Why do fan-made pokemon games look better than released ones?

[Jessibella]

A lot of them are fun to play because the people who create them know what fans want, unlike Gamefreak who would rather remove locations, Pokemon and features from their games just for the sake of introducing new gimmicks that they'll toss in the trash a few years later.

 

[prog rocker]

A lot of them are fun to play because the people who create them know what fans want,

I think this is a kinda problematic statement, considering the opinions I have seen here are completely different from one to another. There's no consensus on what fans want.

 

[Hidden Mew]

A lot of them are fun to play because the people who create them know what fans want, unlike Gamefreak who would rather remove locations, Pokemon and features from their games just for the sake of introducing new gimmicks that they'll toss in the trash a few years later.

Fan made game developers can't appeal to everyone just like GameFreak can't. The fanbase isn't a hivemind where everyone has the same opinions and desires. Saying that they know what fans want is pretty ridiculous, especially when none of the fanmade games I've heard about sound like they'd appeal to me or that the developers knew what I wanted. There are valid complaints about GameFreak, such as introducing new features that may or may not stick around for the long haul regardless of whether or not they have a good impact on the games, but putting fan made game developers on such a high pedestal in order to complain more about GameFreak just bothers me a lot.

 

[Phosphene]

Fan made game developers can't appeal to everyone just like GameFreak can't.

To provide an example of this, there's praise for Pokemon Reborn in this very thread, however, I found a let's play thread on another forum that was much more mocking and critical of the game. What is a good game to some is a bad game to others.

 

[prog rocker]

Fan made game developers can't appeal to everyone just like GameFreak can't. The fanbase isn't a hivemind where everyone has the same opinions and desires.

That's what I wanted to say. To put a list of opinions I have seen here:

-Pokémon should stay being a turn-based RPG.
-Pokémon should be an action RPG.
-Pokémon should stop being an RPG altogether.
-Pokémon should be more like the older games in the series.
-Pokémon should keep going in the route they are in.
-Pokémon should be more like the anime.
-Pokémon should stay as far away as possible from the anime.
-Pokémon should stop having a story altogether.
-Pokémon needs more story.
-Pokémon should be more competitive.
-Pokémon should stay where they are.
-Pokémon should be open world.
-Pokémon should stay being a linear game.
-Dexit was necessary.
-Dexit was unnecessary.

Seriously, it's impossible to make a game that completely appeals to a fandom that holds such diverse opinions. It's not like with Paper Mario were most people ask for another RPG or with Mother fans that ask for a translation.

 

[NotAPassenger]

B2W2 had the best idea in terms of difficulty settings. I think people enjoy the rom hacks because of that opportunity, we all love to play and battle Pokémon. Yet the main series often doesn’t allow for significant challenge.

In an ideal world the next gen has an easy and hard mode to allow for 2 very different experiences within the games. Perhaps even a story difference.

Fan games are usually crap, but do allow for a different take on playing your usual games which I think is the main appeal.

 

[Bolt Strike]

To provide an example of this, there's praise for Pokemon Reborn in this very thread, however, I found a let's play thread on another forum that was much more mocking and critical of the game. What is a good game to some is a bad game to others.

It's really hard to tell what their complaints are in that thread (have they ever heard of spoiler tags over there?), but it seems like the main complaint is that it's too dark and edgy. Most of what I liked about Reborn had more to do with the region design and gameplay mechanics. I didn't not like the dark and edgy story, it seems fine for as much as I've played it (it seems I only got about halfway through what the final game is supposed to be, I only got 9 badges out of what's supposed to be 18 gyms), but I'm not super hyped about it either. It just seems fine.

That's what I wanted to say. To put a list of opinions I have seen here:

-Pokémon should stay being a turn-based RPG.
-Pokémon should be an action RPG.
-Pokémon should stop being an RPG altogether.
-Pokémon should be more like the older games in the series.
-Pokémon should keep going in the route they are in.
-Pokémon should be more like the anime.
-Pokémon should stay as far away as possible from the anime.
-Pokémon should stop having a story altogether.
-Pokémon needs more story.
-Pokémon should be more competitive.
-Pokémon should stay where they are.
-Pokémon should be open world.
-Pokémon should stay being a linear game.
-Dexit was necessary.
-Dexit was unnecessary.

