By Zack Kuan

On November 18, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet were released worldwide for the Nintendo Switch, selling over 10 million copies over the next three days. Despite facing criticism because of glitches and other technical issues, some Thompson Rivers University students say they have still enjoyed playing Scarlet & Violet because of the open-world gameplay and the social community surrounding the Pokémon franchise.

Flawed but fun

Mainline Pokémon games are released in pairs separated by slight differences such as version-exclusive Pokémon. Cameron McTaggart, a second-year communications student at TRU that bought both new versions, said he stayed up the entire night before the games were released so he could buy them as soon as possible.

“I had gone off work at 9:15 and I had to do homework and stuff like that and the next thing I know it was 3 AM and I’m like, I’m not about to sleep before I get this game,” he said. “So I stayed right up and then got on the bus and I was the first person into the store that morning.”

Even though he could have downloaded a digital version of the game at midnight, McTaggart said he sees value in owning physical copies of games.

“I like the idea of having just a physical version of the game cause it kind of gives it a more palpable feeling,” he said. “I like having the case so I can put them all up on the wall.”

McTaggart said he began playing Pokémon when he was around seven or eight, even though he didn’t own any of the games himself.

“My best friend at the time had a DS and whenever I was over at a sleepover it’s all we would be playing, just Pokémon,” he said.

McTaggart spoke highly of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet’s open world features. Unlike previous installments in the series, Scarlet & Violet follow non-linear storylines.

“You don’t have any restrictions really, you can go wherever you want at any point,” said McTaggart. “You really can choose what’s the best choice for yourself.”

However, McTaggart said he felt that one weak area of Scarlet & Violet was the character customization available to players.

“You can’t change your base clothes, you can only change your shoes or your gloves,” he said. “In the last games, complete character customization was such a big thing and in this one it kind of seems like it’s [off] to the side.”

Gavin Edwards is a third-year computer science student and the president of the TRU Gaming Club. As president, Edwards said his duties include organizing events and helping out across all aspects of the club’s operations whenever needed. He said that while technical problems have been noticeable in his time playing Pokémon Scarlet, they haven’t bothered him.

“There’s obviously some bugs with it,” said Edwards. “I think that Pokémon could use an additional year before they release games at this point because the games’ scale is getting larger and larger, but I do genuinely think it’s one of the most fun Pokémon experiences that I’ve had in a long time.”

However, Edwards felt that the game’s performance issues were surprising given the reputation of Pokémon’s publisher, Nintendo.

“So narratively I think as well as, like, gameplay wise this is exceeding my expectations but I think, knowing Nintendo as a company for the last thirty years their quality control has always been one of their big things,” he said. “So seeing a game like this drop and the quality control be so low I was a little shocked. I expected the quality control to be a lot better than what it ended up being.”

“Pokémon games are communal”

For some fans, Pokémon is a unique series that fills a need other video games aren’t able to.

“It’s just one of those nice, easy games you can just put on after a semester of hard study,” said Branden Bull, a student in TRU’s teaching English as a second language program. Bull has been playing Pokémon since the first games in the series, Pokémon Red & Blue, came out in 1996.

“Part of me always keeps thinking that they’re going to slowly peter out just because they don’t change anything but I think a lot of people are similar to me where Pokémon just fits this little niche of game that they enjoy,” said Bull

Bull thinks one of the reasons the franchise will continue to succeed is because of its ability to help people connect with each other. “There’s a lot of division amongst a lot of fans for certain things, but I think a lot of people can really bond over the experience of, like, what Pokémon they enjoy, what they like,” he said. “It’s really easy when you find someone who plays Pokémon to just dive into a conversation with them.”

The idea of relating to other people over Pokémon was also a sentiment that Edwards expressed.

“[Pokémon games are] fun, they’ve got good collection in them, and I think a lot of the times, is the Pokémon games are communal,” he said. “I might not be super into the Pokémon game, but I know five other people who are who I can talk to about it.”

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are the first games in the series to include co-op play. Edwards says that adding co-op built upon Pokémon’s strength as a shared experience.

“Pokémon has always had multiplayer built into it,” he said. “Even when it was just trading and battling, people still compared teams, they compared Pokémon, they flexed their shinies, that was the whole point of it.”

Edwards compared Pokémon to other popular Nintendo franchises such as Mario and the Legend of Zelda which are primarily single-player as something that makes Pokémon unique.

“There’s not a lot out there that is collection-based with your friends,” he said.

For McTaggart, who made an agreement with his girlfriend to start playing the new Pokémon games at the same time as each other, video games allow him and his girlfriend to be competitive with each other.

“[Playing video games] is not a need, but it’s something that we really enjoy because we’re both really competitive,” he said.

“But with the Pokémon game we’re competitive in the way that ‘Oh, I’m going to be the first to finish the Pokedex’ and in the end it just turned out we were helping each other,” said McTaggart. “It’s a way to cooperate, so I do it with my girlfriend but a lot of people do it just with their friends and I think that’s a really important part of the game too,”

Bull pointed out that while competition is present in the Pokémon community, different people are able to enjoy the games for different reasons. “I think because Pokémon is at its core still a kids game and is very easy going, there are the people that are more hardcore and get into the battling and all that and the competitiveness, but most people do treat it as just a fun distraction.”

Even though Pokémon is a kid’s game, Edwards said he doesn’t think fans of the franchise are negatively judged. “I don’t think that’s where people are at nowadays,” he said. “Nerdy is mainstream.”

While McTaggart said he thinks that there might be stigma around adults playing Pokémon, it isn’t something that bothers him.

“Oh definitely [there is judgement] but really, I don’t care,” said McTaggart. “They’re the ones that are upset that we’re enjoying this thing but we’re the ones that are happy because we’re talking about, well, animated monsters that are really cool.”

Bull said that for anyone unsure of Pokémon’s appeal, the best way to figure out what makes it special is to play it.

“I think if you’ve never played Pokémon, I totally get that it seems very dense and hard to get into, but especially nowadays with the accessibility there is with a lot of these games, I think it’s worth giving it a try and kind of seeing what people enjoy about it,” he said.