#i could technically tag this as pokemon cards but i won't

[thedreamyperidot]

Very much new to tumblr, so I'm not entirely sure how all this works yet. I don't exactly know how to respond to reblogs yet so bear with me. First off, your ramblings are totally fine, don't have a problem with it at all. The reason I'm responding to you is to explain my perspective on the game and how it was handled. This mostly concerns you calling the devs lazy. (Note: I don't fault you for thinking this, nor am I upset about it. Sorry if this ends up being a super long reply lol)

I'm not going to go deep into the details of my life and who I am, but I think it's important to know that I've been taking game development classes for about 2 years now. I'm not an employee of GameFreak, or the Pokemon company, so I can't give any definitive answers on why the game came out the way it did, but I am almost certain that it isn't because the people involved were being lazy.

I'm not exactly sure how to best explain this, but from my experience with the game, it seemed like the team behind it genuinely cared about the project. The art direction completely shifted, pokemon are much more detailed now, there is an overabundance of things to see and do, and the core game is actually really fun. Character designs are great, the writing is well done, and there are so many creative ideas at play here.

Now if that is the case, why is it such a mess from a technical perspective? There is the chance that their game engine needs an update, and there is also the fact that this is their first fully open world game, but I don't think either of those are the main culprit. The two potential reasons why I think the game ended up the way it did is either a lack of time, or a lack of money.

First off, let me explain my reasoning for time. Breath of the Wild was the first Zelda game to attempt an open world. It's development started not to long after the release of Skyward Sword in 2011 with a planned release date in 2015, but got delayed to 2017. This left that team with a development time of 6 years. The dev time for Scarlet and Violet was presumably 3 years, with SwSh dlc, and Legends Arceus being developed at the same time. When you are making an open world game that has a strict deadline, some corners are definitely going to have to be cut. This deadline is set by the Pokemon Company to keep sales up while pumping out more merchandise.

My second thought is that there is not enough money going around. Before anyone says that Pokemon is the largest franchise in the world, yes I am aware, however, Gamefreak doesn't get to decide how much these games are funded; the Pokemon Company does, and they also have to balance out things like the mobile games, merchandise, the card game, the anime etc. Gamefreak only gets a small small portion of that cut. Because of this, they can't just quadruple their team size just to pump out higher quality games quicker, because The Pokemon Company wants to turn a profit.

As unfortunate as it is, this stuff isn't completely in the hands of GameFreak, and as such they don't really have much control over it. This is mostly speculation on my part, but it is a fairly educated guess. Sorry for the long winded post, but I think that the devs get treated quite unfairly by fans who think that they are the sole reason that the games won't improve in quality.

I hope my own rambling at least gave you some insight on game development, and it's many challenges and I hope this helped you understand my point of view on the subject a little bit better!

oh my god! yeah maybe saying lazy wasnt the best way to go tbh, it was 2am when I made those tags so my word choice wasnt the best (Also why I mentioned how if you disliked the tags you could let me know sjdhjfj)

I think that the points you make are completely true! Game Freak mightve cared a lot for the game but due to factors out of their control the product ended...like that. It's honestly such a shame as someone who was a huge pokemon fan since they were 8, seeing the series suffer due to capitalism has been incredibly disheartening.

Thank you for this ask! I appreciate your thoughts in this and I understand my wording might not have been the best.