Seriously, it's impossible to make a game that completely appeals to a fandom that holds such diverse opinions. It's not like with Paper Mario were most people ask for another RPG or with Mother fans that ask for a translation.

Those demands aren't as impossible as you think. Usually when other developers have contradicting views on the direction of the series like that, they make a subseries or spinoff game. Many of those complaints aren't unique to Pokemon anyway, a lot of IPs are seeing debates among their fans on things like linearity vs. open world, story vs. no story, etc. The difference is that some of those IPs have a second branch to them that provides a different gameplay style that's distinct from the original but still feels like a part of the series. For example, when Mario went 3D they couldn't make the traditional linear style platforming work and they wanted to show off what 3D levels could do for the series, so they made Super Mario 64 a sandbox style platformer focusing on collecting Power Stars. So by having 2D linear platformers and 3D sandbox platformers, they're able to satisfy completely different demographics of fans that want completely different things out of a Mario game (2D fans generally want linear platformers that focus on challenging obstacles and have minimal story, whereas 3D fans want more open ended platformers where you use your platforming skills to explore open environments and collect things, and generally want more story heavy games with colorful characters to interact with). So even when the fans can't agree on what they want, they're at least satisfied as long as they're releasing a healthy mix of both styles of games.

No, you're not going to be able to please everyone with 1 game. So make 2 games so they can appeal to both sides of the debate. I've long thought that a Pokepark 3 or spiritual successor to Pokepark would serve this role pretty well, Pokepark 2 is a good foundation for the sort of ARPG gameplay people have been asking for.

 

[colours]

want a pokemon fighting game? there's pokken
want a pokemon explorer game? there's pokemon mystery dungeon
want a pokemon mobile game? try masters if you don't mind gacha, otherwise there's unite that's coming out at some point. there's also obviously pokemon GO
want a traditional pokemon game? there's swsh
want a GO-style pokemon game mixed with traditional? there's let's go

whether these offerings are good or not is another conversation, but the pokemon company hasn't put all their eggs in one basket when it comes to the main series games, for better or worse. trying to reach a broader audience seems exactly the kind of move they're doing right now.

i get it, i get the point. it seems that the general sentiment when it comes to the more jaded crowd of pokemon fans is that they want something more mature, something more difficult, and in their eyes, for game freak to put some effort for once and make a mainline console pokemon game actually deserving of a console title. but "really picky pokemon fans that want x or y or maybe z in their pokemon games" doesn't seem to be a widespread demographic outside of internet pokemon communities, so it's unfortunately understandable why game freak is so disconnected from what older fans of the series really want.

because, to be honest? i don't even think a lot of more veteran fans can all agree on what we want from the next pokemon game. and therein likes the issue, and why there's a million different fangames out there for all the different pokemon fans with strict taste in pokemon games.

 

[Bolt Strike]

want a pokemon fighting game? there's pokken
want a pokemon explorer game? there's pokemon mystery dungeon
want a pokemon mobile game? try masters if you don't mind gacha, otherwise there's unite that's coming out at some point. there's also obviously pokemon GO
want a traditional pokemon game? there's swsh
want a GO-style pokemon game mixed with traditional? there's let's go

What if you want an ARPG? What if you want an open world game? They haven't provided those yet, so there's a glaring hole in their offerings.

i get it, i get the point. it seems that the general sentiment when it comes to the more jaded crowd of pokemon fans is that they want something more mature, something more difficult, and in their eyes, for game freak to put some effort for once and make a mainline console pokemon game actually deserving of a console title. but "really picky pokemon fans that want x or y or maybe z in their pokemon games" doesn't seem to be a widespread demographic outside of internet pokemon communities, so it's unfortunately understandable why game freak is so disconnected from what older fans of the series really want.

because, to be honest? i don't even think a lot of more veteran fans can all agree on what we want from the next pokemon game. and therein likes the issue, and why there's a million different fangames out there for all the different pokemon fans with strict taste in pokemon games.

