Why They'll NEVER Fix Pokemon

Pokemon's death grip on children's entertainment has loosened since the 90s, but it is still holding on. Here's how the Pokemon Company does it - and what that means for the franchise's future.
Subscribe for anime and gaming videos every week: www.youtube.co...
Support me on Patreon: / mothersbasement
Subscribe to Mother's Basement for anime and gaming videos every week: www.youtube.co...
Validate me!
Follow me on twitter: / g0ffthew
Also on facebook: / mothersbasementofficial
And check out my Steam Curator page: steamcommunity....
and the new Mother's Basement Subreddit: / mothersbasement
In the depths of his Mother's Basement, Geoff Thew creates videos analyzing the storytelling techniques of anime and video games. He has been named the number one Worst KZbin Anime Reviewer by The Top Tens.

[@Axitros]

MB: throughly explains the workings of the Pokemon media machine in a palatable way Me: the Pokemon Adventures manga is still going?!

[@Sunaki1000]

@@JoseAlberto-dh8pf horny?!

[@telka6479]

@@JoseAlberto-dh8pf what???

[@pyrosianheir]

@@JoseAlberto-dh8pf um.... Horny how?

[@GGABueno]

I stopped on DP as I felt it was a downgrade when compared to RS, I wonder how is it doing now.

[@gravityhero2227]

Yes read it.

[@Tekimeneki]

How did Pokemon get so big? Dynamax

[@WaddleDee105]

That's not how they got big... That's how they got T H I C C

[@ChosenHeroLink]

It's really stupid if you ask me they should just bring back Mega evolution that gen was Awesome in Kalos and in Omega Rudy and Alpha Sapphire

[@wallegg1499]

Yes, that was the joke in the thumbnail. Thank you for pointing it out.

[@Sazuyu]

How did pokemon get so small? Explosion

[@newfacepaula]

Steroids

[@duchi882]

*The Secret to Pokemon's Success:* 1. The OG Opening Song

[@jacobhero1577]

2. The Master Quest Opening Song

[@sindri1447]

Johto League theme was the best you heathens.

[@EWolffe]

You mean the 4kids dub of the og opening.

[@LocalMaple]

The original theme song in Japanese said to look up a girl’s skirt during the opening verse. Thank the American dub for making it cooler, even if the motto was changed from “Let’s Get Pokémon” to “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.”

[@mascotwithadinosaur9353]

I know you mean the eng dub but I personally prefer the Japanese theme. Idk why I find it catchier.

[@MyralinaBradford]

Pokemon will always be "good enough". As long as the games are just a cog in a franchise machine, the games will only have enough time to be "good enough". I think that's why most of the hardcore fans are bummed, deep down. Their franchise, the one they loved since childhood, will only ever be "good enough". Just for once, they want a "great" Pokemon game. They see Mario have Odyssey and Zelda have BotW and wonder if Pokemon can ever have a game of that caliber of that scale, and it will always disappoint them when the answer in the current state of things will always be "there's never enough time".

[@moonflowerpalace3872]

This post right here.

[@supersnackbros2423]

Black and White, tho.

[@BonaparteBardithion]

Black and White had the benefit of getting a follow-up game. Seeing new regions is my favorite part of the series, but making more direct sequels is something they can do more often to get more story out while using most of the same assets. There's also the option of adding stuff in as DLC, but I'm not sure I want them to start going down that road. A little too easy to start selling $20 season passes with five or so Pokemon each in a tiny recycled forest. Ideally, they could gradually add content with free updates, similar to Mystery Gifts. Though I wouldn't expect much in the way of new mechanics, it's probably the best way to add the international Dex.

[@WaterKirby1994]

It's not just the Pokemon Games that are suffering, the Gen 6 onward mangas have been severely rushed because of the 3 year cycle while Gen 5 is still ongoing. Pokemon games simply aren't "good enough" anymore if you ask me, if any other series than Pokemon tried what Sword & Shield did it wouldn't have sold 10% of what they sold. Gens 3&4 got 4 year gaps, while Gens 5-7 weren't that fortunate. Only Japan got the 3 years for Gen5 before Gen6 started, as Black & White were 2011 releases everywhere else weren't they? Pokemon International has been run foolishly this decade. Let's see there were the awful decisions with the Gen 5 anime or having Iris become Champion out of nowhere in the Sequel Games, despite how badly she was portrayed in the Gen 5 Anime. Those mistakes regarding Gen5 led to Gen6 being released a year before it probably should have. Then Gen 6 was severely rushed so that Gen 7 could be released on Pokemon's 20th Anniversary. They thought the Switch would flop for some reason unfathomable, & were trying to transform Pokemon to mere phone games.

[@alonelyperson6031]

Hits with 100% accuracy. When the reply you get for your want and need is. "It's good enough". It's as if the whole world hated you. It's like seeing a pet you loved slowly die from sickness, and all the people around you can say is, "It's fine, let it's immune system sort itself out". If there ever was a symbol of absolute helplessness, the pokemon's hardcore side of the fanbase would be one.

[@Kuudere-Kun]

Personally I liked the Anime more when it was 4 years per Gen rather then 3. I actually miss filler seasons like the Orange Islands and Battle Fronteir.

[@commonviewer2488]

Those gave us some of the anime's best episodes. Ash winning the Orange League, and Charizard vs. Articuno being my favorites

[@convergeman7825]

I think the anime is best when it isn't trying to be EXACTLY like the games (and vice-versa).

[@izuto727]

@@convergeman7825 they tried in sun and moon, and most people hate it(except me)

[@kryzethx]

@@izuto727 They changed the artstyle, which instantly turned off a lot of people even before it started (like me)

[@caswellweird]

@@izuto727 hey if ppl wanna write off an amazing story and characters and beautiful animation because the artstyle for the kids show is more bubbly. Then thats on them. SM and XY are the best the series has ever been in story and action respectively. and 2019 looks to continue that trend.

[@duncanmacleod6274]

Counter argument to the staffing thing: Yeah, building up a studio is work, and you can't just double your team overnight without issues, but GameFreak has been refusing to even ATTEMPT to start doing this, and they should have begun this process a decade ago. Yes, there are growing pains, but maintaining a much bigger team than GameFreak has isn't just possible, it is routine in the AAA industry. Their staff is TINY. They are outselling games like BotW which have teams many times their sizes, and not using any of this massive pool of money to improve their own capabilities that are sorely lacking in many areas.

[@raze2012_]

all this assumes that all those masses of money even go to GF to begin with. If they have such massive profits, idk why their first self publishing venture in their 25 year existence was a $25 digital download game that was like maybe 20 hours if you stretch it.

[@duncanmacleod6274]

@@raze2012_ they do go at least partially to GF. They are one of 3 major part owners of TPC International that owns and manages the whole brand. GF isn't poor, or necessarily even cheap, but they're stubborn about turnover and adequate staffing.

[@AquilaPainWhy]

@@duncanmacleod6274 Most of the money goes to spinoffs and franchises, and only a small fraction of the money goes to the mainline series games.

[@duncanmacleod6274]

@@AquilaPainWhy GF gets a big split of the profits. If they want to up their budgets, they can. Their sales numbers still more than justify it even without profits from the rest of the franchise, but they have access to that. To my knowledge, TPC profits are not earmarked in any particular way. That's still money flowing into GF as a major shareholder, not as part of the budget of TPC.

[@rjd-kh8et]

Game Freak did hire more people to model all the Pokémon for X and Y.

[@austinryder2622]

Now that SwSh has come out I think it's the perfect time for GameFreak to increase their staff. Since the next game in the cycle is probably a remake that gives them an opportunity to train new staff on already trodden ground, and means a few of the risks you mentioned won't be as much of a problem, given the anime hasn't usually been altered by the remakes. Also hiring more people and not having their incredibly small team by major media franchise standards split between both Pokemon and their other projects would do alot for people's concerns.

[@bangormc3rd562]

That's what I was thinking when Let's Go was announced. It was a remake, on a new console, and one with a lot more capability and thus a lot more expectations. The perfect time for a major staff/capacity increase.

[@gameinsane4718]

Staff? Whats that? -Game Freak

[@estebancorrales3476]

Game Freak’s staff isn’t all that goes into these games though. They outsource a lot of the work to other companies

[@jjbarajas5341]

@@estebancorrales3476 Outsourcing even more would help them to make even higher quality games. Let Bandai namco handle the Pokemon animations, they sure did a heck of a good job with pokken tournament. Or heck, hire 900 people to each rig/animate one single Pokemon if that's what's needed. Even if they shelled out $500 for each of them, that would be a mere $450,000. Or $900,000 if every mon cost $1,000. Considering the budget for Detective Pikachu was $150,000,000, well, clearly this should be a non issue. But whatever.

[@caswellweird]

@@jjbarajas5341 not to mention sword and shield made 6 million on day 1 alone. So even if 900,000 went into developing the mons alone, thats still 5,100,000 to spend on the rest of the game and still turn a profit on launch alone.

[@goldencyclone4984]

On the subject of bringing in new people. Masuda has been INCREDIBLY stubborn about not expanding Game Freak, and from what I've read they haven't added a sizable amount to the dev team since Black and White 2. I think that if they had steadily been growing and letting newbies cut their teeth on either games like Let's Go, or maybe breaking up the attempt to make the mainline series annualized by creating more side games like another Orre or Mystery Dungeon game and letting newbies learn with those, then we would HAVE a bigger team that would be able to work well together.

[@tipulsar85]

Geoff: "Look at this cute Wooloo." Wooloo: [rolls around to Riding Dirty]

[@DarthChocolate15]

I'm reminded of a quote from Mark Rosewater of Magic: the Gathering- "Players are excellent at identifying problems, but they're not equipped to solve the problems. They don't know the restrictions you're under or what needs you have to fulfill. They see the game from their perspectives, but your job is to understand the perspective of all the players. So use your audience as a resource to help figure out what is wrong with your game, but take it with a grain of salt when they offer you solutions." (20 Years, 20 Lessons- Part 3) It's fair for us to ask more from Pokemon, but the excercise of explaining how 'more could have been delivered' is pretty pointless.

[@quadeevans6484]

Really well put i feel like when people say listen to fans its coming from the fans perspective but sometimes listening to fans is bad like rwby....

[@Edax_Royeaux]

The consumer always has the right to demand a better product. I will not be buying Sword and Shield.

