Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket has done the unthinkable for a mobile game: it’s actually excited and invigorated my group of friends.
Our Whatsapp group chat, usually solely dedicated to planning our next pub outing, is now awash with screenshots of Pokemon card pulls and chatter about online matches and limited-time events. In a chat of 16, the game has ensnared about eight. I’m waiting for those who don’t play to complain and force Pokemon chatter to migrate to a separate group, but I digress. My point is: when this happens, I always know something is cutting through.
This group chat – largely people I went to school with, years ago – is definitely a significant part of the Pokemon TCG Pocket target audience. We’re the people who grew up with the original cards, who witnessed playground fights over shiny Charizards. Some of these people haven’t played a ‘proper’ Pokemon game (save Pokemon Go, of course) in a decade-plus. But this has grabbed them. This attention is inevitably fragile, though – and if the first two weeks have taught me anything, it’s that TCG Pocket needs to evolve fast to seize long-term success.
Much of the required evolution is around battle, and in a sense I am not surprised.
When I saw the game in a pre-release state, representatives from The Pokemon Company drove home that pack opening and card collecting is the app’s raison d’être. The game is built around it. The splash screen advertising the game on the Google Play App Store pushes the collectible card aspect of they ame over the battling part of the game. But nevertheless, battling is a vital component – and that’s where I can see things beginning to strain.
It took around a week, among my friends, before the complaints began to creep in. Some of these guys are complete TCG amateurs, some are ‘proper’ Pokemon TCG veterans, and others know their way around a deck of Magic or Divorced Dads. Across the gamut, one thing is becoming alarmingly true: two weeks in, folk are starting to become a bit burned out and bored.
“I hope it does last,” one of the lads says of TCG Pocket when debate about the quality of battles flares up. “But I feel like I’ve hit a wall. I need to do these battle events to get XP – but I’m already finding the battles boring.”
Players can always be expected to take the path of least resistance, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that Pokemon TCG Pocket already feels a little bit busted when you’re playing online. A few hard-line metas have emerged. We’ve seen headlines and player conspiracy theories about Misty coin flips being broken (it’s not, it’s just an incredibly silly card that goes against the game’s own design decisions), worries that going second puts players at an unfair advantage, and grousing about the ubiquitous nature of EX cards. In the end one thing is true: online is indeed already becoming very, very samey.
Many trading card games fall into this sort of thing; there’s always going to be some dominating meta or two, whatever game you prefer. But it’s also completely fair to say that what exists right now in Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket is more pronounced and noticeable than in other games. I definitely feel the dominance of a few boring, repetitive strategies and the resultant fun sapping away from TCG Pocket at a quicker rate than I’ve experienced with Magic, Marvel Snap, Hearthstone, or even the tabletop version of Pokemon TCG. I’d call that a problem.
People are having fun opening packs and collecting, of course – but when part of the grind to those unlocks involves battles, you need the battles to feel right. I think this is equally true for Pokemon-loving kids as it is for mid-30s adults reliving their playground trading card heyday during their bathroom breaks. It’s a universal thing. For the longevity of the game,
In my analysis, I’d say the issues stem from two places. First of all, it’s about the tweaked, streamlined version of the Pokemon TCG rules that Pocket presents. When I saw the game at preview I was blown away by the slick simplicity of this tweaked setup – but in the wild, under the intense glare of millions of players who’ll do anything for a leg up, it’s clear the odd element might need to be tweaked. Second, it’s about the number of cards: in the limited launch offering, certain cards and concepts are dominating – and usually, the only way to flush that away is with new cards, new mechanics, and new ideas – that meta must be kept rolling.
The Pokemon Company will likely take this as a win, of course. One of the fixes to the potential burnout problems they have is to add more to the game – which is likely to drive in-app purchases as players pump money into booster packs. So, that’s all good – it’s probably heartily welcomed by them, even. But I really hope it happens fast.
This may be a game that needs to iterate at breakneck speed in order to keep ahead of a player base that’ll doubtless quickly find ways to break the back of whatever is best at the time. But if that iteration and subtle balancing comes at a decent pace, huge long-term success could be first around the corner. And I wouldn’t even mind spending a little money – at least I wouldn’t have to explain endless binders full of cards to my wife.