Other companies do tend to listen and take feedback from internet communities though. This sense of "screw you, we're focusing on casuals" is mainly just unique to Pokemon and Game Freak. Nintendo listens to what people are saying online and tend to give them what they want and you really don't see as many complaints from those fanbases. You see some, you always will, but not as much as Pokemon.

Again, look at Mario as an example. Mario is an equally widely appealing IP with a large casual base, and they still release large scale games that appeal to a more hardcore audience like Odyssey. Nintendo tried the same thing with Mario back in the mid-2000s and early 2010s with Mario, we saw a lot of games that were incredibly stripped down to appeal to a casual audience, with the NSMB games, and 3D games Galaxy, Galaxy 2, 3D Land, and 3D World which gradually stripped more and more from the 3D games until they were designed similarly to the NSMB games and similarly casualized. Then guess what? People complained. Sales dropped. The casual gamers that drove the NSMB games moved onto mobile and never looked back. Nintendo then realized that that audience is not going to drive sales for their console games so they started making hardcore games again and the result is the Switch, which has seen rousing success and record breaking sales. Mario Odyssey being a return to form for 3D Mario with all of the sandbox platforming elements people missed, the unique settings and characters people missed, and generally made the game a large scale open ended experience driven by player choice and freedom made it the best selling 3D game and one of the best selling Mario games of all time.

No, appealing to casual players and ignoring hardcore fans is not necessary, and in fact the failure of the Wii U and success of the Switch indicates that this is actually detrimental. The casual players that bought the Wii and DS and now reside on mobile are mainly uninterested in console games now, so bending over backwards for them backfires for them nowadays. The modern success stories of the industry are all games that can be enjoyed by both casual AND hardcore gamers that can experience the game the way they want to experience it. And yes, that requires putting effort into their games and listening to fan feedback such as what's being said on this forum.

 

[colours]

What if you want an ARPG? What if you want an open world game? They haven't provided those yet, so there's a glaring hole in their offerings.

whether you like swsh or not, it strives to come as closer to open world as possible. it's by no means a breath of the wild experience, but it's pretty clear that's what the games strives to be. again, whether it's done well or not is another conversation, but it's what we have for now.

no comment on the actionrpg front, but that's mostly because i sort of agree with you there. an arpg would be an interesting spinoff addition to the pokemon games, assuming there's a demographic for it.

Other companies do tend to listen and take feedback from internet communities though.

"other companies" are not game freak, though. you can point at every other AAA development company you want, game freak is a purely japanese company, located in japan, with no real marketing or outreach outside of the japanese market. yes, nintendo is also a japanese company, but they have headquarters pretty much globally. they have a giant marketing team so of course they're not deaf to fan complaints. you gave the example of mario games, which yeah it's a fair point, but people have also complained about nintendo's online offerings for quite a while now since it's awfully lacking compared to sony's and microsoft's and we've yet to see any sort of real improvement (again, yet), so i wouldn't always hold nintendo to the gold standard of being in tune to what the fans want.

when it comes to developer communication with the fans, i won't blame people for feeling like game freak is one of the worst offenders out there. i think most small indie studios at least have some sort of forum or a subreddit or something to talk with their fans, but whether it may be japanese workplace culture or for some other really strict NDA-related reasons, game freak doesn't do this, which probably leads to a lot of the issues that more jaded pokemon fans have. i mean, people keep spamming #bringbacknationaldex on the pokemon twitter account somehow thinking game freak runs it or whatever? when it's really just a global marketing account for like everything pokemon franchise related. the one time it got loud enough on social media to where masuda issued a direct response pretty much not changing his mind on the issue, and that was that. this is the closest the fans have ever gotten to reaching out to game freak whatsoever. they rely on their game testing/likely internal QA team to make sure their games don't run like hot garbage to the point where it's detrimental and that's that.

