Why Does Pokemon Insist On Teaching Kids To Accept Monetisation?

Yesterday’s Presents was, as the internet has already complained about at length, a very disappointing one. The Pokemon Company announced the showcase almost two months in advance, very unusual for a company that usually reveals them a few days before, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:its length implied we would be in for quite a few surprises. That turned out to be untrue – apart from a rousing hour-long 🎉set from DJ Pikachu leading up to the showcase proper, there was really nothing to write home about.

One minor surprise was that a new mobile puzzle game, Pokemon Friends, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:was shadowdropped. It’s free on iOS and Android, and $9.99 on Switch. Be🔥cause I’m a sucker for punishment, I played it over my half-hour lunch break today. You likely won’t be surprised to hear that there’s really not much to it.

Forget Pokemon Fri🌠ends, I Want To Play Pokemon Enemies

P❀okemon is capable of far 🔯more exciting things than collecting cute digital plushies.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 🍎

What Is Pokemon Friends?

pokemon plushes in pokemon friends. — via Pokemon

Pokemon Friends is designed to have you log in every day to compl🌱ete a set of rudimentary puzzles in order to ‘untangle yarn’. You then feed that yarn into a machine, where it creates a plush, which you can put in a virtual room. The faster you complete the puzzles, the more yarn you get, though I’m not sure that has any effect on the game apart from giving you records to beat. The type of yarn you get, also not up to you, determines the plush the machine spits out.

The puzzles themselves are, as I said, incredibly simple. You might have to draw a single line through an array of lightbulbs, rotate pieces 🧜of a track to help a Pokemon get from one end to the other,🦩 or tilt your phone to guide a Pokemon to the exit of a maze. It seems pretty clear this game is meant for children, as I can’t imagine any adult finding this kind of puzzling compelling or challenging in the slightest.

Maybe the puzzles get harder once the game has established that you have a reasonable grasp of its very basic mechanics – every puzzle I played has been labelled with a ‘level 1’ in my high scoreboard, which may imply that the better 𝄹you get at a game, the more difficult it could become.

If th🦹at’s the case, the game doesn’t make this very clear. Its simplicity, as things stand now, make it hard to believe that this game was meant for an audience other than one that has dedicated iPad screen time pencilled into their day because their parents are too frazzled trying to keep their lives moving smoothly to pay full attention to them at all hours.

A screenshot of the Razer x Pokemone collaboration with Snorlax in front to cover it in shame.

The US Razer Pokémon Hardware Collab Isn't Super Effective

Why do inter♋national releases get all the cool gear? The Razer x Pokémon collab coming to US shores is just about as boring as a level 5 Pidgey.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: ꦫ

Pokemon Friends Has $40 Worth Of DLC To Make The Game Worth Playing

And in that case, we have to delve into the monetisation, because of course, Pokemon Friends has it. Like the puzzles, these are currently in a very rudimentary state. There’s quite a few pricey DLCs – two are $15 puzzle p🐼acks that unlock more plushes, puzzles, and wallpapers for your virtual room, and one is a $10 basic pack that also adds more plushes, wallpapers, friend quests, and puzzles, removes the limit on how much yarn you can untangle in a day (currently you can do this only once), and add🐼s a few new features like replaying puzzles from the two previous months, and additional setups for your plush room.

On Switch, 🐎the game comes with the Basic Pack unlocked.

The mobile bundle that contains all the packs is $40. It’s not clear if you can unlock these items through ꦍplaying, but my guess is that these items are permanently paywalled. Essentially, Pokemon is selling this incredibly basic puzzle game for $40.

It’s also worth noting that theꦕre’s a Plush Rates indicator with a warning when you open up the yarn spinning mechanic. The warning says, “Some actions – such as purchasing downloadable content (DLC) – can make more varieties of plush available. More available varieties means the likelihood of obtaining any specific variety decreases.”

In the base game, all the available plushes have an equal chance of getting made. The wording of the warning doesn’t indicate that certaꦏin plushes will be harder to get, but the fact that there’s a plush rate section (aki🐈n to a gacha pull probability disclaimer) at all does make me raise my eyebrows.

Pokemon’s Mobile Apps Are Ripping Us Off

This is, perhaps, par for the course. Pokemon is bringing games to where its audience is at, and that place is mobile. Mobile games are notorious for having exploitative monetisation. Lots of free-to-play g🔜ames, for children or adults, on and off mobile, also give players plenty of opportunities to spend money.

has monetisation. has monetisation. has 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a lot of monetisation. This is one of the biggest franchises in the world, with a legacy built on excellent 𒐪games beloved by players worldwide, but it sure doesn’t act like one. It could have continued to make truckloads of money by just continuing to make good games, but instead it’s allowed the IP to be plastered on countless mobile apps, all of which shamelessly grab at your wallet with greedy﷽ little hands.

Lest we forget, while lots of millennials grew up with Pokemon, games like these are still targeting children. 💙Why are we just letting Pokemon do this with no pushba𒁃ck?