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The problem behind the trees

It’s almost a ritual: A new Pokémon trailer is sparking a discussion about trees and their graphics. But what is actually behind it?

First, a brief summary of the debate about the “Pokémon Legends: Arceus”, which will be published in early 2022 and which is astonishingly reminiscent of the debate about the “Pokémon: Sword and Shield” published at the end of 2019: The trees are ugly. Admittedly, this is a somewhat succinct summary, but it gets to the heart of the criticism that is expressed above all on social media. The Pokémon games for the Nintendo Switch are not pretty enough, and even with launch games like “Zelda: Breath of the Wild” they can’t keep up. Just as the graphics discussion may sound superficial, this criticism is only the surface of the underlying question: How can it be that one of the most famous and profitable franchises in the world does not produce higher quality games? Let us try to approach this question.

If you look at the The frequency with which the major Pokémon games are released, not spin-offs like “New Pokémon Snap” or the free-2-play game “Pokémon Unite”, it turns out that such a game appears almost every year. 2020 was the first year since 2011 that no new or redesigned Pokémon adventure hit the market. There is also a reason for this: a large part of the franchise income is generated in merchandise. Plush toys, trading cards, figures or clothing – these products make billions. However, in order to be able to offer more and more goods, new Pokémon must also be created. This is where the games come into play. With the annual release, usually around Christmas, new merchandise comes onto the market. This is an interaction that hardly allows any release postponements.

Unlike a “Call of Duty”, however, the Pokémon role-playing games are developed by a studio: Game Freak. Under Activision, a different studio is responsible for the shooter series every year. Call of Duty: Vanguard, which will be released on November 5th, is being developed by Sledgehammer Games. Last year’s “Call of Duty: Cold War” again from Treyarch. Sledgehammer Games has 225 employees, Treyarch 250. Game Freak has around 150.

The problem of many Pokémon

Every new Pokémon RPG needs one thing above all else: new Pokémon. They have to be designed, equipped with various animations and built into the game. Certainly, Game Freak can fall back on existing assets for the environment and other character models. For the Pokémon, however, most of it has to be created from scratch. That is probably one reason why the Pokédex in the games are now severely restricted is – that too has caused a lot of criticism in the past.

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Since a large part of the development time is invested in the creation and implementation of the Pokémon, there hardly seems to be time to sacrifice new features for online modes, for example. Or just tackle the improvement of the graphics. More precisely: The focus is not on these aspects of the game. And there is a reason for that too.

There may be some players who have been with Pokémon since the first part, who have been following the game series since 1998, when “Pokémon Blue and Red” appeared in Europe. The much larger part, however, is a younger audience. Game Freak’s philosophy is to develop each part as if it were someone’s first part. Means: often extensive tutorials, explanations of game mechanics on every corner, dungeons and opponents that do not offer an overly large challenge.

This audience is less likely to care that the trees are pretty ugly – while they’re trying to catch a Jigglypuff with a Poké Ball. This is also borne out by the series’ sales figures, with each new part of the role-playing game series being sold over ten million times worldwide. “Pokémon Sword and Shield” has so far sold over 21 million times. The incentive for game freaks, and ultimately also for Nintendo, is probably rather small to drastically increase the budget of the games in order to tweak the graphics and lack of features. Because that’s what it boils down to: prettier trees need more time. More time costs more money.

Of course, all of this does not mean that Nintendo, Game Freak and the Pokémon Company should not be criticized for releasing new games year after year that seem to have been developed according to the motto “the bare minimums are enough”. The only question is where to start so that the justified criticism is also addressed.

The biggest leverage would be to stop releasing the Pokémon RPGs every year. That already helped with “Assassin’s Creed”, for example. However, it cannot be assumed that the Pokémon Company will forego annual merchandise sales. This is a finely meshed sales machine that won’t be stopped anytime soon. It would be more realistic that Game Freak would bring new talent into the studio, hire more employees in order to have more resources for a better gaming experience.

But even for that it would first need a reason – the lack of sales of the games is not. So why change something in a proven formula? It turns out that the leverage lies, once again, with the consumer. Since the companies will unfortunately not accept the criticism on their own as long as they do not fear major losses, buyers would have to stay away to change the Pokémon games.

The discussion about supposedly ugly trees thus points to several problems. The complexity of the video game industry on the one hand, in which developers time and again Crunch working beyond your limits need to get a game ready for release. On the other hand, there is also the pronounced commercial orientation of this medium, which rarely seems to be about artistic expression. So maybe the trees aren’t that ugly after all.

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