visible level. What if some people can only afford to participate because of the time save on Genning. Being able to Gen a team and play it on a simulator saves on 2 things
- Money spent on acquiring the old games that several Pokemon are exclusive to (for the sake of argument I am including emulating and trading the old Pokemon up because this still entails external resources even if the Pokemon aren't "generated" outright)
- Time to iterate on the team, in the form of playing matches, making adjustments, and playing more matches. Resources are available within SV but they're not bottomless, and things like Tera Raids to restock on them is a time sink if your expense exceeds your supply.
Time spent playing for resources and THEN testing the team as opposed to jumping straight to the latter is still an expense, whether that's time they'd prefer to spend on other hobbies/family, or perhaps they need to work a job that doesn't spare them enough attention to do grind busywork simultaneously.
Yes, Pokemon fans who play VGC do not have accessibility issues, but I think the causal relationship is being reversed here: the inaccessibility without Genning is why the playerbase is mostly middle-class people who can buy multiple games and spare that time.
Imagine an in-person Fighting Game Tournament in which each competitor had to unlock the character they wanted to play on their copy before participating, or had to complete Arcade move to change something like an assist character or Super Move choices. Individual iteration isn't a large time expense, but the amount of times one would have to do that to experiment and then practice before arriving at their choice would add up to untenable amounts of time for a hobby even with a prize pool, much less something played mostly as a large-scale hobby like Pokemon.
I will make my take clear so there is no confusion, and it will be slightly harsher considering this is a hot takes thread anyways, so whatever. I know this will probably catch some flak.
I do not care about financial accessibility to VGC, nor will I. Because it's not a real esport. There are no stakes. Play on Showdown or gen, I don't care, but I also don't care if Game Freak makes it so you need an old game to get Pokemon in the new game, or doesn't pay for tickets to go to Worlds, or makes it time consuming to get into the game. I don't care. The next season could require a $20,000 entry fee, and I would not care. Why? Because competitive Pokemon is decentralized, and not serious. Any day someone else could just start a new competitive Pokemon tournament with a prize pool and get probably about the same results.
It's not that serious, and never will be. VGC is a marketing expense.
For the record, if you had to grind for characters in a fighting game? I don't care, that's cool if the developers want it and make it a fun game.
The end point of this whole accessibility take is that everything should be free as to remove all barriers to players, but who cares. VGC is not real. The official solution is only accessible via a product, and to participate you have to buy the products.
Out of all competitive videogames, Pokemon is one of the least serious, like period. By the way, if you think TPC/Game Freak do not deliberately allow Pokemon Showdown to exist, you are being fooled.
To get slightly political, I am anti-capitalist. But I do not hate on the players. I hate on the game. I think that what TPC is doing is bad, but I just do not care, and neither should you, it is a waste of energy. Competitive scenes should do everything in their power to ignore and separate themselves from what companies who only see them as a marketing expense want them to do. The official solution does not matter.
Something that isn't a waste of energy is talking about the thing that the actual game developers have more agency over, and that is how they design the game. Because even if VGC spontaneously combusted tomorrow, in-game tournaments would still have a genning debate.
My dog in this fight is not the accessibility argument, but the game design argument. It is not bad game design to require grinding for PVP. Period. Pokemon Sword and Shield's PVP, for instance, is not badly designed. There are minor errors such as no 0IV item, but overall the PVP gameplay loop is in my opinion well designed. Having to explore the game world and mechanics outside of just the battles, is not bad game design. Having to breed is not bad game design.
These games are more cohesive by telling players that if they want to get the best Pokemon, they interact with different systems. Go breed, go do Raids, go do Battle Dungeon or whatever the fuck it is called except in SV, an unfinished game. Go get some money by doing X, Y, Z. Figure out the best odds of this and assess your strategy of how to efficiently get your things done, go actually collect them.
It can be immensely satisfying and rewarding, and make it more enjoyable all around to use your party. That is why my problem with genning is not that it exists or makes the game more accessible, it's that the people who advocate for it actively deny the fact that other ways to play the game, and design the game other than straight up doing Pokemon Showdown officially, is bad game design. It is not.
I do not think that people who do not want to gen and people who want to gen should be forced to compete with each other. I think that preparation is in fact a skill that effects the game, even inside of the actual match. Time to learn matchups, pilot, make tweaks is something that matters much less when you have way more time. I do not think that one philosophy is simply superior. I do not think Pokemon is stronger as an overall package when you can just skip everything and play the game with spontaneously created Pokemon. I do think that Pokemon should have options to support both playstyles.