this is getting past the subject of fan games, but the reason why i make that point is that you put game freak on an equal scale to nintendo and perhaps other developers when they're clearly not. this is one of those scenarios where game freak being a tiny japanese company with their only outreach being TPC actually hurts them as far as reaching out to the western audience and keeping in touch to what western pokemon fans want vs what exclusively japanese pokemon fans would want. maybe japanese fans like what game freak has to offer and they dont loudly criticise them as much as western fans do on social media, idk. throwing random guesses out there. but that's my point of view of it. also:

No, appealing to casual players and ignoring hardcore fans is not necessary, and in fact the failure of the Wii U and success of the Switch indicates that this is actually detrimental.

i suppose we have differing perspectives here, because the absolute disaster that is marketing of the wii u as well as the likely atrocious development for it (i mean, from what i recall, there weren't that many third party companies jumping on the wii u train compared to the switch) is what led to its demise, rather than trying to appease one demographic over another. but that's another conversation that doesn't have much to do with this thread in particular.

---

again, on the point of fangames in particular (i don't want this thread to get too off-track), there's a reason why there's so many of them. some fan games are dark and "edgy" and appeal to that sort of crowd that wants pokemon games mixed in with edginess. some fan games offer something different than that. there's different ones of varying quality that appeal to different tastes, because unsurprisingly, the pokemon fanbase is not quite monolithic and doesn't all enjoy playing pokemon for the same reasons. where an actual development company is concerned though, whereas they have built their whole brand and games on being kid and family friendly, that is what they're stuck to for better or worse.

 

[Kallyle]

Like everyone else has been saying, the quality tends to vary from fan game to fan game. However, the biggest advantages are the lack of a hard deadline and corporate interference. I do think TPCi and GF should pay more attention to certain features added in these fan games and try to integrate them into the main series rather than just (or in addition to) taking them down because of the nonsensical fear of them losing money over it (especially when Pokémon already rakes in billions in monetary gain to begin with). That way, they can potentially get even more money by actively improving the games with more features the fan base actually wants.

 

[prog rocker]

I do also have a problem with the statement "hardcore gamer", at least in regards to Pokémon:

I don't care so much for the difficulty in Pokémon (although it could use some work), I didn't mind Dexit since it was a necessity in my opinion, I don't care about competitive battling, and in my opinion the Battle Frontier can stay where it is right now.

Does that I'm not a hardcore gamer, considering I have been in the franchise for almost 21 years, I have gotten all main games from each year up to USUM, have played almost all spin-offs and even joined a community with other fans.

Tell me where do I fall there?

/rant

I do think TPCi and GF should pay more attention to certain features added in these fan games and try to integrate them into the main series rather than just (or in addition to) taking them down because of the nonsensical fear of them losing money over it (especially when Pokémon already rakes in billions in monetary gain to begin with). That way, they can potentially get even more money by actively improving the games with more features the fan base actually wants.

They can't do that, otherwise they would be the ones getting a lawsuit.

 

[Bolt Strike]

"other companies" are not game freak, though. you can point at every other AAA development company you want, game freak is a purely japanese company, located in japan, with no real marketing or outreach outside of the japanese market. yes, nintendo is also a japanese company, but they have headquarters pretty much globally. they have a giant marketing team so of course they're not deaf to fan complaints.

And yet they still see fit to release the games globally. This is poor business sense, if you're going to release something worldwide, you need to keep tabs on what your worldwide audience wants.

you gave the example of mario games, which yeah it's a fair point, but people have also complained about nintendo's online offerings for quite a while now since it's awfully lacking compared to sony's and microsoft's and we've yet to see any sort of real improvement (again, yet), so i wouldn't always hold nintendo to the gold standard of being in tune to what the fans want.