[@AStandsForFrench]

yeah that's all fine and dandy but pokemon is, as geoff mentions, the most profitable franchise in existence. they can afford more staff and vetting to ensure that staff is not going to sabotage the group effort like he hypothesizes. I don't even play pokemon and I think their reasoning for not having all the pokemon is bullshit. I'm rarely in the "throw more money at it" camp, but pokemon is again the MOST PROFITABLE FRANCHISE IN HISTORY. THROW MONEY AT IT! Hire more artists and animators, lord knows there's plenty looking for work! Don't just suck down whatever excuse they give you. If they didn't "plan for it", that's entirely upon the management at nintendo, not the fault of the consumers.

[@duncanmacleod6274]

@@AStandsForFrench Exactly. The argument that more staff come with more problems and that you'd get potential drawbacks and diminishing returns isn't an entirely baseless one on the face of it, but it's extremely weak when applied to a case like GameFreak in particular. There is just no denying the fact that their team is WAAAAYYYYY too small for the size of the franchise they lead, and has been for a least a decade. This is a self-inflicted injury. They push out games to AAA audiences with an indie sized development team.

[@Trowa0101]

@@quadeevans6484 As someone who watches the series but don't know anything about Rwby fanbase I'm curious, how Rwby fans are hurting the show?

[@AniGaAG]

I'm not tired of Pokémon games. I'm tired of the way they're being handled.

[@masterknife8423]

I'm tired of how they're still so fucking childish after all these years. The whole concept of Pokemon is really fun but why can't it age with it's audience like Harry Potter?

[@danielfloresdevalgaz4576]

@@masterknife8423 because there's a never ending supply of kids who are less resource conscious and will be more likely to buy merch. The games themselves aren't Pokemons money making scheme, they're just the official launch point of all the merchandise for the new characters in other industries.Its the biggest IP in the world currently and maturing the franchise to appeal to the adult audience cuts off the child audience, which cuts off a huge revenue stream. The people who have to work a 9-5 and budget for the year are less likely to buy your plushies than a kid that doesn't even know that the concept of a tax return exists. You can call that greed, but as stated in the video, if they cut off that portion of the audience, it has a huge ripple effect for many companies who are licensing Pokemon.

[@raze2012_]

@@masterknife8423 kids are a safe and stable market. Simple as that. Also some family friendly image or whatever. Probably the same reason YT was/is melting down over COPPA. people really don't understand that having one non-E rated thing doesn't mean the entire thing isn't still e rated overall

[@cdwarrior6582]

Well said

[@almostincredible146]

"I sure would love it if we could just end capitalism to make pokemon better." - Mother's Basement, 2019

[@SebastianChavezBowtied]

Little does he know that in any other economic form, Pokemon would be a waste of recourses and thus not be.

[@Atlasbr001]

Motherland Basement

[@almostincredible146]

@@SebastianChavezBowtied Actually, providing entertainment increases morale and, as a result, productivity. An early example of a state government utilizing this is the Roman policy of Bread and Circuses, by which they kept the people entertained, and therefore both productive and compliant to the state. So pokemon is still useful outside of capitalism. Edit: typos

[@Metawraith]

@@SebastianChavezBowtied That is demonstratively not true. If anything, Pokemon, much like most other forms of entertainment, would exist in an even better, resource-effective form if Capitalism didn't exist. To think otherwise is to believe that humans willingly choose to only use resources only for "practical matters". What Capitalism does is force most people, the workers, to waste their lives to gain needlessly limited resources (by way of Capitalists) to produce and use the vast resources in the world for the sole benefit of Capitalists. In short, no Capitalism, no Capitalists, no significant waste of resources or of human lives.

[@renatendouji388]

Lol at all those people who think Pokemon would even be *useful* in a non-capitalist state. I LOVE pokemon as much as the next guy but take a listen to your old 2.B.A master CD, every song you love is a clever fabricated marketing scheme : GOTTA CATCH EM ALL! GOTTA CATCH EM ALL! Literal subliminal message to milk you of your money. And before you say it's 4kids, do not forget that they artificially created the 2-versions thingy in order to increase the sale (idea of Miyamoto) and given that Pokemon still sells a lot despite removing content means that it works and will keep working. (Ironically, it's all those die-hard leftists on twitter who praise the game) Pokemon is not high art and even if it has inspirational messages, it's not something that fundamentally enrich mankind.

[@DrMecha]

As a Game Modeler, I could tell you that updating the Models have less to do with Polygon count than it’s about updating the texture resolution and taking account of the new lighting engine.

[@ShamblesTCG]

most models were remade from scratch. They literally copied and changed the data to animate said models, but the models themselves were newly made. Over 400 new Pokemon models...

[@TheMessinger47]

UI Raditz this has been discredited

[@ThePiny29]

@@ShamblesTCG No, they weren't.

[@Sunaki1000]

@@TheMessinger47 there kinda remade them. There fuckt up the saves and needet to repair the datas. Dont know how save the Info is, but the guy predictet the names of the games, so yeah. Wasnt planed.

[@JoseAlberto-dh8pf]

Also that Lord helix video (I forgot the Pokemon's name sorry) It's literally just the let's go model with the shading and coloring of that game which looks off in swsh, also that guy just replaced a jamper model with a helix one, it's the same Pokemon just with a different model

[@0Enigmatic0]

I don't like the arguments defending Sword and Shield centering around "it's hard, ok?" I know it is, but you know, it's their job? If you have a pipeline forcing you to pump out subpar things then you have to change it.

[@RedfurredPikachu]

Well sadly people can be stupidly stubborn and refuse to listen as your proving right now. Let's say Gamefreak really does want to extend a games development time after Sword and Shield. Well they've still got to clear that with everyone else in order to do that. What happens if the card company's who make the Pokémon game want to keep the schedule the way it is? Or how about if the anime doesn't want to do filler arcs anymore in order to wait for a game and refuses to change that. These are the things people are not thinking of, Game Freak doesn't just have themselves to worry about if they do that but the employees of the other media companies too. Now this can very much happen that everyone agrees to change up the games releases and thus the schedules of everything else as a result, but it's not going to be done overnight and to expect that only proves how little respect you actually have for the people working on this stuff. Your seeing them as numbers and robots not actual human beings with lives of their own.

[@0Enigmatic0]

@@RedfurredPikachu Calling me stupid at the beginning doesn't make me want to listen to you lol

[@RedfurredPikachu]

@@0Enigmatic0 Sometimes insults need to be hurled, if their right. You ignored everything I said and focused on me calling you out which only proves my point. You don't like that you were called out so now your trying to deflect my argument with a convinent excuse.

[@0Enigmatic0]

@@RedfurredPikachu I'm not going to argue with someone being mean. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And they're not a charity, they're not your friend, they're a corporation trying to make money. I don't have to buy a rushed subpar product just because they refuse to restructure their business model. Hope you have fun with the game tho

[@rythvicr3240]

@@0Enigmatic0 If that's what you believe, why not try and organize a petition with The Pokemon Company to extend development cycles? We can't expect Gamefreak to do this alone, we need to help them out too!

[@LunaProtege]

A lot of the arguments here amount to "its not that simple" in response to a lot of things they could have done to fix the situation. ... I'm sure others have other things they could say, but I say "when has anything worth doing ever been simple?" We have to look at the future though; they could not extend their schedule THIS time, and it cost them PR. However, considering they DO have enough time to change the schedule for "three games from now" without having to scramble; there isn't as much of an excuse for next time as there was this time.

[@duncanmacleod6274]

Especially on the staffing argument. It's not THAT simple, but it's not an unreasonable expectation for GameFreak to expand. They are WAY smaller than they should be, and way too small for a AAA game studio. They are being held to a VERY low standard by those making this argument, and I don't think those people even know how inadequate and small their dev team is compared to the rest of the industry.

[@RoyalFusilier]

The critically low standards for Game Freak is a massive part of this situation. The things being asked of them are often the bare minimum any other company would be confronted with in late 2019.

[@McSnezzly]

Luna Protege also, it’s silly to say “well their job is hard” and leave it at that. That’s how we get Fallout 76. And Gamefreak’s response wasnt as bad as Bethesda’s response to criticism, but it still wasn’t good enough

[@bits355]

@@McSnezzly and all the other in this stream(I'm not singling anyone out) You can feel it wasn't good enough all you want and i celebrate that feeling, but to compare Fallout 76 to pokemon is very much like comparing apples to rotten grapes found under and 600 pound man (Fallout are the grapes). The idea that game freak "should" expand completely ignores company culture and intentions of higher ups within that culture. Now you don't have to like it and you can voice your opinion on the matter but look at it like this: when we say its not that simple we don't mean that "it's hard so lets not do it." Lets talk about Jeff's idea about hiring "some assholes" to the team. If you hire more people, you loose more control of the final product. You have to hire more middle manager which muddies the waters, and god forbid you hire the wrong people and they are toxic to your company's work environment. Morale in creative fields is very important and when you have issues like bad company culture and loss of control of that culture, you are more likely to hurt the end product. Lets go to fallout 76. I could be wrong here, but fallout 76 started with team who had no clue what they were doing with a multiplayer game before launch. Then after the awful launch instead of hiring the correct people (like EA did for anthem, but im not getting into that can of worms now) or even getting rid of the ones who could have cause the issues, Bethesda doubles down and create patch after patch that doesn't work as advertised and have the audacity to make a premium store for the game (one that doesn't seem to have that many bugs, that feels pretty shitty) Not to mention the fact that the Creation engine is old AF and needs to be dropped. Just today there are news of hackers effectively destroying the game because Bethesda decided to release a multiplayer game in a single player engine and refuse to update it to a significant degree. Modding tools = cheating tools in multiplayer and if you have the same engine, those tools arent hard for some one with expereince to make work for fallout 76. At the very least GameFreak have been updating and creating more engine wise and ensure that the engine will actually support the game properly. Now should they staff up? I think that a corporate restructure is in order but someday they were going to have to make the decisions they made. no matter the size of the team. TLDR: First: i respect all of your opinions, but think like a project manager who is trying to keep up morale and create something with the team they have. Second, never compare fallout 76 to any game because that game it hot garbage and fallout fans deserve way more than what they got. Pokemon at the very least isnt completely broken, and works when you plug in the game to the system. (I say not as a fallout or that much of a pokemon fan anymore)

[@darknessknows1235]

I think people should also keep in mind that Gamefreak went above and beyond for the end of Gen 4 and entirety of Gen 5. They've gotten lazy and are sticking their heads in the past.

