Imagining a Pokemon Utopia
How can we adjust the Pokemon formula to create a happy world of friendship without the taint of HM-slaves.
Pokemon has been with me all my life. But the real Pokemon and the one in my mind are worlds apart. The colonial roots of Pokemon are present from Gen 1 to the present and probably will be forever. We all know Pokemon is the most successful franchise in the world, it has little incentive to change. But that doesn't stop others from taking its ideas and what it means to us and then create other similar games. It's okay to "steal" ideas, mechanics and overall game structure from other things. But the Pokemon-likes or "creature collector" genre has been quite unimaginative in its “theft” I find.
I've seen some innovation in the hacks and new IP's, primarily battle and scope, but there's an aura of fear in the hack scene and that type of imagination is not what I speak of. I don't care for more complex combat systems, or more creatures to collect, or even pretty graphics. I want that world of Pokemon that's in my head and I know is in other peoples heads. That utopic vision of a society that has happy people with healthy relationship, that somehow has figured out a way to deal with the menial labor and bullshit jobs, a world which solved crime, hunger, meaning and contains an overwhelming aura of joy.
Pokemon paints just enough of a picture to give a sense of cozy comfort and a vague sense of building bonds with your creatures, your "friends" — which most of sit in the "PC", for as far as each game explains, a permanent sleeping limbo because you gotta "catch em all". But with some slight scrutiny falls into this sad little world where you attack wild animals and capture them in balls to be your slave-friend or potential slave-friend. Where you breed them for perfect numbers then justify your time invest because your brain must comfort you in your wasted time (sunk-cost fallacy).
The Imagining Part
Let's try an exercise of imagination, clear enough to step into a better world but not collapse under scrutiny. Okay, close your eyes… wait don't.
Starting with battling, instead of showcasing the brutality of the world (the PETA game, don’t look that up) lets instead mold it into that happy place we **believe** it to be. I think removing the obsession of collection has to be the start, replaced with a respect for nature. And focus on the monsters we choose to befriend, and importantly they choose to befriend. Now this means bonding is kinda half the game, so there needs to be more ways to bond with your monsters. Maybe camping and cooking, going for walks or having them assist you in the world by getting up cliffs. It's so much more like the Pokemon anime and we miss a lot of that in the games.
The grinding has to mean something too, like you getting closer with your monsters and getting stronger. IV's and EV's were supposed to influence that in some weird way, and I don't they are effective in indicating that bond, and at worst they are a tedious aspect of grinding and tossing pokemon. We become Gary, which is very much not the point.
So let's have a trainer level, which improves in any battle, and the monsters have two levels, bonding and training, which add up to a total level. You can focus on training or bonding if you want, but both are needed to be the strongest. This could also tell stories directly through the gameplay. Your rival who doesn't care for the bond of trainer and pokemon has low bond levels and you can directly see why you beat them.
Hmm, ooo, let's have bonding battles, where as your trainer level increases you yourself gain moves and each individual Pokemon has different preferences for their bonding styles. Some like to just sit nearby, or they want to be pet, hugged, head patted, others can really love food or even obsess over training.
Hmm… what a nice dream. It makes the monsters have more personality and lets you spend time out of battle with them too. It reminds me of my cats which all love so differently.
With just these few changes you could extrapolate a whole game out of it (and they don't need to be 30-100 hours long either). These ideas have taken ahold of me these past few weeks, I have fallen in love with this world. I think I'll start building it.
Dreaming about a part two.