No company is perfect and every company is out to make money so there's always going to be some level of this. That being said, Nintendo is a definitive improvement over Game Freak in that area and probably the best company out of the entire industry at this, so they're a good example of how to do this right.

this is getting past the subject of fan games, but the reason why i make that point is that you put game freak on an equal scale to nintendo and perhaps other developers when they're clearly not. this is one of those scenarios where game freak being a tiny japanese company with their only outreach being TPC actually hurts them as far as reaching out to the western audience and keeping in touch to what western pokemon fans want vs what exclusively japanese pokemon fans would want. maybe japanese fans like what game freak has to offer and they dont loudly criticise them as much as western fans do on social media, idk. throwing random guesses out there. but that's my point of view of it.

There's a reason why they're viewed in the same light as Nintendo and other AAA developers. It's because Game Freak continues to release the main games as full price retail games, and now that they're on console selling the games for $60. Selling a full retail $60 console game carries with it the expectation of it being a AAA experience, that's what the industry's been conditioned to expect after 20 years of retail console games being large scale, high budget experiences. You can point to Game Freak being a tiny Japanese company all you want, but the fact that they decided to release the main series games as $60 retail games automatically makes them competitors to AAA games like BotW and Odyssey whether Game Freak wants to compete with them or not. If they want to be treated as a tiny Japanese company and not be criticized for their lack of scale and effort, then maybe Pokemon should be a $20-$30 eShop game instead of a $60 retail game. Then people's expectations would be more in check.

i suppose we have differing perspectives here, because the absolute disaster that is marketing of the wii u as well as the likely atrocious development for it (i mean, from what i recall, there weren't that many third party companies jumping on the wii u train compared to the switch) is what led to its demise, rather than trying to appease one demographic over another. but that's another conversation that doesn't have much to do with this thread in particular.

Well there were multiple factors in the Wii U's demise and marketing and empty schedules were definite factors, but part of the problem was that the Wii U was too similar to the Wii and DS and it was an obvious attempt to keep the casuals that bought the 3DS and Wii U around. Additionally, the types of games that were released leaned more to the casual side of things, but those releases weren't quite as successful on the Wii U as they were on the Wii, and not just in terms of raw sales but in terms of the attach rates. In case you're not familiar, attach rate is the sales of a game divided by the sales of the console, essentially a percentage of how many console owners bought your game. Here's the attach rates of some of the highest selling games from the Wii, Wii U, and Switch as well as their predecessors and successors:

Spoiler: Wii Attach Rates

Console sales: 101.63 million
Wii Sports- 82.90 million (81.57%)
Mario Kart Wii- 37.32 million (36.72%)
Wii Sports Resort- 33.13 million (32.60%)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii- 30.30 million (29.81%)
Wii Play- 28.02 million (27.57%)
Wii Fit- 22.67 million (22.31%)
Wii Fit Plus- 21.13 million (20.79%)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl- 13.32 million (13.11%)
Super Mario Galaxy- 12.80 million (12.59%)
Wii Party- 9.34 million (9.19%)
Mario Party 8- 8.85 million (8.71%)
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess- 7.53 million (7.41%)
Super Mario Galaxy 2- 7.41 million (7.29%)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword- 3.52 million (3.46%)
Animal Crossing: City Folk- 3.38 million (3.33%)

Spoiler: Wii U Attach Rates

Console sales: 13.56 million
Mario Kart 8- 8.45 million (62.31%)
Super Mario 3D World- 5.84 million (43.07%)
New Super Mario Bros. U- 5.80 million (42.77%)
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U- 5.37 million (39.60%)
Nintendo Land- 5.20 million (38.35%)
Splatoon- 4.95 million (36.50%)
Super Mario Maker- 4.01 million (29.57%)
New Super Luigi U- 3.05 million (22.49%)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD- 2.31 million (17.04%)
Mario Party 10- 2.23 million (16.45%)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild- 1.5 million (11.06%)
Wii Fit U- Unreported (estimated 0.86 million by VGChartz)
Wii Sports Club- Unreported (estimated 0.38 million by VGChartz)