[@BP-dn9nv]

I understand that increasing their work force isn't as easy as snapping their fingers six months before launch and expecting everything to go smoothly, but they could have still hired more people three years ago after Sun and Moon came out to help them do the work. If they're going to charge $20 more for a game, people can't expect no negative reactions when half the reason people buy that game is missing. I'm not going to send death threats to Gamefreak or anything stupid, but I do intend on holding out until the cost of the game goes down or for the third version before buying it. If Pokemon wants to be charged as a full priced game then it's going to be held at the standard of every other full priced game, and Gamefreak needs to look into increasing their workforce if that's going to happen.

[@NotBamOrBing]

Nintendo games don't reduce in price

[@lunatic0verlord10]

@@NotBamOrBing Then they better give us a game worth that current price.

[@prl4122]

Lunatic 0verlord they won’t because of videos like these that try to excuse everything wrong with the game. He’s even virtue signaling about them not making a better product because delays can potentially put people out of jobs like somehow that’s unique to Pokémon

[@lunatic0verlord10]

@@prl4122 I am thinking of unsubscribing from him... And of starting a movement to bully butt kissers into depression.

[@WaterKirby1994]

Pokemon's Anime & Manga won't suffer from GameFreak taking an extra year to make a generation good. Gens 3&4 were 4 year Generations & everyone was ok with that. The manga suffers more than the games from these deadlines. Gen 5 manga is still ongoing, while the Gen6&7 mangas were severely rushed. Is it right for the quality of both the games & manga to be sacrificed so that Pokemon's Trading Card & Merchandising companies can be lazy rather than show creativity? Of course the answer should be obvious & Pokemon International has been making way too many mistakes throughout the 2010s. GameFreak needs to increase their workforce & actually be more ambitious for the series. Also it's shocking that Pokemon chooses not to reveal next gen Pokemon early & have them appear in the anime anymore. The last time we got a significantly early reveal pokemon was in Gen 3 with Munchlax, Bonsly, Mime Jr, Weavile, & Lucario. It's unfortunate that we don't get spinoffs anymore except for Detective Pikachu games. Why did Ranger Series get cancelled? It seems these days all Pokemon International cares about is the Mobile Phone game market.

[@Alias_Anybody]

Back in the days, the anime suffered to be able to properly finish the games. Now, they kick the games out of the door no matter what to not delay the other stuff. Also, budget and team are tiny in comparison to begin with. For someone only interested in the games that's pretty upsetting.

[@Edax_Royeaux]

I'm glad Gold and Silver got delayed, they were the finest Pokemon game I ever played the only Pokemon sequel to actually feel bigger than the predecessor. It's no coincidence that HeartGold was the last Pokemon title I ever finished.

[@ExKiwi-yw8er]

i dont care about dexit but by gosh i wish gamefreak left themselves a little more time for polish.

[@lockscorparationunrapped4309]

I do to

[@someman8772]

They literally do copy and paste models though. The only change they make is to update the textures. The animations in this game are also a complete joke, and you can't sit here and tell me they couldn't have copy-pasted those onto all the Pokemon. So no, I'm not gonna be satisfied with what Game Freak deigns to shit into my mouth.

[@poisondamage2182]

funny how a team that made tiny game in the '90s isn't prepared to be a huge franchise machine, huh.

[@Doctor_Pazuzu]

There's a lot more work than you think in updating the textures, accommodating for the lighting, and making sure the animations work properly. I'm not saying they even did a good job doing THAT but...they probably couldn't have simply "copy and pasted those onto all the pokemon".

[@Shinius]

The whole "but they can't just mass hire, because then these newbies would make the game development even worse." No one is expecting the newbies to suddenly increase the productivity right away. But if your team cannot handle the projects given to them, at some point you're going to have to expand. During the expansion period, you're going to slow down while the newbies learn, but then once they become functioning members of the team, the game after that is going to have many more people working on it. You can't avoid the "newbies gotta learn" stage of expansion, so you might as well start now, otherwise your team will ALWAYS be small, because "you can't devote time to teaching newbies on this strict of a schedule."

[@cookie8162]

I hear your frustration, it's tough to hear that the games are the least important thing when it comes to this franchise being profitable, not to mention a new game brings in a new gen but after it does that its not really important anymore everything else in the franchise makes more money

[@CyberMinerCrafting]

Also - if they really *have* avoided hiring new employees as many commenters have mentioned, their team will LITERALLY die eventually. Their employees will age out of the workforce and they'll be left with nobody to do any real work because they've refused to expand their team in the 20+ years they've had to facilitate turnover.

[@ViewtifulDevil]

Geoff, you made some good arguments here and I agree that "just hire more" is not a catch-all solution to the issue and has some drawbacks in and of itself. Eventually Pokemon will get too big to have an all encompassing game for. That being said, that time is not now. I don't ever think just making it "Good Enough" is quite an acceptable goal for a developer with so many resources, especially when "good enough" equates to "less than what we were doing before." Also would've been nice to address that, while it's not "just" copy and pasting assets, most Pokemon assets and animations HAVE been proven to be re-used with little to no changes (other than disconnected tris for some reason). In a world were post-release content is a thing (and Nintendo being often able to supply it for free), I see little excuse for Pokemon not being able to get an hard initial release deadline AND not skimp on it's content. That's not even considering that most new Pokemon games effectively get a "second try" with an extra year (or more) of dev time in the third version.

[@commonviewer2488]

I would much rather Game Freak start using updates and DLC than keep making these third versions. There is no good reason for them to exist anymore.

[@Alias_Anybody]

Sure, just increasing the team makes it also less efficient because communication and coordination become more difficult. But a) Pokemon still completely seperates overworld and battle screens/fighting, which means that you can easily outsource the latter to another team, and b) you could also copy the model of Call of Duty which uses no less than 3 different teams to keep up a yearly schedule. If you have to pump it out once a year at least make it decent.

[@Gumbrases]

Alias Anybody also there are enough programmers online who can work with the Pokémon engine and are probably willing to cooperate with much passion but are shut down by Nintendo and pkm company

[@duncanmacleod6274]

I think those making the argument that they can't just increase the team size to solve most of the issues are not looking at all of the relevant information here. While that point is potentially valid in theory, GameFreak is MUCH smaller than it should be to begin with. They aren't a big AAA studio that should try to get bigger to improve their games, they actually have a very small development team with no legitimate excuse for not expanding to meet the demands of the games they are making. Yeah, there is such a thing as getting too big, and they are nowhere near that threshold.

[@lunatic0verlord10]

@@Alias_Anybody Never thought I'd see CoD used as a good example in anything.

[@phoenixking62]

I don't think you've been half fair to many of the arguments that people have behind their complaints, and I'm not saying that as a fan-boy or anything. I've never even played a pokemon game (except for GO! and only for like a month), so I really don't have any attachment to the series or characters or anything, and I think I've only seen like 3 episodes of the anime. There are a lot of arguments that you kinda just push aside with "game development is complicated" and "better people have already explained this", but "it's complicated" is not a satisfactory answer and a lot of those "better people"'s arguments have been thoroughly rebuffed(unless of course there is some master argument I haven't seen yet, which is possible but I find unlikely). It's easy to argue against the worst arguments posed by your potential detractors, but not even including some of the better arguments seems pretty disingenuous. But that's just my 2 cents.

[@beruman]

they have had the money to hire more people and ramp up stuff the right way for how many seasons now? Sure it would be unreasonable now but the stagnation has been evident for quite a while and its only now boiling over.

[@duncanmacleod6274]

Oh, they've been in a position to expand for at least 10-15 years. They just don't want to.

[@sweggs3599]

"game devs need time to create new models" "Gamefreak says they created new models for new system" "All models added turns out to be old models so in reality game freak lied" "PEOPLE NEED TO GIVE THE GAME SOME SLACK WHY ARE PEOPLE ANGRY AT THEM FOR REUSING ASSETS HOLY SHIT U GUYS ARE CRYBABY MAN CHILDREN WHO WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND DEVS" jeff i love ya man but a team of

[@divyanshmalik5135]

9:43 this is one point i'll heavily disagree with. with the current state of pokemon adventures the more recent arcs have been rushed heavily so the author can get the the new Pokemon game arc out on time. for example, the entire SM arc, Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, and to an extent ultra sun and ultra moon had major tonal whiplash and undeveloped characters in order to showcase the new items from the updated versions of the game. this is especially seen in USUM where in previous chapters the "updated" games like platinum and fire red leaf green (even emerald and ORAS) had separate chapters after the main event of the first game. USUM didn't have that because it was in production with BW2 which is STILL GOING ON due to the the heavy delays needed to make a new manga for the new games. I mean look at the sword and shield manga, it literally has chapter one out after USUM had it's ending chapter. the author hadn't had the time to play sword and shield due to it's release being later and had to crank out something in advance. really, more gaps between pokemon would help adventures tremendously ( and also get BW2 done as fast as possible). TL;DR More time between Pokemon games=better adventures arcs. current adventure arcs are being rushed b/c lack of time between games and demand for the manga to come out in line with said game, and BW2 is still unfinished.

[@sinkmagg0t]

AND they should hire, i don't know, an actual writer

[@RoyalFusilier]

Yeah, I was gonna say, "they consistently get the product out on time" isn't actually necessarily good. At all. Because you know who always gets the Product out on Time? FIFA.

[@divyanshmalik5135]

@@sinkmagg0t for the manga or the games?

[@zjzr08]

And the animé too, as I argue the Alola League had rushed spots IMO (although it's already rare that we see all matches in a league), and we also didn't get closure for Mallow and her search for Mohn.

[@QuintaFeira12]

Literally just let other studios work on games. That would give both GameFreak and the other studio more time. They used to have a Team B that worked on "third versions and remakes", and we got HGSS and B2W2 out of it.

[@MeteoRaizor]

Pokemon X and Y released only three years after Black and White, and in that time frame they were able to fully model and animate (FROM SCRATCH) 649 pre-existing pokemon, 72 new pokemon, 28 mega evolutions, a number of other unique forms, a full cast of human characters and NPCs, and the game world itself. They did this without skimping on any of the mechanics and features fans expected, at least for the first releases of a new generation, which are historically lighter on content than their enhanced versions.

[@raze2012_]

uhh what? Pokemon X had what's still the most paltry endgame of any pokemon game and the sales were "bad" (for a pokemon game), to the point where they didn't even bother with the in-gen follow up for the first time ever. It may have paid off in the long run, but it certain did make a dent to the game series.

[@EinstinStinium]

@@raze2012_ that's not why we didn't get a "Pokemon Z" it's because at the same time Game Freak's A team was prioritized on finding a new big game for Game Freak which drew resources from the development of mainline games.

