Video Games, and mostly competitive games, are often blamed for being hard to understand, a kind of niche activity. Traditional media tackles FPSs for their violence, MOBAs for their accessibility and RTS games for their complex vocabulary.On the other hand, expanding their audiences, reaching the general public and kids have always been majors challenges for esport’s main protagonists, media, professional teams and partnered brands. Electronic sport continues its transformation through huge efforts. But what if the solution was Pokemon?
People tend to forget that, far from the development of mainstream esports, Pokemon has gone a hell of a long way. Since its huge success in 1996, it has played an important role for electronic sport still in embryonic stage early 2000. With 260 million copies sold, Game Freak’s game is still one of the biggest successes in video game history.
Still very popular with young people but also for old gamers who have grown up with the game and continue to play it, Pokemon is an « easy to play, hard to master » game so important for the purists. It enjoys a good reputation among the media. In fact, Pokemon could totally be a part of esport as we know it! Nintendo already organized its own world championships. There are several steps and national qualifications to hopefully get a ticket for the grand finals in Boston.
Pokemon championships offer many advantages among which are easy rules: you just have to beat your opponent!
3 groups that speak to everybody: junior, senior & master. Winners share $500 000 dollars! But hold it! The prizes are distributed in the form of student grants or holidays to spend as a family! A huge added bonus that enhances its reputation.
However there are some gaps in Pokemon’s path as they are not regular events, sometimes a long way away, too far for players to meet there. As we know, the Pokemon World Championships have a fully stand-alone management. Is this because Nintendo likes to manage everything themselves or has Pokemon simply been forsaken by professional teams and tournament operators? Could linking Pokemon & traditionnal esports together have a win-win effect?
Translation – James Berry