Spoiler: Switch Attach Rates

Console sales: 55.77 million
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: 24.77 million (44.41%)
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate- 18.84 million (33.78%)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild- 17.41 million (31.22%)
Super Mario Odyssey- 17.41 million (31.22%)
Pokemon Sword and Shield- 17.37 million (31.15%)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons- 13.41 million (24.05%)
Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee- 11.97 million (21.46%)
Splatoon 2- 10.13 million (18.16%)
Super Mario Party- 10.10 million (18.11%)
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe- 6.60 million (11.83%)

So what can we glean from these numbers? Well first of all, the Wii brand games fell off a cliff from the Wii to the Wii U before Nintendo killed the series completely. They sold gangbusters on the Wii, but then when they tried to replicate their success on the Wii U, the sales took a nosedive (note that when the company doesn't even confirm how many copies it's sold, that's very bad, that means it sold so poorly they don't even want to tell you how much it sold). Second, NSMB sold very high on the Wii, still held on on the Wii U, but then dropped on the Switch. This could be just because it was a Wii U port, but that didn't stop Mario Kart 8 Deluxe from still selling gangbusters on the Switch. It seems that 2D Mario fatigue set in throughout the mid to late 2010s causing a drop in sales. Third, Zelda's attach rate jumped tremendously with the Switch, with BotW having double the attach rate of the next highest Zelda game in that span (Wind Waker HD, which was a remaster). Booming success for Zelda for sure. Fourth, 3D Mario saw an increase in attach rate from Wii to Wii U and Switch. This indicates that the people that left after the Wii weren't interested in 3D Mario and then 3D Mario grew with its fanbase. Lastly, you see consistently high attach rates for Mario Kart and Smash across all three consoles. Put all of this together and you get a pretty clear picture: Nintendo had massive success on the Wii appealing to a casual audience and tried to release similar types of games on the Wii U. The more casual games failed on the Wii U with those audiences leaving in droves and the games that had the best success (and I use success in a relative manner) on the Wii U were the more hardcore leaning games, as that was the audience that stayed put with Nintendo. So Nintendo slightly shifted directions from Wii U to Switch and started making more hardcore games and they've started to see massive success again with games like BotW, Odyssey, and Splatoon stepping up to fill out the top slots. That's why I can draw the conclusion that appealing to the hardcore crowd is beneficial to the sales, we've seen them try to go casual, fail, and then succeed again when they go more hardcore. Now that's not to say the casual crowd isn't important because we've seen games like Mario Kart and Smash consistently succeed despite the changing circumstances. This is because they can appeal to both sides, being games that are easy to pick up and play but have a lot of depth and an active competitive community for those that want to engage themselves in those games. So that's the key to maximizing their appeal. As it stands, Pokemon is erring more on the Wii brand and NSMB side of things. They're going casual, trying to appeal to those audiences. And history shows this is going to come back to bite them. The audience will lose interest. The demographics actually buying Nintendo consoles won't want to buy the games. And the sales will fall. On the flip side, if they take note of this Pokemon's sales could become even more insane, we've seen that happen with 3D Zelda and 3D Mario. So it would definitely behoove them to listen to what hardcore gamers want.

again, on the point of fangames in particular (i don't want this thread to get too off-track), there's a reason why there's so many of them. some fan games are dark and "edgy" and appeal to that sort of crowd that wants pokemon games mixed in with edginess. some fan games offer something different than that. there's different ones of varying quality that appeal to different tastes, because unsurprisingly, the pokemon fanbase is not quite monolithic and doesn't all enjoy playing pokemon for the same reasons. where an actual development company is concerned though, whereas they have built their whole brand and games on being kid and family friendly, that is what they're stuck to for better or worse.