[@Bionickpunk]

What you mean they didnt skimp on any mechanics? The game was half baked, short, and lacked polish.

[@andrewmcclean823]

The 3d modelling was outsourced

[@winfordlee7151]

A big part of it is that the mascots are so hecking adorable.

[@WillWatches]

It’s the Cute/Cool balance. Appeals to both boys and girls

[@JoseAlberto-dh8pf]

@@WillWatches something a lot of Pokemon clones don't achieve, only a few

[@jex1689]

Yeah like Pikachu, Charizard, eevee, Cosplay pikachu, Charizard Tgc cards, Legendaries, Gen 1 pokemon nostalgia, jigglypuff, and. The starters.

[@mackielunkey2205]

Justin X Particulary Rowlet and Mudkip.

[@kingsmithie1712]

Oh, and im here thinking of The pokeball guy from sw/sh😔

[@Eliagiulio]

Hold up Geoff, counterpoints to your arguments. 1. Regarding the hire more people argument: yes, it can be risky to mass hire. But here is why they should still do it (or at least try): most of the complaints stem from inconsistent quality in the games (animations, textures, etc). These are problems that can be fixed easily either hiring some sort of second company and only have them handle animations or hiring more people (the only real risk you run here is getting a-holes at the job, since the skill required for the animations doesn't seem to be too much, hell a college student animated a Wingull in the Wild area better than GF did in one day or something). 2. If the problem is the 3-year-crunch cycle (I wholly doubt GF would actually make a better game, if they had more time, they have lost all of my respect after I started digging a bit when the whole issue with the models and animations and you know, them openly lying about stuff, exploded), then there are 2 ways to solve it. Either A. you make the cycle longer, anticipating that it's going to take longer (this is especially possible now that the anime is visiting all regions and that the movies have come into play. TPC can buy GF more time with stuff like that) or B. split the license regarding Pokemon. Have GF handle their next cash grab cow and give another team that doesn't have crushing time constraints the chance to actually make a Pokemon game with actual new mechanics, a new look, etc. and a general fresh look at the game without having to worry about creating 100+ new mons. This concludes my TedxTalk

[@swebartender4697]

also doesn't game freak have a company that only does the pokemon models. Creatures (the company) does most if not all pokemon's model, sure the also produce the tcg but still

[@Eliagiulio]

@@swebartender4697 I dunno much about Creatures, but hey if that's true, add that to the pile of incompetence/bullshit for Game Freak

[@TORchic1]

It seems like GF broke off their partnership with Creatures. I have to find the article.

[@swebartender4697]

TORchic1 well noting is confirmed yet, the website for both companies doesn’t show the other company as partner. So they may have ended it, we can’t say yet until someone from those company or Nintendo say something

[@Eliagiulio]

@@TORchic1 Serious? That'd be massive

[@Slivr]

You've got this all wrong - they should have hired enough people to do the job before they started making the game. There are no excuses to make, game freak decided to make the game without the national dex, and hired accordingly

[@Yamartim]

Let's be real tho the controversy would be much smaller if they didn't lie justifying the lack of pokemon by saying they made new models and more detailed animations when they clearly didn't. Also yeah a lot of companies would suffer if they delayed the game after all the pre production, but if they managed their time better by giving a larger time of pre production to acomodate a game of larger scope that sword/shield should've been this wouldn't have been a problem. And something else they could do to give the devs more time is just not have made the last two half-baked filler games ultra sun/moon and let's go pikachu/eevee, quality over quantity you know? A lot of fans feel like the quality of the games has been lowering exactly because they started that terrible yearly release schedule that as we all know ruins tons of big franchises...

[@prl4122]

Yamazake Whitesky meh even without considering the controversy this game does look terrible and is still embarrassing for a release in 2019. I thought that would bother me the most but I got over it pretty quickly and then discovered that they’re way more things that suck in this game than just the visuals that no one is really talking about

[@WaterKirby1994]

Sword & Shield are extremely flawed games, & the Manga has been suffering since Gen 6 started because of the new generation every 3 years thing. Gen 5 manga is still ongoing while Gens 6&7 are being severely rushed because of the games being rushed for releases. I don't think the people making the anime would be effected too much by making filler episodes. Part of the problem is how blind Pokemon International is to their own product & its needs. Pokemon hasn't known what they were doing for the entire 2010s decade seeing how they allowed Iris to be champion despite her role in the Gen5 anime. TCG & Merchandise can survive an extra year between generations if they planned things better.

[@WaterKirby1994]

@Harrison Klebold Dude what the crap are you talking about? GameFreak lied on multiple occasions, they claimed they were making Sword & Shield for the long term fanbase, which was a lie. They claimed the dexcut was to balance the game, yet they unbalanced everything with Dynamaxing & by keeping all the powercreeps introduced in Gen5. What are you referring to by review bomb another game & encourage piracy? Also what does scalping mean? This is the 1st I've heard of Pokemon getting accused of sexual crimes as well. Are you sure there's proof in what you're saying? These rumors are bad & dangerous. I'm still not over what happened with Vic Mignogna yet & don't want to hear of more sexual misconduct cases.

[@brianfong5711]

1:22 George Carlin: Meteors don't rise, they fall.

[@MogekoMagica]

This title couldn't be more accurate... *Oh how the mighty have fallen...* People are pissed because GF let us down. Look at every 1st party Nintendo title having a new breath of life breathed into each of them. They've been delivering rushed projects to keep up with a schedule. What we want is a good game. A leap from DS to Switch. It's an oversimplified, "undercooked", uninspired, poorly optimized rushed game. This isn't an arguement, this game isn't even close to meeting AAA or indie 7th gen console. Either supply GF with more employees and a larger workspace, or give the series to a company like MonolithSoft. SnS are embarrassing. And Capitalism isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

[@WaterKirby1994]

Also Pokemon International really could give GameFreak an extra year for each generation, they've done it before & that really helps the manga which has been severely rushed since Gen 6, while Gen 5 never even finished its manga adaptation. Anime can just have filler & we could have early reveals like Togepi & Munchlax again. The last time we got significantly early revealed Pokemon was in Gen 3 with Munchlax, Bonsly, Mime Jr, Weavile, & Lucario.

[@lucastv719]

Considering the manga is adding SWSH on top of the unfinished SM/USUM and B2W2 arcs, I think we’re okay on waiting on that front

[@TheSuperqami]

lucastv719 hello! 4 months later, BW2 and SMUSUM arcs have concluded! Though, I’m pretty sure SMUSUM had already ended when you wrote that comment

[@Aaronrules380]

My issue with the multimedia machine arguement is that the current anime that just launched isn't even labeled as a sword shield anime, has Ash based in Kanto and visiting every region and thus stuff like the orange islands isn't really a good point anymore

[@WaterKirby1994]

Also there's the fact that the Pokemon Manga has been suffering from the rushed releases of the games. Gen 5's Manga never actually finished, while Gen 6 was severely rushed in favor of Gen7.

[@markmolayal9402]

The last time I was this early we were holding out for a Sinnoh remake

[@thunderflare59]

So...forever?

[@clerkinator1304]

At this point I'm afraid how they'll massacre my boy

[@markmolayal9402]

@@clerkinator1304 Pokemon Platinum but without half the Sinnoh Dex

[@AlphaladZXA]

I dont even want a sinnoh remake now for another 5 years

[@Excellsion]

Alright yeah, mass hirings would be problematic, but there's this thing called planning ahead. Slowly hire the RIGHT people going forward from now on. I can accept that Pokemon cannot ever be everything that Gamefreak and all the fans want, but if they want to scale back on their intentions to the smallest degree, they should basically always be looking for people to expand the workforce. Gamefreak is a small company people wise, and if they can figure out how to do this much with all the restrictions, acquiring more of the right people is the solution. That's the bit that bugs me at this point. I don't buy that skilled programmers that would work well with everyone else are so rare that they can't find any, (which, mind you, is paraphrased rebuttal someone gave me, that programmers are SO hard to find IN GENERAL). Honestly, if news breaks that Gamefreak is working to expand their team(s) that would be pretty great publicity for them and go a long way to please a lot of people, as it would show they can recognize and address a weakness. It really is the complaint that has the weakest rebuttals to it. More people would help, and they can find those people starting now. Heck, let's start small, can the goal for next time be at LEAST 50% of the pokemon? Oh also apparently there is a Pokemon with SEVENTY FORMS, so there's a discussion to be had on prioritization but that is a whole other topic.

[@yourfriendlyinternetmeatshield]

Given how long this series has been around, I'm sure there are plenty of Japanese people that grew up playing this game, and loved it so much they went into programming and would consider it their dream job to work for GameFreak, and they probably turn these people away all the time. That is such a weak argument that "some assholes" would harm productivity. People can be fired, it's not hard to solve. They knew their schedule, they knew the scope, they had plenty of time to prepare, this is exactly the product they wanted to make. They it would outsell every other game that came before, because of course it will when you charge twice the price for games people frequently by both versions of, just because. When they know that people will just buy whatever they crap out, and they can and will get away with it, there is zero reason to produce anything near what the potential product could be, and it is supported and made financially viable by those very people.

[@senaruryuin2773]

And not only that, it doesn't change that gamefreak did lie about why things were cut. They should have just been honest about things

[@Edax_Royeaux]

I don't think it's wrong to point out that for such a profitable franchise, there is a disappointing lack of ambition on display.

[@shingshongshamalama]

They absolutely should be, however, _increasing_ the size of the studio isn't necessarily a good idea. You have to compartmentalize things in a way that means you effectively have to give your developers multiple separate projects. Having too many people working on one thing at a time is just a logistical nightmare.

[@prl4122]

shingshongshamalama sure but what ever they’re currently doing is hindering the quality of their product, the whole “well doing x won’t solve anything” is usually what people say when they don’t want change despite there being obvious flaws in the current method

[@caswellweird]

So this went from an interesting topic on the hows and whys of Pokemon's marketing to blatant strawmanning in defense of swsh. I was with you up until you made the argument that more manpower wouldnt work because "some employees might be bad at their job." Game Freak has proven time and time again that they are completely incompetent with development, they need more competent directors and programmers to help them avoid needlessly wasting their short schedule.

[@geasslordzero]

this is a very poorly researched video. it has already been proven by dataminers that game freak DID import the assets for the pokemon from the previous games. there is no reason outside of lazyness and greed that they could not have imported all the models to the new games.

[@rogofos]

Why not just give more time for Gamefreak to make NEXT game?

