Pokemon is Already an MMORPG
STARTING SCREEN | Pokemon has all the good parts of an MMO while avoiding the bits that we hate.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
Whether it's because of EverQuest or World of WarCraft, MMOs have taken on a very specific meaning over the past 20 years or so.
When we think of MMOs, we think of massive social hubs. We think of guilds. We think of huge co-op raids, endgame content, and of course, raids.
When a game lacks those elements, we tend to discount it as being an MMO, which is one reason people have been begging for a Pokemon MMO for a good 15 years now.
But here's the deal: Pokemon is already an MMO in its own weird way. And its ties to massively multiplayer online gaming have only become more apparent with the advent of online multiplayer.
Social multiplayer has always been a big part of Pokemon's DNA. It was Satoshi Tajiri who brought the Game Boy link cable back from the grave, enabling the battling and trading that made Pokemon Red and Blue one of the most popular games of all time. Even before online multiplayer became widespread, Tajiri and company understood the innate appeal of social gaming—of carving out your own identity while working with other players toward a common objectives.
Key to this dynamic were its overarching objectives. Like the MMOs of today, Pokemon didn't end with the credits. Instead, your goal was to catch every single monster and complete your Pokedex. Conversely, you could raise the ultimate team and become a top battler. There were no "raids," but these components nevertheless roughly conformed to the PvE and PvP components that define today's MMOs.
As Pokemon evolved, so did its community. When it became possible to breed monsters, a whole community of obsessive breeders appeared. When Gold and Silver introduced alternately-colored "shiny" monsters, collecting every single shiny became a badge of honor among a certain segment of hardcore collectors.
In 2007, online multiplayer was introduced for the first time, and Pokemon was totally transformed. For the first time, strangers on the Internet could battle, trade, and even work together to conquer the Battle Tower. Smogon emerged in this period, as did the Youtube battling community. Serebii, one of the oldest and most established Pokemon communities, became a Hearthpwn-like hub for all things Pokemon (all while maintaining the exact same layout from circa 2003).
If you had the least bit of interest in Pokemon's postgame, there was a segment of the community that could cater to your needs. As a primarily PVP player, I often turned to breeders to get spare eggs from their various breeding projects. If I needed a legendary monster from another version, I would flip a popular starter like Charmander online. Clever features like the Global Trading System—where you could upload a random monster and potentially get something amazing back—dramatically enhanced the sense of being connected to a worldwide community.
Pokemon has only continued to grow since then, its community being the rock on which the entire empire is founded. Binding it all together is the continuity afforded by apps like Pokemon Bank, which allow you to transfer monsters from games going back to Pokemon Black and White on the DS (and beyond if you're patient enough to chain your monsters from the GBA to the DS to the 3DS). It's the continuity from game to game that makes it all feel like a cohesive world, one where your monster buddies will always be at your side.
In that, the only thing keeping Pokemon from being a full-blooded MMO is a connected in-game hub. It's already a persistent online world in which you can take part in a multitude of activities. It's just that most of the actual interaction takes place in chatrooms and message boards.
I get it: When people say they want a Pokemon MMO, what they're actually saying is that they want a massive world featuring all of the regions that they can explore at their leisure. They want to beat gyms run by other players. They want to see another traveler on the road to Johto and challenge them to a quick battle.
Such visions are tantalizing, but they ultimately contradict another important aspect of Pokemon's identity: in-person interaction. It's why Game Freak has resisted creating a full-blown console generation through all these years. Pokemon's lifeblood is still the seven-year-olds who are trading with their friends on the playground.
And in any case, it's the in-person interaction that makes Pokemon feel that much more genuine. As I told Nadia on our RPG podcast Axe of the Blood God, I often struggle to get into MMORPGs because the worlds feel so artificial. And really, what's the fun of a world where everyone can run through the solo content and become Champion? In a way, it's nice to have the world of Pokemon to yourself, with the outside connections being purely at your own discretion.
For that reason, I'm glad that Game Freak hasn't tried to cram Pokemon into what we know as an MMORPG. I'm glad that I don't have to deal with server downtime, patches, and idiots spamming the chat with Nazi salutes. I can even deal with having to play through the story again to access the endgame content.
No, Pokemon will never be what we recognize as an "MMO." But it has all the elements that matter most—the persistent world and the community to match—and it manages it without sacrificing the unique sense of ownership you have over your personal journey. Personally, I wouldn't trade that for the world—even a massively multiplayer one.
Looking Ahead to the Rest of the Week
Everything is super-busy here at USgamer. We're taking the last laps on the games that are contenders for our Game of the Year list and deciding what's going to take the top spots this year. All that will be appearing on the site over the course of the next few weeks. This week though, here's what's you can expect.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on Xbox One: The indie game that Microsoft is treating like a first-party release went live on the Xbox Game Preview program this morning. For $29.99 on the Xbox Store, you can jump in and see what the fuss is all about. Caty spent most of the morning playing the game and her impressions are up on the site today!
Monster Hunter: World Beta: The beta of Capcom's newest Monster Hunter is still ongoing! If you have a PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Plus, you can download the beta right now to get a taste of the MonHun on a home console! The beta will be ending on Tuesday, 11:59AM ET/8:59AM PT. That means there's still time to enjoy it!