Yeah, the dark and edgy approach will never happen, but it doesn't need to, there are other aspects of the hardcore crowd's preferences that are compatible with the family friendly casual nature of the series. Adding in difficulty settings should be a no brainer, then players can make it as easy or hard as they want. Having tons of optional content would also allows the games to appeal to both sides, because then the casuals can tear straight through the game without much intrusion while the hardcore can immerse themselves in content for weeks, even months. Putting more complex design and puzzles in some of those optional areas will also allow the hardcore fans to flex their mental muscles a bit more while being out of the way from the core storyline. And it's not just fangames that are doing this, this is what games like BotW and Odyssey are doing as well. So it's not just about the fans wanting something that Game Freak can't provide for business reasons. They're just being willfully ignorant. That's the issue, and that's why I'm bringing up the sales and practices of other IPs vs. Pokemon. What the fans are doing and what fans are asking for isn't something that's infeasible or won't sell or too niche/varied in taste. Game Freak and TPC just don't want to do those things simply because they don't like them, so the fans feel the need to fill the void.

 

[Kallyle]

They can't do that, otherwise they would be the ones getting a lawsuit.

They obviously can't implement those exact features into the games, but what Game Freak could do is analyze the commonalities between those games and draw inspiration from them. In other words they could use them as a guideline for certain areas like the type of content and difficulty balance to create an optimal experience for more types of players.

 

[prog rocker]

They obviously can't implement those exact features into the games, but what Game Freak could do is analyze the commonalities between those games and draw inspiration from them. In other words they could use them as a guideline for certain areas like the type of content and difficulty balance to create an optimal experience for more types of players.

I still think this might be pretty risky. On one hand, there are fans that would be grateful for that, but on the other one, I know that there are idiots that will use that chance for their own gain, like attention or money.

It's sad, but it's also a pretty big possibility.

 

[Hidden Mew]

They obviously can't implement those exact features into the games, but what Game Freak could do is analyze the commonalities between those games and draw inspiration from them. In other words they could use them as a guideline for certain areas like the type of content and difficulty balance to create an optimal experience for more types of players.

I don't know if that would be the best idea. Not only because of the legal risks involved, but I don't think it would necessarily improve their odds of appealing to some of the older/long time fans of the franchise anymore than just using their own ideas would. It's still assuming that these kind of features from fangames would be welcomed by more fans. Having an easy/hard setting would be a pretty safe bet, but I don't know about some of the other features, especially when I still haven't heard a lot of praises for Pokemon fangames in general. I just don't think that using features from fangames as a guideline on what to do would work when the fanbase is pretty divisive on a lot of common topics. Despite all of the intense arguments around the National Dex, not every fan agrees that it was or wasn't necessary and plenty of people, like myself, just don't care about it at this point.

I can understand wanting Game Freak to take more fan input on the games. The target audience is still primarily children, but they are clearly aware of long time fans who have played for multiple generations by this point. I'm just not sure if it's that practical for them, at least in terms of trying to appeal to fans since they can't appeal to everyone. Even if they did manage to put in all of the elements from fanmade games into a new main series title, I'm positive that it would still be more divisive than openly praised by this point for a number of reasons.

 

[colours]

.

i'm going to make this final point. it seems that we mostly agree that yes, pokemon games can and should be better, but we disagree on the finer details. we agree that Game Freak has glaring flaws, but i'm not exactly sure that appeasing "hardcore" fans would make a significant enough difference in sales as you claim. you point to sales figures, but either neglect to mention or ignore once again that SwSh, as criticised as it is from these same "hardcore" fans, have been the best selling games Game Freak has ever sold since either DPP or GSC. you point to BotW and Super Mario Odyssey and Splatoon being the gold standard for "hardcore" players, but yet in that list that you've shown, SwSh's sales are literally up there with BotW's and SMO despite only being released for... seven months? compared to three years for those titles, and SwSh has even sold more than Splatoon has. if we're going by the sales = quality metric, then i feel you have to be fair to pokemon's sales as well and give credit where credit is due, regardless of your possible grievances with it.