[@jacobhero1577]

I expected this game to be like Mario Odyssey ngl like cmon bro this is a HUGE event... and yet the corner cutting is obvious

[@commonviewer2488]

They clearly rushed Gen 8, but I still don't think Game Freak will extend dev time. Pokémon releases annually now, after all.

[@CometX-ing]

РОГОФОС what they need to do is start shifting the way the franchise is handled to allow them more time to make the game.

[@Cwestlov]

Saying "Game Freak can't just hire more ppl with all their money because hiring ppl is a difficult undertaking and running a business is hard you guys" is the dumbest non argument I've heard related to this conversation yet. Take your Game Freak cape off you goober.

[@thunderflare59]

Gold and Silver, the second best selling Pokemon games, were delayed. Diamond and Pearl, the third best selling, were delayed. Sounds like those delays weren't problems. Sure didn't stop the momentum. Also, took one week for modders to put banned Pokemon in the games. Hmmmmmmm.

[@Edax_Royeaux]

Gold and Silver were the only sequels that were significantly bigger in scope with almost double the map, double the gyms and double the pokemon and I loved them for it. My interest in Pokemon has waned since Gold and Silver since there's been a disappointing lack of ambition on display ever since. It's no coincidence that the last title I completed was HeartGold, since then I've just been watching and reading in-depth reviews. Having so many of the original pokemon missing and having the games almost completely lacking in challenge just makes we wonder why I'd even play another pokemon game. I can't even bring my dreamteam from HeartGold into any of the later games so there's almost no outlet for my nogsitia.

[@CronoEpsilon]

Recently, it just feels like each entry is always cutting content in someway to justify itself. Now, we're at the point where they're cutting the Pokemon themselves. Honestly, I just don't see this as a good thing.

[@Gameorama91]

It's really not a big deal. People dont complain when mechanics and content arent carried over to new Mario Games, they just get excited for the new thing they try. So why do people suddenly want Pokemon to keep every feature they've had? The generation specific features gives each gen it's own identity and a reason to replay them. Also all the pokemon isn't a big deal. They still exist, and they will be back in other games, which will make fans of those excited to see them again. (Which is how EVERY OTHER MONSTER FOCUSED RPG works, and none of their fanbases complain that not every single monster is in every single game lol)

[@CronoEpsilon]

@@Gameorama91 The difference is that Pokemon fundamanetally hasn't changed from what it was since it released on Gameboy. So, when things are removed it makes little sense in most cases and is very noticeable. My problem with games like Let's Go and Sword/Shield is that so much has been content has been removed that I have very little reason to play it at all.

[@prl4122]

Gameorama91 yeah but Pokémon does replace the cut content with anything, even if we go as early as usum, swsh has less content than a game on the 3ds. You’d be hard pressed to name a single thing this game does that the old games didn’t that don’t just some goofy half cooked gimmick. Mario and Zelda games are all very distinct from another and even at their worst they’re always experimenting and trying push the genre they represent so yeah that’s why we give shit to Pokémon and not other franchises

[@BlazeMakesGames]

I'm willing to give S&S some slack considering that maybe they just messed up with their first real mainline title on switch and they couldn't delay it due to existing contracts and blahblahblah. BUT, lets be real here. This means that they have no excuse for the next game. Now is the perfect time to start increasing the scope of your company and dedicating more resources to try and improve on the problems that people complained about. They can work out their next set of deals to give themselves more time to make the next games great. One thing is that Game Freak is tiny by AAA standards considering how much money they make. They're basically guaranteed 10 million sales per gen no problem, which is absurd. Capcom just released its highest selling game of all time, Monster Hunter World, and it still hasn't sold as much as the worst selling generation of pokemon (X/Y at 16 million and that's only because they didn't get a third game) and I'm sure Sword and Shield will surpass it as well in like a year. The fact that pokemon hasn't grown over the last 20 years into the largest game studio of all time is kind of ridiculous. I mean obviously they don't need to be that big but you'd think they'd be up to AAA standards of size by now. But, based on past trends. I'm willing to bet a million dollars that game freak will barely grow, and that the Diamond and Pearl Remakes that come out like next year will miraculously include a lot of the pokemon that weren't in Sword and Shield, and then the games that come out after those will miraculously include more pokemon. Basically I'm honestly not even convinced that it was development problems that caused the Dex Cut, or if there were, then they were problems that competent programmers could've solved easily. If modders manage to pull off modding in the whole dex inside of a few months, that'll just go to show that they didn't really even need that much time or manpower to do it. Imo, the best solution is to just licence out the games again. Let someone else make them and actually put time, effort, and competent programmers behind the helm and watch as it somehow ends up being much better modeled and animated, as has been the case in the past. But for real these other companies won't be beholden to the same time frame as the core games so they'd be free to put more time in it without such a strict schedule.

[@zjzr08]

The POLICY GOING FORWARD announcement and their hesitance for DLC even a year or so after makes it hard for me to give the benefit of the doubt -- like a sign that Masuda seems tired of being a game director and announces less to work with in the future. IMO managing the games within the the franchise cog has to be a lot better. Maybe give the reins to another trusted GF developer like maybe Morimoto (who famously wanted a lot of content for HGSS). When you see other aspects like the mobile with Masters (search their update video and see their passion to improve) you can see that the core games are ironically getting left behind.

[@HeIifano]

The only real problem I have with Dexit is that it was all but proven that they did *actually* copy models from Let's Go. There's little reason that they couldn't at least bring forward all original 151 pokemon (+Alolan forms).

[@AKAProm]

because the work done to the texture work and making sure they play nice with the lighting would've been less time to work on bringing on Pokemon not included in Let's Go. There is already a horrible case of "Gen One'er" within Pokemon, we don't need half the dex just being Generation One. As much as I like Leon, I absolutely hate that he has a Charizard and that Charmander was the only returning starter, I would've rather had no returning starters.

[@kaseymorris8456]

I feel like The Pokémon games have a lot in common with apple. Even if game freak and Nintendo puts out a lackluster game and everyone complains about it, we're still gonna buy it out of principle. Nintendo has no incentive to improve Pokémon to where it CAN be

[@prl4122]

Kasey Morris you mean gamefreak, for all the fuckery Nintendo engages in theyre usually about quality control even it means less money

[@PredictableEnigma]

Nah man I will never buy apple stuff

[@goldenxp9404]

Nah both Samsung and apple trippin rn. I mean tf happen

[@kryzethx]

Unfortunately, unlike Apple, Pokemon was actually good once. Android for liiife

[@strav8672]

Game Freak were not using their "A Team", (they're quote). Their "A Team" is working on "Town", not to question how good the team that made Sword/Shield, but it's a question of how much resources they aren't using for their first main game on a non-handheld system. There's so many out-of-date animations that make it seem like they didn't put much into the game, double kick being a prime example, the attacking pokemon jumps twice and you see a dust cloud appear on the opposing pokemon twice. I agree that there are people that took their reactions to the decisions made too far, but as Jim Sterling put it, when Game Freak spent 2 decades creating the idea that each person is going to have their favorite pokemon and then immediately cut about 2/3's of the past pokemon, people are going to be angry. And that is when you don't want the game to be "Good Enough". That is when you put out your best and give consumers a reason to forgive that their favorite didn't make the cut

[@kryzethx]

...I'm not sure how to tell you this, but "Town" has already been released (as Little Town Hero), and its reception was... lukewarm at best. It also had zero marketing leading up to its release, so not many even knew it was out, much less played it. And the ones who DID play it, mostly seem to think it was mediocre at best; a novel concept with poor execution, etc. If Little Town Hero and Pokémon SwSh is what happens when they split their team, then they need to never split their team ever again.

[@TheKeybladeKeeper]

Dylan Travis this. Pretty sure they said (paraphrasing of course) that they don’t want Pokémon to be their main focus anymore, and want to come up with new IPs. They should’ve at least waited until Sw/Sh were out to release Town

[@TheKeybladeKeeper]

Chris Reyes that’s exactly what happened. They decided both needed to be in development instead of staggering release dates. So both games suffered. No marketing for Town. It’s variety was all but scrapped. And Pokémon was downsized it seems

[@estebancorrales3476]

TheKeybladeKeeper did you not watch the video?

[@FunkBastid]

A lot of kind excuses for Gamefreak here. How do you explain the laughably inefficient storage of files and duplicate animations that eat up storage space and slow the game down overall? Also, nice dab on the capicucks fellow comrade!

[@Catpuff818]

So I shouldn't blame a company for not having the foresight to gradually expand the team of the biggest game on earth according to the demands they have and just be happy that pokemon games will never be more than just an incomplete game that could've been great? Rhetorical question aside, if they're going to keep prioritizing making the games on time rather than releasing a quality product they could at least lower the price of their games a bit. No one should have to pay 60 dollars for a game that feels so unpolished at every turn.

[@brandondearmas294]

Ok but that's not what they said if they said we didn't have time and we can't delay it was their reason for no may dex, then I wouldn't b upset, my issue is they lied

[@meaninglez100]

A lot of these arguments can be applied to other companies as well. Especially the hiring more people thing. Because that's how all companies work. Everyone has schedules. Everyone has business partners. These are not isolated to Gamefreak just because of their size. I simply don't buy that this was the best possible outcome given the circumstance. But all that aside, I just think 60 bucks is too much to ask for it. If we gotta cut down on the quality of the games to match the self cannibalizing schedule, I think the price should reflect that.

[@naggl3s]

Ok, but the argument against the reason for cutting the dex is that they didn't have to do any extra work. They made the 3D models with the idea of future-proofing them. This is proven because every other model in the game that was of a Pokemon of a previous game is the same exact model. While I do not care to have the National Dex, I also don't see why it couldn't be added when it was a simple importing of files. And if you argue that it was to save space on the game card, Pokemon Sword and Shield are not nearly as close to being as big as say Zelda BotW or Odyssey. So no, I don't excuse Game Freak for doing that. Besides that though, the rest of the points are valid and I really enjoyed the video.

[@rept7]

I wonder how much of the dexit 'controversy' would have gone away if TPC just revealed what Pokemon Home actually is? If it was a cool ongoing game that focused on non-adventure and non-battling based features instead of just another Pokemon Bank, I'd be excited. Game Freak could work on simpler games and let Home take care of the weird 'lifestyle game' features that people who want more long term engagement with their favorite Pokémon want. Even if it'd have to be a games-as-a-service... Because capitalism... (Though if it was just another Pokémon Bank, woo boy, the ding dongs would only gain more power)

[@WaterKirby1994]

You mean like My Pokemon Ranch was for Diamond & Pearl? Let's not forget how Pokemon is prioritizing this thing called Pokemon Sleep over actual spinoff games.

