Blogpost 2: What Made Pokemon A Successful Franchise

The Pokemon franchise had been around for several years. If I remember rightly, Pokemon started from the release of Pokemon Red and Green in Japan on February 27, 1996. Pokemon made it into two decades and still is loved by the media. What made Pokemon a huge success? 

I looked up on what elements a game should have in order for it to become successful, and I came across Carlos Icaza's article entitled Eight Elements to a Successful Game. The article was simple, it stated that a game must have the "eight E's" in order for it to be successful. 

This is what a game needs to be successful.

A game must be engaging. The creator must think of engaging a conversation, it could be enjoyable or entertaining. The game should also be expandable, something that you can keep growing. For example, the Pokemon franchise had multiple games like Red, Blue to Black and White. The game should be elastic. The game must stretch as far as you can while letting the player think it's still as easy as the first level. It the game is elastic, it would definitely be enjoyable and entertaining. At this point, the players of the game would want to share it to other game players, making your game endemic. 

It made me think methodically about creating games, and I find Pokemon being the successful game explained in the article. The writer proved good points on discussing what a game developer must take notice in creating a game. 

As I was looking up on what made Pokemon the game it is now, I came across a fascinating article. A blogger by the name of LimeCatMaster created an article about the Four Main Reasons The Pokemon Franchise Won't Die and it inspired me to create this blogpost. The blogger states that the Pokemon franchise has (1) a mass appeal to the fans, (2) big cultural impact, (3) educational value and (4) human spirit. 

If there's one thing you can tell about Pokemon, you can tell right off the bat that it has a huge fanbase. We all know this, we all know why it is this way and we can even explain the facts right off the bat. Pokemon always had this special aura into it, something that makes the game attractive to people from any age bracket, ethnicity and status in life. The article stated that we all liked a certain video game in a point of our life, and all, if not most of us, played Pokemon. The TV show was appealing to us and we wanted to be like Ash. We read the manga and we wanted to be like Red. It had a huge impact to the people who liked it and eventually even until they grew up, they continued to play and like Pokemon. It was full of childhood memories they couldn't just throw away.

I want all of these!

Pokemon had a big cultural impact. It attracted a lot of attention ever since it first came out. Why is that? Well, let's take a look at the impact it made so far. As broad as that statement gets, I could tell you all sorts of stuff in Pokemon that affected the culture of people who liked it. It created spin-off games to plush toys, trading card games and even designing airplanes with the face of popular Pokemon. On top of all these, Pokemon has gone off and become a worldwide phenomenon far beyond what anyone expected it to be. You can spur out a conversation by just suggesting the word "Pokemon". 

Of course, those are just all on the tip of the icebergs. We could also find deeper darker secrets of Pokemon like Pokemon Creepypasta written by freelance story editors, game exploits, speed runs, fan arts and videos of people playing run throughs of the game. Pokemon is so cool, and we learn something new everyday because of it. The list goes on and on. Players created whole new stories about Pokemon by creating hacked versions of the game - meaning new areas to explore, improving mechanics and even fan-made Pokemon. Fans have created an amazing culture based on this single franchise alone. We've created a reality we can all relate to. Sure, maybe other games are similar as a whole but Pokemon created more than that. 

Our imagination can go on and on.

Education was also prevalent in the Pokemon games. Pokemon had this little innocent cock-fighting gameplay that made us think with a rock-paper-scissors mentality to make the game enjoyable, but there's more to that. As I read the article, the author stated that the game's mechanics were easy to understand, but we think of ways to exploit the game and make ourselves think of what to do next. If I had a pair of scissors that is made of rock, would paper win? Multi-type Pokemon make us explore more options. In addition to moves to use, there is also the Pokemon using them. Sure, this Pokemon can dish out a whole lot of damage but it goes down once it gets hit, or this one Pokemon that never dies but has relatively low power. These may all seem like simple stuff, but it gives us the ability to cope with the problems in life. It shows us how to handle problems with our mentality in choosing different options for the best results.

Competitive battling also shows us education with the mechanics that are really hard to understand. The mathematics behind Pokemon concerns competitive battling. EV's, IV's, held items, Pokemon abilities, natures, movepools, and the list goes on and on. We learn the complexities of these mechanics and master them. Everyday we learn something new when a person tries this certain Pokemon with these set of mechanics and find it ridiculously overpowered and it means something: everyday we're learning and enjoying the passion we had for years.

Lastly, Pokemon is a celebration of the human spirit. Pokemon was made from a failed franchise that started off as "Capsule Monsters". Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon, had all the reasons in the world to cease working for his passion, but it never stopped him. He was so involved in his game that he nearly failed his education and didn't go to college. He didn't stop and he created this amazing game and I think it's pretty inspiring.

The game is also the celebration of the human spirit. It reflects this idea because your character will be a young child, journeying into a world that is foreign to him. You are to face many challenges and dangers. You endure them with the unstoppable force that you create through the bond that you share with your pets. You may encounter an evil force but you keep pushing on and do something that was never thought possible for you.

The massive fanbase!

Even if the Pokemon franchise ended formally, we all have our imaginations. So long as we have ourselves, imagination will run free. We can argue a lot of things that are technically related to Pokemon, even with the Pokemon designs. But in the end, we are all gathered with the thought that Pokemon is a product of our imagination. Imagination has no upper or lower limits. We can still keep going, and that's the beauty of it. We can still keep going not just for Pokemon but also places to explore and stories to tell.