as an aside somewhat, there's a reason i put "hardcore" in quotes like that. it's such a vague term referring to a "power" user demographic of the pokemon gaming franchise. i'd assume you'd be referring to the competitive battling community normally, as they're the ones that are a bit more involved in cart-based battles (in the case of VGC) and are more "hardcore" in a sense than people who don't care about that stuff, but that wouldn't make any sense since Game Freak has made competitive battling ridiculously accessible this generation more than any other generation in the past. so who are the "hardcore" fans you're referring to, here?

also, to clarify: i said Game Freak is a tiny japanese company with pretty much no direct communication with fans. i bolded that part so my point hopefully doesn't get lost again, and i also said that even tiny indie studios would more than likely have some sort of communication with their fanbase, so it is an oddity that Game Freak doesn't do this. so i'm not sure what the point of that third point was when i was essentially agreeing with you that Game Freak may be disconnected from what some fans of the games want.

look, i know that you, as well as others (and myself, even) are hungry for more substance in pokemon games. but i'd be careful for what you keep wishing for because what you want and how Game Freak decides to implement what you want may very well be two distinctly different things. you may want challenging puzzles, well to Game Freak, their definition of "challenging" may be different from yours. you want a difficulty setting, well they've done that before in B2W2 and their implementation of such was criticised. hell people have wanted pokemon following the trainer for years and Game Freak brought it back not once but twice. the first time around was in LGPE which i guess isn't everyone's cup of tea but the second time around the implementation itself was criticised because it wasn't exactly like how it was back in the HGSS days. when Game Freak gave players what they wanted in getting rid of HMs in SM/USUM, the implementation was once again criticised because some people didn't like that it was preselected pokemon instead of your own, and (justifiably) criticised the ugly ride outfit. when Game Freak brought back character customisation again in SwSh after being criticised in SMUSUM (this is justifiable) for the lack of options available, there was still criticism of that very same nature present in SwSh because of the clothing stores only being in a select few towns or cities and not offering enough variety (which they keep adding more with the addition of IoA and likely with CT), especially for the male character. i would assume theses are things "hardcore" players care about, but each time Game Freak has brought a highly requested feature back, they face criticism because it's not to the exact liking of these players.

i get the rest of your point, as well. it's on a console game, so it should be held to the standards of BotW and other AAA titles, and i agree! SwSh, in my eyes, aren't perfect, especially where Game Freak is entering in a console field where they're no longer that dominant unlike the handheld, so they should strive to make better and better games. just don't be surprised when, even when they do eventually get to the wishlist of these "hardcore" players, that they continue to be criticised for not implementing these wishlist requirements to their exact specifications.

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also lets please get back to the main point of fangames vs official games because i feel like we've gotten way off course with this.

 

[Leaf_Ranger]

I've just discovered Nexomons and Anitons and while these aren't fan-games, they seem to be based a lot on Pkmn but at least while we can see some copycat content, the fact is that they try to create a new narrative other than what GF has been providing. While the players wishes and hopes are different and even opposite, it wouldn't hurt GF to at least try to implement radical changes on some maingame and that's what I praise in both fan-games and full-fledged games: they try something that while not groundbreaking it's different.

 

[SerenaToAlola]

(Or 1 that's a Visual Novel but that's not really the standard Pokémon Game I guess.)

Ah what's this? Sounds interesting.

I don't think I've ever played a fan game. Any recommendations? I'd be more interested in upgrades/remakes of existing games than a whole new region.

The fanmade content that I follow are the fakedexes on Instagram, many of which are very interesting. The biggest of all is probably the lewekaregion fakedex which is about to be made into a game. It mostly looks good and I can tell he put in a lot of work into it but something about it makes me very uncomfortable too lmfao.

 

[Daenerys]

I've never actually played fan-made games but I have seen screenshots of many and they do look pretty interesting. I figure that since only die-hard fans would program those kinds of games, it allows them to use all their creativity in ways that Gamefreak never would.