[@TheMessinger47]

I feel TPC/GF's silence speaks volumes about Home. I doubt it will be any more than Bank + GTS (oh yeah, they removed the GTS from SwSh. greeaat). I think Jim Sterling had it right: Pokemon is one of the few examples where a live service could be beneficial to all parties

[@holyelixir4580]

I fully understand and can accept why all 900+ pokemon aren't in Sword and shield. What I CANNOT accept is the absolute joke of a difficulty that last few games have been. There is almost zero challenge in the franchise since X&Y. All i want is the old exp share and a damn difficulty setting

[@hunterwynn3826]

Honestly Sword & Shield feels like a lackluster game. Sure, the act of catching and training Pokemon is still just as fun as the other games, but everything surrounding the game just isn't thought out that well. Like the story is pretty meh when compare to Sun & Moon, the gigantamax pokemon is down right stupid with how you have to find them during specific raids instead of being tied to the Pokemon species like Mega Evolution, and the little amount that is in this game. This feels lackluster from the last Pokemon game, which is a shame since it feels that the 3DS game had more improvement than the game that's on powerful hardware.

[@McSnezzly]

It’s a baby game. It’s okay if you wanna turn off your brain, but it’s really a shame how bad it is, even compared to Let’s Go in terms of simplicity and hand holding

[@zgamer200]

I recognize that delaying a Pokemon game would make things incredibly difficult for everything else for Pokemon from the card games to the anime, etc., but as you said, it's pretty disappointing that such a storied and lucrative franchise has devolved to just "good enough." If GameFreak needs more time to work on the games, I don't get why they don't hire more devs and have a 3rd party company model the Pokemon for them. Pokemon is literally the highest grossing multimedia IP in the world by a significant margin, so it disappoints me that they won't pour more resources into the games. I get why it is the way it is. Sword and Shield have proven that Pokemon is a big enough IP at this point that any controversies it faces is never going to slow it down. I just wish that the Pokemon games would challenge themselves to be the best they can be, and to grow and evolve. The series just feels really stale in my opinion, especially without old side series like Pokemon Ranger and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Seriously, how epic would an Action RPG Pokemon game be? I'd love to see something like that, but I just don't think we ever will because The Pokemon Company knows they've struck gold, and it's not broken, so why bother changing things? And that's my root issue so far with Gen 8 when back in Gen 7 it seemed like Game Freak was making an effort to be different.

[@commonviewer2488]

Game Freak didn't make any of the spin-offs, so I don't see why another studio could be placed in charge of an Action RPG Pokémon game. I would really like to see that.

[@theprettypetard2524]

sadly video game face the reality that they are a business first so making money and cuting cost is something that will happen to all of them. why spend more money to make the best game there ever was when it won't make you that much more than if you just made an okay game. let's say for example making an okay game take 2 year and 200 mil and will make 1 billion in sale and making an amazing one would take 3 years and 300 mil and would make 1.4 billion in sale (it also is a bit of a gamble). if you look at those number and put them in a 6 years period the okay games would make 3b in sale (2.4b in profit) and the the amazing would only make 2.8b in sale (2.2b in profit) if you consider the fact that it is also a gamble to put more money into it you can see why it's so unfavorable to do so and understand why well polished game are getting so rare from triple A studio.

[@commonviewer2488]

@@theprettypetard2524 It also doesn't help that costs for the mobile games are a lot lower, yet they are insanely profitable. Pokémon Go has broken many records with how many people downloaded it, and how much it made, and continues to make.

[@Alias_Anybody]

Last time they made an effort in terms of gameplay was Gen 5. Now in Gen 8 they don't even try with the graphics any more.

[@commonviewer2488]

@@Alias_Anybody A little unfair, the art and music design is still good. The towns look better than they ever have. It's just upsetting that Game Freak didn't push the graphics much further than "HD 3DS."

[@Miiias]

I can only partially agree, yes hiring many new employees at once is with very few exceptions mostly just counterproductive. But the rising amount of employees that gamefreak needs with the continuation of the game isn't a problem that just exists since the switch came out, but is something that was expected already when they started the project to convert all of the pokemons to vector graphics. The management clearly failed here to create an organized long term hiring and training plan. In a company carrying as you already said such a heavy responsibility on their shoulders is just inexcusable. I know this isn't an easy task, but they had the resources and time available to hire people who are good at managing these kind of tasks. edit: I know this may not solve the entire problem, but getting at least 50+ more pokemons into the game would have been totally achievable

[@Mixman1133]

Great video! Is the title really accurate though? I feel like calling it something like "Dexit: Playing Devil's Advocate or Not?"

[@lunatic0verlord10]

And *THAT* is a title who's answer is yes. And I'm not the kind of guy who likes to play Devil's Advocate for crummy companies like TPC. I much prefer playing Devil's Prosecutor.

[@caiooliveirasilva1690]

But the models were copy pasted ...

[@novaroseoooooo]

"It'll probably take a while" --Mother's Basement, 2019, on ending capitalism

[@Edax_Royeaux]

The Russians managed to end capitalism in North Korea pretty quickly now that I think on it.

[@roycephillips2920]

​And look at how well that went.

[@Daniel-qt5ib]

Except the reasons they claimed for the Dex cut was to improve the animations (which are shit) and to update all the models, which are confirmed to have just been imported straight from SM. They also spend what must be a vast amounts of time and resources developing beloved game mechanics and features such as triple/rotation battles, following Pokemon, season cycle, day/night cycle, mega evolutions, and Z moves (to name a few), and then TRASH those mechanics one generation later. Your point about the Pokemon franchise having to be a well-oiled machine that runs in-time with the clock is a valid one, but how GameFreak run themselves cannot be considered efficient by any stretch of the imagination. Most game studios could do more in the same time period than GameFreak.

[@WaterKirby1994]

Actually the manga & anime don't need the New Generation games to be rushed out every 3 years with the Manga actually suffering from the games getting rushed out. Gen5 manga still hasn't been able to finish, while the Gen6 manga was severely rushed reducing its quality. Gen 7's manga really shouldn't be rushed like Gen 6 manga was. I agree it was completely pointless to have Dynamax & Gigantimax when they'll just be abandoned rather than returning fan favorite features like Mega Evos & Following Pokemon. There's no defending Sword & Shield. Pokemon X&Y were far more of a leap than Sword & Shield as they actually had all 721 Pokemon at the time given future proof models for that 1 game made from scratch & there was everything else in 3D in addition to Mega Evolutions. I think we should be complaining to Nintendo & asking them to save Pokemon from this severe mismanagement by Masuda & whoever the guy who runs Pokemon International that thought the Switch would flop was. Nintendo needs to tell them that Switch Games are the priority over Mobile Phone games & that they can't keep lying to the fans about why their games are an embarrassment to the Switch despite their overwhelming number of sales. Miyamoto saw to it that Mario & Legend of Zelda got far better games on Switch, & should explain that what Pokemon is doing is only hurting their reputation.

[@AquilaPainWhy]

Game freak isn't at fault here, it's the TPC and Nintendo. People always blame Gamefreak, they did nothing wrong, TPC and Nintendo made miscommunications, bad decisions for the game and now that Pokemon Unite is coming out, TPC made the decision that "OH F*CK LET'S SIDE WITH THE CHINESE". Gamefreak is trying their best. TPC is just shit.

[@IronDino]

7:20 "You've already heard, probably more than once, that modelling an animating the entire Pokedex is a massive task..." 7:35 "You've also been told that that process is a lot more complicated than just copying and pasting assets from game to game." To both points. No. But I've heard and seen and explained the exact opposite by graphic designers, and animators, and the like more than once. If there are links to the contrary, I'd more than welcome them.

[@Celia_Dawn]

Wasn't there a modeler who was literally able to hack the game and copy paste an old model (ie one of the same ones that SWSH is using right now) in less than a day?

[@putridmoldyman306]

@@Celia_Dawn Also thered that all the models are from last gen anyway

[@Houdini111]

4:06 Hmm.... I don't think they've gotten better at that. I think it's more that they've stopped delaying games, even when it's needed.

[@lunatic0verlord10]

Exactly, older games were more polished. Before, the game release was influencing the other stuff, now the other stuff is influencing the game release.

[@WaterKirby1994]

Manga & Games are both suffering these days from these rushed deadlines. Really it's probably Pokemon International wanting yearly game releases in time for December as the anime can use filler, while the TCG & Merchandise can be creative during the time of delay. We've had 4 year Gens before so there's no reason we have to have every gen be 3 years these days.

[@TigeriPlaysGames]

pretty sure that footage you used of the HD texture mod was very early footage that pretty much only existed to prove they could do it, the textures look much nicer now.

[@PredictableEnigma]

That's good to hear. But it still just feels like people that tried to do hyper realistic renders of Wind Waker when it came out as if that "fixed" it

[@TeryJones]

@@PredictableEnigma My thoughts exactly, hyper realism in video games is more of a hindrance than people like to believe, just look at Sonic '06.

[@LzKal]

@@TeryJones I dont need the game to look hyper realistic I just want it to look better than a 3ds game

[@TeryJones]

@@LzKal Well from what I've seen of the visuals it already does. So what's the problem?

[@LzKal]

@@TeryJones No it doesn't. It looks like they slightly tweaked sun and moon engine. Honestly its so minor I don't think they should have bothered making a new engine at all if they wasn't going to try making it look better. At least then maybe there would actually be stuff in the game to do.

[@OuterRing]

There is this cool thing called Out-Sourcing to get other big companies to help make assets for the Pokemon games so that its less of a load on the main design team. Nintendo out-sourced Plantinum Games create the vehicles and other parts of StarFox Zero as their main team could focus on game. Maybe Game Freak should just start hiring more people because they have already had Little Town Hero in development along side Sw&Sh splitting their staff and development. Tecmo Koei and their Team Ninja have been hired to help work on other games like FE:Three Houses and Smash4 so whats the really issue? Their Musou/Warriors franchise has like 200 characters and movesets, would of seem to be a perfect pick out-source modeling or just animation to them or atleast a portion to cut down work on gamefreak.

[@lunatic0verlord10]

*EXACTLY!!!* KT SHOULD BE WORKING ON POKÉMON!!!

[@raze2012_]

is starfox zero really the example you want to bring up in terms of how to deliver a quality product? Outsourcing is a double edged sword.

[@AlphaladZXA]

@@raze2012_ honestly starfox zero is the wrong comparison for different reasons, i blame the control scheme and the system it was released on in its failed twilight era.

