Pokémon is becoming bloated

 Pokémon has a Pokémon problem

Pokémon is over 25 years old and in that time it has grown to become the single biggest multi-media franchise in the world. The video games bring in over 10 million players every entry. The TCG had a spectator boost in the Covid years and is now more popular, for better or worse, than ever. More and more merchandise pops up every week, from your typical plushies and themed backpacks to stuff for a far older audience like high-end Pokémon shirts and polos.

With this popularity and age problems are bound to pop up. And pop upped they have from the tug of war between appealing to the kids of today and keeping the older crowd invested to keep the series relevant. The biggest problem series is facing though is one that it cannot solve. One that’s tied to the very core of the series. Pokémon has a problem with the Pokémon. More specifically, the amount of Pokémon is problematic.

Let’s dive in. 

So many Pokémon

Pokémon is over 25 years old and in those years it has introduced, at the time of this writing, over 900 Pokémon. Critters that are cute and cuddly. Critters that are slick and cool. Critters are kind of ugly but we love them still. That is a lot of Pokémon, no two ways about it. And that is the problem. Over 900 Pokémon is a lot to keep track of for fans and developers alike.

When I got into Pokémon, the 4th generation was just around the corner here in Europe. I came into a world of nearly 500 Pokémon. It was a lot of fun to learn about these Pokémon for the first but it was also a bit daunting. Even these days there are Pokémon I tend to forget, like Smeargle and Dunsparce. Also, the series’ catchphrase is ‘gotta catch them all’. That is a lot easier when there are only 151 critters to worry about and not, when I went for it, 721. If it wasn’t for 5+ years of catching and keeping Pokémon in Diamond and White giving me a head-start I don’t think I would’ve even attempted it.

These days newcomers are faced with around double that number; the daunt is even more daunting. There’s a lot more you need to learn and the task of catching them is a lot more work. Sure, it has become a lot easier in many respects. You don’t have to find someone with the opposite version and bargain with them for any version exclusives: you just use the internet. Still, I think a lot of people will lose their motivation to catch them all when they hear they’ll have to catch over 900 Pokémon. Soon to be over a 1000 Pokémon. 

That’s one side of the issue, the consumer side. Now it’s time to look at the problem from the developer side. That in and of itself is a weird situation. One I could write an entire article about in and of itself but for the purposes of my point in this one, I’ll keep it brief. Pokémon is created by a rather small group of developers and that has really started to create friction. To create problems. 

Learning about, choosing between and catching over 900 Pokémon is difficult? Try having to design, create, implement and give attention to them all! Just keeping track of them internally is a logistical nightmare. Small or big, the size of the studio doesn’t really matter here. The logistics don’t change much here. The juggle of keeping them all relevant, the work put into making them all feel unique and keeping all the models up to date and of good quality is a big task. Decide where and when they’ll pop up in the show, the trading card game, merchandise etc.

It’s a big task that’s cracking under its own weight. That’s where stuff like Dexit came from. Getting all the Pokémon into one game, the effort that was needed for it to happen and for it to happen in a balanced way was too much for the developers to handle with the resources at their disposal in the time they had to make Sword & Shield with all the controversy it eventually brought.

This problem, this ‘there is too many Pokémon’ problem is a problem that will never go away. Why? That is pretty easy to explain. Pokémon is about, well, the Pokémon. They are what makes the franchise appealing to people in the first place and introducing new Pokémon is what makes it all go around. What the series is built around. You can’t ‘stop’ it and thus, the number of Pokémon is ever growing without any signs of it ever stopping.

Gimmicks

Up until now, I’ve focused on just the Pokémon themselves but they’re not the only thing contributing to the bloat. The gimmicks do so as well.

Pokémon has become increasingly reliant on the introduction of a new gimmick every new generation. Starting with Mega Evolution in 2013´s X & Y, every generation has centred around a new gimmick. Sun and Moon have Z-moves, Sword & Shield have Dynamax/Gigantamax (they’re one and the same really) and Scarlet & Violet have the Terastal phenomenon.

Scarlet & Violets signature gimmick: the Terastal Phenomenon allowing you to play around with your Pokémon's typing mid-battle. 

I’m not a fan of the series' overreliance on these gimmicks. It feels, to me, like a very cheap way to draw in new players and make each entry ‘feel’ unique. It’s like dangling a new shiny thing in front of people’s faces just to get their attention and not because the shiny thing is actually that cool or good. They're more for marketing purposes and have something to advertise the game with to hammer home that these games are new, different and ‘better’.

The reason I look at these gimmicks so unfavourably is because of my experience with the Bakugan franchise. Over the course of its original run, the series introduced at least one new gimmick every year. By the end, of the game, you had more gimmicks/extra pieces on the board than actual Bakugan. All these extra pieces made muddied the game; overcomplicated and confused the game unnecessarily. These gimmicks also introduced lots of balancing problems. For certain pieces, it became more about getting these pieces on the board. The player who did that first would basically already have won with how powerful they were in the game. There’s a good argument to be made that these gimmicks and the problems they introduced contributed to the demise of the game's original run.

I see both of these problems in Pokémon though to be fair, they’ve addressed these problems better than Bakugan did. As just stated, we’ve got a third type of gameplay gimmick a the moment with a fourth coming soon. That’s a lot, especially compared to the rather static and slowly evolving battle system Pokémon has traditionally had and not every gimmick was born equal. I still like Mega Evolution, the cool-looking designs and the sheer fun it is to use them, but I will not deny that they were pretty unbalanced. They became the centre-pieces of teams and setting them up was the top priority. Doing so before the opponent meant the odds were in your favour. Z-moves were even worse: they really became an ‘instant-win button’ for players. Dynamax/Gigantamax, while I might not like them much, are a lot more balanced and were designed with the problems of Mega Evolution and Z-moves in mind.

What Game Freak has also done though is start cutting gimmicks. Mega Evolution was still present in Gen VII, in Sun & Moon, and you were allowed to use both it and Z-moves in the competitive scene and tournaments. Sword & Shield cut both gimmicks; Dynamax/Gigantamax is the only one present in the games. They still exist in the Pokémon world, they are referenced in the games and the anime makes active use of them in the current series, but for all intended gameplay purposes they are gone. I’m generally speaking not a fan of cutting things like this but with the Bakugan situation in mind, I do think it’s for the better.

..........

The amount of Pokémon is ever-increasing. New Pokémon get introduced every year or so, lately even yearly. This is causing some problems. A large number of Pokémon are both fun and exciting and daunting. For gamers wanting to get into and keep track of the series, fans who want to ‘catch them all’ and such. For the developers it’s a lot of work and comes with a lot of logistics; even a big team will struggle with the latter. Add in all the new gameplay gimmicks Pokémon has been introducing and the entire franchise is getting big and overly complicated.

Still, new Pokémon make the franchise go around and let´s be honest: we all love new Pokémon. And, it’s not like the Pokémon Company is blind to these issues. The franchise has done its best in the last few generations to come up with ways to keep it all manageable for everyone. The solutions they’ve come up with are far, far from perfect but the effort is there. Moreover, I don’t actually think a perfect solution exists. Hopefully, with time, they’ll come up with a better one but for now, we’ll just have to deal with what is, enjoy what is, and hope for better.