Star Wars: Battlefront 2: The first season of updated content for Battlefront 2 went live last week, celebrating the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Last week, you could choose to be a part of the Resistance or the First Order. This week on December 13, Finn and Captain Phasma are joining the game as playable heroes and the Resurrection story content continues Iden Versio's story. Crait comes as a new planetary map and D'Qar is the new Starfighter Assault map. Basically, if you're playing Battlefront 2, this is your week!
The Best of the Rest: Okami gets another re-release as Okami HD comes to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One tomorrow, December 12. Laster this week, Romancing Saga 2 finds a revival as the SNES classic comes to PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC on December 15. It's a port of the Android and iOS version, so don't expect much, but if you're a fan, it's one of the few English releases of the title.
Nadia's Note Block Beat Box: Gormott Province (Daytime)
Oh, Xenoblade Chronicles 2. You're a mess, and I love you. Sometimes you don't know whether you're coming or going, but I'll tell you this much: Your soundtrack has everything together.
The soundtrack for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is composed in part by the venerable Yasunori Mitsuda, who has a real talent for making pieces that click together with their settings like puzzle pieces. The tune for Gormott Province is a key example: It keys up just as you find yourself on the sprawling back of the Gormott Titan, one of the biggest and liveliest areas in the game. It practically sings to you. Gormott Province's melody was clearly composed with Gaur Plains in mind. I think Gormott may actually surpass Gaur; just dig that change Gormott dishes up at 3:43.
Mike's Media Minute
One of the more iconic images from Steven Spielberg's classic adaptation of Jurassic Park is also one of its simplest. It's a cup of water that's just sitting there, with small ripples passing through it. It's a great image, one full of tension and meaning: something big is coming. Something big that will likely kill us all.
That image encapsulates the box office with Star Wars: The Last Jedi coming out this week.
The Last Jedi is sucking up all the air in the room for the foreseeable future. Justice League's meager legs have been cut short and Thor: Ragnarok can be glad it reached $300 million domestic before the juggernaut launched. It's not just attention: The Last Jedi is also taking over marquee screens at most theaters.
Oddly enough, it feels like expectations are higher for The Last Jedi than last year's Star Wars: Rogue One. The latter film felt like a spin-off and The Force Awakens was mostly tasked with re-establishing the franchise for a new generation. The Last Jedi is the work of director Rian Johnson, who previously did Brick and Looper. Johnson is expected to offer up a darker, more meaningful film, this trilogy's Empire Strikes Back, before he returns in the future to helm an all-new trilogy. If you want an inkling of what that'll be like, The Last Jedi is the litmus test.
Hopefully, it lives up to those expectations.
As a small aside, I wanted to highlight a teaser trailer for a film that won't be coming out until next December. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is the official title of the animated Spider-Man feature featuring the other Spider-Man, Miles Morales. The trailers show off a very distinct artstyle, somewhere between a CG film and a comic book. The film has been developed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street. Lord wrote the script with help from Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch. Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, and Rodney Rothman are co-directing, which gives me pause, but otherwise, I'm looking forward to it.
Caty’s AltGame Corner
This week's AltGame Corner pick isn't technically out yet, but it's out tomorrow, and it looks to be an interesting one. Releasing on Tuesday, December 12th is Rumu from Australia-based developers Robot House. Rumu is a narrative adventure about a Roomba-like vacuum that seems a bit more sentient. You're not just sucking up cat fur to keep the house clean though.
As the game progresses, you discover more about your mysterious creators, and the house's AI Sabrina whom you've sorta befriended. From previews, the game's already drawn comparisons to the likes of Wall-E, Firewatch, Gone Home, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. This will be one mess we're itching to clean when it releases on Steam for PC tomorrow.
This Week's News and Notes
- Last week, Capcom announced Mega Man 11 and offered up Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 and 2 for Nintendo Switch. This weekend, Capcom continued its roll with the announcement of Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, which brings together every arcade version of Street Fighter, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter Alpha, and Street Fighter 2 in a single package. That's coming to PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch sometime in May 2018.
- But Capcom's not done yet! Alongside the launch of Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition on January 16, 2018, Capcom will also be kicking off Season 3 with the release of Street Fighter Alpha's Sakura! Sakura will be joined later by Sagat, Blanka, Cody, and new fighters Falke and G.
- The PlayStation Experience 2017 was a pretty light affair for Sony, having offered up most of its big announcements at Paris Games Week. Regardless, here's a recap of everything that was announced and revealed during the keynote. You can also expect further news and interviews from Matt, who attended the show, over the course of this week.
- Caty might be exploring the Xbox One version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds this week, but last week she took a look at the game on PC. Why? Because PUBG Corp introduced the game's new map, Miramar, on the test server! You can take a look at her impressions of the map before jumping in yourself.
- Nadia found that The Champion's Ballad, the second expansion for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, offered up the best and worst of the original game. Breath of the Wild's Shrines are still a problem, but revisiting the new Hyrule is still a treat.
- Mike's last check in with the recently-delayed Far Cry 5 focused on the work Ubisoft put in to recreate the environment of Montana. This time around, it's all about what Ubisoft has done to give players fun stuff to do in the fictional region, while still holding onto the feeling of Americana.
- Ryan Reynolds, the voice and body of Deadpool, will also be the voice of Detective Pikachu. Yep. Nadia is unhappy with this.
- Podcastin': On Axe of the Blood God, Kat and Nadia jawjack about The Champions Ballad, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and the Game Awards. Over at the USgamer Podcast, Mike, Nadia, and Caty talk all about Mega Man 11 (yay!), Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris, and Five Nights at Freddy's.