[@FancyTophatDude]

I get a lot of your points, but let's be real: there are ways around all the problems with hiring additional employees. Are you gonna avoid them all of the time? Hell no. But most AAA productions face these problems when working with outsource studios, expanding their teams after big successes or just every time they hire new people. That's what recruitment teams, HR, Directors etc. are for. Yes you can't just double the size of your team in a day, but you can plan to increase it and integrate everyone properly along the way.

[@sumdud23]

just adding the number of employees won't be that good, cuz after some point, the dude named diminishing returns knocks on your doors(edit: what they could do is slowly build up a b team to make a god tier not mainline game...tho i don't know how feasible that is. also the dev cycle can't be too long long as they would prolly have to release it at near the launch of console to really max returns)

[@user-ff6lc1sl4l]

XYZ was an amazing anime. Better than the original series. And that’s coming from someone who grew up with the gen 1 explosion

[@Captain1nsaneo]

"Under our current system, Capitalism, money is the sole metric by which the success of large artistic endeavors can be judged. As well as the sole mechanism that allows more endeavors to be taken." Now there's something I'd never want to say in a public museum. Or to anyone who enjoys cult classics.

[@occamsaturn]

Yeah, I'm kinda just coming to terms with the fact that I don't care about pokemon now. It's heading in a direction that is for someone else, not me. I may be in the minority, but I would prefer less and less new pokemon and more and more features with old pokemon. So I guess I bid it farewell, and I can still love the old games.

[@WaterKirby1994]

I agree with you, we don't need new Generations every 3 years adding 70+ new Pokemon, we're better off with new Gens every 4 or 5 years doing that. There was no reason for us to get the Thanos Region this time.

[@stuartmatthews91]

I've heard this reasoning with the new pokedex before. while logically sound is no less disappointing to a fan of 20 years. I didn't set the expectation that pokemon is about catching them all. But I've lived with it the vast majority of my life. what this generation could have represented. the first full scale pokemon console experience.. I would have happily waited longer. perhaps it was poor planning to think moving to a new console and having to create new assets was doable in the same amount of time of previous iterations. there was clearly a choice made during development, I wish that choice was more about being the best it could be and not about selling toys and cards. at any rate we have the meh generation we have now and I'm likely not buying in. that tent pole between generations keeps getting smaller and smaller and I care a little less each time.

[@WaterKirby1994]

Well said, Pokemon has been rushing generations throughout the 2010s decade. Japan probably should have been getting 4 year waits for each 3DS Generation much like was done for the DS Era yet didn't. XY 2014, ORAS 2015, 2016 could have done something for the 20th Anniversary that wasn't a new generation. With that timeline Gen 7 may have ended up getting pushed to Switch in 2018 instead of 3DS. The Manga suffers more than the games from Pokemon being rushed. If Merchandise & TCG were creative they could have been able to wait an extra year. Besides we could have gotten significantly early Pokemon reveals like we used to get with Togepi or Munchlax to help sell toys.

[@jjrambles683]

The orange island episodes is some of my favorite Pokemon anime, and I never knew it was just filler for a game 😲

[@morrison215]

Well in all fairness, the orange islands were loosely based on the concept of the sevi? Seven? Islands that were added in Fire Red/Leaf Green. There was the intention to add a section of small islands the player would explore back in gen 1, but they were cut for a number of reasons, and it seems that looking for filler material, they were pitched that cut concept.

[@SecretIdentityStudio]

One of the most iconic filler arcs in anime, I'd say.

[@jjrambles683]

@@Fleshbag453 it makes me wonder if battle frontier was also filler? If so it seems that Ash has better luck winning championships in filler

[@AnimeboyIanpower]

@@morrison215 Didn't the Sevii Islands come after the Orange Islands?

[@morrison215]

@@AnimeboyIanpower LIke I said before, and this is to my knowledge, that the Sevi islands were an idea that were suppose to be added into the original gameboy games Red/Green/Blue, but they were ultimately cut for a number of reasons. They were however added in as a little extra in the remakes. And from what I can tell, the Orange islands were based on that cut content, probably given by gamefreak since they were delaying Gen 2 and needed to help the anime have something to work with.

[@TiasVsEverything]

Side question: did you lose any of your favourites this gen? A lot of my favourites are gone this gen, some forever (megas). Pokemon I’ve brought with me through every single game to date are ineligible to come to Galar when Home/Bank access does come out. The hotly requested patch (just patch the game between release and the release of Home/Bank) never gets brought up in these “you know they couldn’t delay these games, right?” Despite not requiring a delay. There’s something about needing to spend more than ever before (game price) while also having to buy the most expensive console to date ($400-450 AUD) in addition to several features being locked behind not 1, but potentially 2-3 subscription services (Switch Online, Bank, Home) and for all that extra money, at least 50% of the people I know lose the ability to use their favourite pokemon, even in the postgame... that rubs me the wrong way.

[@ronan5427]

O boo hoo, who fucking cares? If you dont like the game dont buy it. Stop thinking that your opinion and experience are applicable to everyone.

[@darknight910]

I think you nailed it on the head there. The response I see from Pokemon veterans seems to be the cost of entry versus the handheld offerings doesn't seem worth what at first glance looks like an update on the Sun & Moon engine, even if it's not quite that.

[@kyleabel4426]

Lunatic 0verlord what the fuck is your problem?Tell somebody that Is messed especially since my friend has cancer.

[@Hetsu..]

@@lunatic0verlord10 You dont have to get that cheesed over a youtube comment on a kids game

[@lunatic0verlord10]

@@Hetsu.. And there we go, the "it's for kids" justification. Just watch "Animated Atrocities : Return of Slade" to see why there is so much wrong with that argument.

[@ashbornphoenix7104]

that mod you show at 8:05 were literally just used for testing to see if their method for replacing textures would work with development of the actual textures (ones that keep fairly close to the og just with some slight higher detail.) coming after.

[@lunatic0verlord10]

I suspect Geoff of being a closet apologist.

[@tobimisa]

+Lunatic 0verlord do you realize how silly you sound

[@lunatic0verlord10]

@@tobimisa What would you call the Wooloo brainwashing attempt at the end? I call that suspicious.

[@Hetsu..]

@@lunatic0verlord10 What brainwashing attempt lmao

[@lunatic0verlord10]

@@Hetsu.. The part where Geoff, after acknowledging that some in the audience might still be upset about all those issues, tells the viewer to look at Wooloo.

[@SR2XO]

Honestly? This is the first generation I'm just skipping. The animations and models were said would be better but they aren't, I've seen kicks for headbutt and just a move for kicks. One of the characters I think the sort of Rival just uses Hau's animation set from Sun/Moon, there are a litney with problems, iirc the only changes to the models were fixing one vertices for one Pokemon and making Pikachu's mouth move. They also cut moves from the game series and left some in like Sketch for Smeargle even though he isn't in the game at all and it's his signature move. It more looks like Gamefreak is resting on it's laurels and just waiting for the cash to roll in with little effort at this point.

[@legomeaker101potato]

The modded textures don’t fit the game but you cannot say that they look worse than the original ones

[@GentlemanJaggi]

"You can't just hire more people because they need to be trained and might mess up" is honestly... a shitty argument? Learning a job or working in a new place always takes some time to adjust, you can't just say "we can't do that because it might now work out". If a company isn't even capable of organising their own staff than they're frankly not qualified to work on a project that so much other workings are attached to. It's not like they didn't have years to get it all running since Sun and Moon.

[@raze2012_]

""we can't do that because it might now work out". yet 90% of companies in all industries say exactly that. if you ever had trouble getting a first job above minimum wage, that's probably the mentality that left you in the resume black hole for 70% of your apps. it's even worse for games because of deadlines.

[@imaloony8]

Isn't the solution to vet new staff through their intermediate remake games? Because games like Let's Go and ORAS have a much clearer picture on what they're going to be earlier on and the multimedia empire doesn't hinge on their release (for the most part), it seems like that's a perfect time to do those mass hires and vet new staff and make sure they're a good fit for the team. I guess my problem with SwSh is that despite culling the pokedex, it doesn't really feel like they added much in to replace all they took out. The region looks beautiful and the Wild Area is cool on paper, but it feels like they didn't push any new idea to its logical extreme. Why doesn't the wild area branch into various secret areas like caves or an abandoned facility with a side quest associated? Why was the story so bare bones, even for a pokemon story? Why were we in and out of a city before we really had a chance to get a feel for that city? Why did every fucking starter except goddamn Charizard get cut? Couldn't we have at least gotten the other Kanto starters? Why were the first Poison type Legendary and the first Dark Type Gym both introduced with so little fanfare and story around them? Those are just a few issues, but also there's another big one. Theoretically, cutting the dex by this much would help rebalance the Metagame, but that was fucked up too by Dynamax. Dynamax is so fucking overpowered that a lot of Smogon is calling for it to be banned outright. And hilariously, Gigantamax is actually WEAKER than Dynamax. Clearly there's a problem on the mechanical side of pokemon that needs to be addressed as well. I dunno, I feel like there's definitely a middle ground where Gamefreak cuts back on content but polishes what they do have to a mirror-like shine, and we just didn't get that here. The game feels incomplete, and it feels sloppy. I just want it to be truly great on at least one of those fronts.

[@WaterKirby1994]

The problem is simply that Pokemon International doesn't give a crap about the games or manga which need more time between Generation releases than simply 3 years. All they seem to care about are their mobile games these days! That's why Gen 7 didn't really have any spinoff games except Detective Pikachu & Pokemon Quest with a continued Pokemon Shuffle.

[@000Dragon50000]

Dude NO. The yearly release cycle has been DEVASTATING, they NEED to cut back to a bi-yearly model AT LEAST in order to push the quality back up to where it was at in the late DS era (Black and White and their sequels) Particularly in the storyline and world depth. And, as you said, this needs to be the PLAN FROM THE BEGINNING, not something thrown together all improvised-like.

[@raze2012_]

tell that to their profit margins as for the "bi-yearly" thing: I come from the future and now know their answer to that is DLC expansions. guess that starts a whole other debate that has gone on since 2005 or so, but it's technically a bi-yearly plan.

[@000Dragon50000]

@@raze2012_ Eh, trust me, I know capitalism can be shit and this focus on profit at the expense of quality is, ahem, causing problems everywhere... :p As for the DLC, honestly it's not an imrpovement in the regard I wanted, the devs are still spending this year working on something that's not Pokemon 2021, so it hasn't actually solved any of the issues there.

