The Spirit of the Game at the Pokémon World Championships
If I was to ask a random person on the street what place they most associate with the Pokémon brand, there’s likely only a very small chance anybody would say Hawaii.
The 2016 games Pokémon Sun and Moon may have been set in Alola, a fictional region heavily inspired by Hawaii and its culture, but I can almost guarantee most people would end up saying Japan.
What’s wild is that the Pokémon World Championships this year took place in Hawaii for the fourth time.
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Compare that to the home of the brand, Japan, where it’s only taken place once!
This wasn’t my first time covering the World Championships, I previously hit up both London in 2022 and Yokohama, Japan, last year in 2023 – a real pilgrimage for lifelong fans of the franchise.
But this year was something different.
The Honolulu convention centre is probably a little too small to handle a crowd of competitors that large.
Also yes, maybe technical issues caused the opening ceremony to be delayed by 20 minutes and YES, maybe the Pokémon Center was yet again poorly organised on the first day and totally understocked, but walking around the Hilton Village and seeing trainers from across the planet playing games, meeting Pikachu, and generally just enjoying the beach together is something I doubt the community will ever forget.
That’s what’s at the heart of an event like this, the community.
I went into these Pokémon events a few years ago, predominantly as a journalist first and a fan second.
I go to so many media events now that they are commonplace.
But Pokémon events are something so different, and it’s down to that community.
Over the course of attending Pokémon these last few years, I’ve grown closer to an ever-growing group of creators and journalists, some with a background in Pokémon, others coming in fresh, and what I can guarantee is that everyone will walk away from these events as friends.
And that’s not just the media attending, you just need to look at the competitors on the floor and on stage, in any of the different games – there’s an obvious respect and rapport between everyone.
It always interested me how Pokémon has managed to cultivate such a bunch of, for lack of a better phrase, good eggs.
The media and influencer side I get. If you are a good person who people like being around then you are more likely to be invited back to things – but when it comes to competitors, that’s a different story.
There was an incident this year involving a contestant, Ian Robb, being disqualified from the masters TCG tournament mere moments after winning the semi-finals. This was for what The Pokémon Company called “inappropriate conduct” in a statement to Comic Book.
The clip is available to watch online, and it’s very hard to disagree with the ruling. Ironically, the competitor Robb defeated, Fernando Cifuentes, went on to win the entire tournament.
Interestingly, from what I was told through unconfirmed sources, Robb was still in the crowd for the finals, cheering on the Cifuentes as he became this year’s Trading Card Game Masters World Champion.
Showing that (if true) even after disqualification, Pokémon competitors still support and cheer each other as a community.
Off the back of this, in a round table with Chris Brown, the director of global esports and event producer for Pokémon, I asked how The Pokémon Company keeps players in line with what they call ‘the spirit of the game’.
His answer was somewhat expected but surprisingly strict.
“So, first: very difficult to do,” Brown began.
“I'll start with what we refer to as the spirit of the game. If you read our rule books, we have this idea of treating people with respect.
There is winning and losing in Pokémon, there's character building that comes with that, but at the end of the day, you should shake your opponent's hand and be cordial and move past some of those defeats.”
“We also have an inclusivity policy.
We do a lot to try to have a discipline process; we have a trust and safety team.
Like any community, there's a process when somebody is not in line with what our values are.
Whatever the rule is, we have a process for discipline, and if it doesn't work for some of those players, they might be suspended, or not able to participate in our program.”
“That's always a tricky thing for any competitive circuit, you want - obviously - everyone to be able to play, but at the end of the day, you need to play by what we view as the spirit of the game, [what] we view as our values.
If you're not willing to do that, then, unfortunately, Pokémon may not be the best competition for you to compete in, and that's just the reality of trying to make sure that it's a fair, friendly community.”
It’s always surprising to hear a heavily PR-trained high-up person of power in any company speak so candidly and direct about a somewhat touchy subject, but you can see how important and clearly enforced positive behavior and respect-related rules are to Pokémon.
But it can’t be all locked down to corporate control.
Before the first night of the tournament, fans, players and Hawaiian locals all crowded down to Waikiki beach to see the biggest drone show in the state’s history.
The feeling in the air was one of anticipation for not just the show, but the weekend to come.
And as the drones took to the sky revealing iconic Pokémon like Pikachu, Dragonite, Psyduck and Mew flying at a large scale in the skies above Honolulu, you could hear the laughter and cheers from adults and children alike.
In a moment, before the games had begun, the tone was set.
An entire city overrun with that Pokémon fever those of us old enough to remember from the nineties.
You truly need to see the fan response to grand final victories in the main hall to fully understand the passion and hype fans have for this franchise and each other.
I expected the screams, tears and fan invasions from a derby match between Burnley and Blackburn at Turf Moor, but the unbridled celebration from the audience when Fernando Cifuentes won his finals match – the way he was embraced by upwards of 40 friends, family and fans in front of the stage - was the most heartwarming sight.
Then compare that to the screams from fans, usually reserved for bands like BTS and One Direction as Team FENNEL fought their way to top of the Pokémon Unite Worlds Championships, you honestly wouldn’t believe this was for a Pokémon game.
I don’t mean this to be derogatory.
It’s just that outside of the core fanbase and those who attend these events, I don’t think the standard fan even knows how wild and passionate these tournaments truly can be.
Pokémon is such a huge brand across the planet - rivalling some of Disney’s biggest IPs for the power it holds, highlighting the fact it should be held up to scrutiny.
From the downright terrible performance of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to the treatment of fan games and projects.
But times like this, seeing smiles on the faces of everyone staring up to at a drone show in the sky, or cheering on a new junior world champion in the trading card game, you can see the benefit of a brand like this and the community it brings together (at least in person – we’re not counting internet discourse here).
You can look at it as a sense of worshipping the billion-dollar franchise, the trend of fans consuming whatever they are given like with Star Wars and Marvel – but this does in a way feel different, a lot less cynical.
If an event like this can build a community and teach children to be a better version of themselves through loss and victory, allow parents to bond with their kids over a shared passion, or just let me, through circumstance as a journalist and video producer make some fantastic new friends, then I can’t see any of this as a bad thing whatsoever.
Topics: Community
Tom Ryan-Smith