[@caav56]

@@000Dragon50000 Even Call of Duty has saner developer cycle, to be honest. With three studios, each releasing game once in a three years, each of them has three years to make a game.

[@VixYW]

I have to disagree with a couple of points. Fist of all, Pokemon is such an indestructible giant nowadays that it wouldn't be hurt if the schedule was broken. And even if they wanted to keep it, then just delay the game and release the rest on time. No harm would be done what'soever if things were to happen out of order from now on. Each and every part of the franchise is huge enough to stand on it's own nowadays. Not to mention that nothing of that explains why they can't just patch the missing stuff later on, which they already confirmed they're not going to do.

[@mightyradish9672]

I'm honestly not mad because they cut pokemon from the game, I'm mad that they lied to their consumers, and its for that reason I don't want to support them.

[@singkitloh528]

Ok. It just business

[@prl4122]

singkit loh sure but where’s the EA defense video? We all like to shit on them for being money hungry fucks

[@Alias_Anybody]

They should just use different teams alltogether. Gamefreak itself is like a 1810 steam engine trying to run a modern highspeed train. Copy Call of Duty, throw 2 other teams in the race and let them compete for the best game every 3 years.

[@aclulaidannuvera6588]

3:14 Why did you put the pokeballs in a capsule? They're already in a capsule, why would you capsule a capsule?

[@Edax_Royeaux]

The anime hasn't exactly had decent writing since season 1.

[@genesisera8364]

@Edax It’s the animated trailer for B2W2, tho.

[@revolvingworld2676]

@@Edax_Royeaux Its not from the fucking anime tho

[@Edax_Royeaux]

@@revolvingworld2676 Fine, the Japanese animation of the game also does not have decent writing, much like the anime.

[@glich6035]

Aclulaid Annuvera thats kinda like asking why you would put them in a backpack or on your belt

[@pyrrhotek2833]

Or they could finally just hunker down and make a Pokémon MMO. This way they keep all Pokémon in, slowly add/update new features, every couple years add in a new region with all the bells and whistles.

[@revolvingworld2676]

Ah yes, an MMO should be simple, they can make something of that scale in their sleep.

[@mushroomdude123]

I really get the vibe that GF wants to be ambitious with these games, considering how natural and less rigid SwSh’s story was compared to other games. The way wild Pokemon run up to you instead of just appearing randomly in tall grass, and how legitimately challenging some boss fights were this time reinforces that. They just don’t have time.

[@Yamartim]

more natural and less rigid? dude every place in the game with multiple exits dont let you explore, the story is on a completely linear path, while in older games you could totally explore optional areas and go to a new route before doing a town's gym and such

[@calebnelson58]

What story LOL! they have Oleana announce the final boss in a simple conversation and had no place you could learn of him in any part of the Galar region and Leon and Sonia seem to do all the cool stuff while your stuck doing the gym challenge.

[@lunatic0verlord10]

@@calebnelson58 I know, right? Most other games broke the League by having us do a bunch of things related to the plot between Gyms. But not this time. That's another reason why I am not buying this crap.

[@FancyTophatDude]

Regarding the art direction: yes slapping realistic textures onto stuff and calling it a day is gonna end up looking shitty in a stylized game, but hot damn. Nothing justifies having a tree with like 30 polys, incredibly muddy textures and super bland terrain from a distance. The switch is not that powerful and pokemon is stylized but there are probably way better ways to make this work.

[@NaclElywick]

Tl;Dr: the problem is capitalism

[@Balthazar228]

And here I thought Meowth using pay day multiple times every day since 1996 was the reason it’s so profitable...

[@bonsaiboi]

Sword and Shield have a lot good things about them, and the bad things like the national dex, performance, and presentation issues aren't even enough to turn me away from the series, but lying to your fans and consumers just isn't acceptable. On more than one occasion Game Freak gave explanations or made excuses for the weaker elements of the game that implied those sacrifices were made to improve some other feature. With none of the franchise's core elements and features being exceptional or dramatically improved in the newest entries (not saying they are bad, just that they aren't an improvement) those weaker elements of the game now seemingly exist for no reason, because the reason they gave us clearly wasn't true. Between lying about the dex cuts being the result of new modeling and animation work that didn't ever happen, and a failure to improve upon the series in any substantial ways aside from the wild area, which has many failings of its own, Game Freak has shown that perhaps they are no longer capable of delivering an experience worthy of pokemon's scale and legacy as a brand. I think people get frustrated or see company's as greedy because there is something very discouraging about knowing that they have no incentive to do better because none of their failures impacted the bottom line enough to make a difference. I'm not really that upset with Sword and Shield personally, but I am worried that they have very little incentive to do better going forward. These games are fine, they arent the atrocious dumpster fire some fans like to pretend they are, but after seeing what nintendo did bringing Mario and Zelda to the switch, pokemon certainly feels dated and below the standard nintendo has set this generation.

[@oksusceptible5040]

But what did they do with the extra time they had without having to port over Pokémon. Because to me the game feels empty their isn’t many trainers which is why I think they made it so exp share is on permanently so that your Pokémon aren’t under leveled and some of the routes are just straight lines.

[@benjaminchi1989]

I wish Pokemon would outsource more spinoffs to other developers in between generations like they did in 4th gen to give themselves more development time. I miss having new games like mystery dungeon and conquest come out, but now it's all mobile apps 😑

[@IdentityChrist]

So what you're saying is that all the faults in SwSh could have been avoided by just better planning and management? So people calling GF incompetent are right.

[@Kevmane_the_bird]

Not gamefreak. The Pokémon Company. If you were paying attention you would have noticed that (according to the vid) gamefreak doesn't get much say on things like scheduling anymore. They are *choosing* the faults that will be in there game because of the time crunch, but if it were not those, then there would be others. And at that point you're getting into difference of opinion. Because of the cogs in the broader Pokémon Compay network of media, game freak, the developer, doesn't have the time to make the perfect Pokémon game. Slight difference but an important one imo. Developers get a lot of hate because of upper management decisions they have no control over. This feels like that on a larger scale.

[@abh5729]

A lot of the things you stated aren't at all true. They directly reused models and animation that were used in previous games as was planned to begin with. They specifically made higher quality models than the 3DS could easily handle so they wouldn't have to redo everything in the future. Of course the models will need higher resolution textures for the switch, but the rest should NOT have been an issue given this was the plan all along. Reusing the models and animations should have been trivial for the Switch given they had been planning on using them on the Switch for several years. There is no excuse in the number of Pokemon cut and the animation work should not have been a problem given they had so much to work with. If they developed a bad pipeline for converting assets then people are totally justified in criticizing them. I can understand some cuts in gameplay and some less than stellar environments, but we can clearly see an area where they either cut corners, were totally incompetent, or have an ulterior motive of essentially selling the full pokedex with DLC or the newer version. The actual devs themselves shouldn't be blamed for idiotic decisions by management though and I think some need to dial it back when they go beyond criticism to insulting hard working people.

[@Mangacide]

And what happened? "Hey now we magically found a way to add those pokemon in no problem if you give us more money!"

[@bangormc3rd562]

I can't help but be reminded of your video about the OPM Season 2 trailer, where you seemed to express disgust at the publisher for prioritizing opportunism and schedule over making a properly-realized product. Would you say your attitude in that regard has changed, or would you make a moral distinction between Viz saying "We need this out while it's relevant" and Pokemon Company saying, "We need this out for the tie-ins"? (For the record, I'm in the "Sword/Shield is fun, but could be better" camp)

[@roxolp604]

It feels like you really didn't do your research going into this video. A large portion of the post-release controversy is because Pokemon company allegedly created models that were "future-proof" so that when they made the next game, they wouldn't run into these issues. Then when this game came out, they said they had to cut some of the Pokemon since they were rebuilding the models from the ground up, which was odd considering the first piece of info but some assumed things had changed for whatever reason. But once early copies of the game came out, people data mined the game and learned that the models were almost 1-to-1 with Su/Mo models, leading it to look like they had lied, leading to speculation of why they actually cut Pokemon. Expecting more quality out of, as you pointed out, the largest franchise on the planet, isn't exactly unreasonable, and the deception just throws oil on a flame.

[@WaterKirby1994]

Of course he didn't do research going into this video. The Manga actually suffers worse than the games from the deadlines Pokemon International gives GameFreak. The anime can survive if delayed a year through filler, as it has done so in the past. The TCG & Merchandise could try to be creative & survive like the anime. Pokemon International could give us actual spinoff games rather than just focusing on Mobile Phones to help wait out an extra year between generations.

[@edsonsouzaneto6251]

Agreed.

[@227someguy]

TL;DR The higher-ups rushed the product. And it makes a lot of money. P.S. 8:06 That mod actually looks better, imo.

[@ejazgaming3941]

Pokemon is the highest grossing franchise of all time

[@scarletice]

I think all the points you made are both excellent and valid, however I want to make a few counter-points. Firstly, what is stopping Pokemon from implementing a long term hiring strategy focused on continuously increasing their expert manpower to compensate for the continuously growing pokedex? Also, even if Sword and Shield HAD to be released as is, why not release it with the promise of a future national dex patch? But to really get down to the meat of the issue, I want to address why I think it is important for Pokemon to continue having a complete national dex moving forward. The national dex is one of Pokemon's most unique features that no other franchise can compete with. And it's not only a draw for hardcore fans. Simply the idea that it is possible to complete a national dex is enticing to casual gamers, even if they have no serious intention to actually complete it. The mere possibility is just that cool. And it serves to maintain lifelong customers. I've literally never completed a pokedex, and I haven't even finished a pokemon game since Emerald. But I was 100% on board to buy Sword and Shield, and the lack of a complete national dex was, by itself, enough to change my mind. Abandoning the national dex will most certainly hurt the franchise in the long run.

[@jowysw]

So... "It's not that simple" and therefore they shouldn't even try?

[@masivebob]

the argument of "hiring more people" doesn't mean that people want them to mass hire people, it stems from the fact that Masuda himself has said in the past that they keep their employee numbers down to increase profitability. they should have been hiring people slowly over time, meanwhile, in 30 years they only managed to employ 143 staff members

[@AStandsForFrench]

yeah, yanno, I hear what you're saying about S&S, but I also hear you mention the well-known fact that pokemon is literally the most profitable franchise in existence. period. they can hire more people to make the game better, and hire proper vetting to ensure those people aren't your hypothetical "jerks".

[@scootermcpeanuts6699]

It took me a good few minutes of staring at the upload date in confusion before I realized the thumbnail was edited.