Pokémon versus the tourist boards
Marsha stepped off the light rail at the corporate office park and heard the breaks squeal as they disengaged behind her. The Pokémon Company headquarters were waiting for her.
The reception area was surprisingly minimalist. She had expected to see some merchandise or artwork on the walls, but it didn’t look any different from a generic office.
She sat down in a leather chair and reached into her pocket for her good luck charm, a small rabbit’s foot. On the tablet in her lap was her finely tuned pitch right from the tourism minister. She was nervous about her presentation. If they didn’t secure the Generation 11 bid, they wouldn’t have enough funding to make necessary improvements to their energy system.
“The eyes still don’t look right,” she muttered to herself, staring at a render of a creature vaguely resembling a koala. Its were looked distant, haunted almost. It looked stupid.
“Still trying to practice your doodles, Rose?”
Its muscles look too bulky. It needs to be cuter, she finished her thought before looking up.
Plava Cobalt was leaning against the doorframe with an effortless charisma. The sleeves of his blazer had been pushed up to reveal forearms that were hairless and small. He flashed a phony smile with teeth that were nearly glimmering.
“I thought Solara was pitching in the afternoon,” she gripped her rabbit’s foot tighter.
“We were moved up,” he shrugged, swaggering over to a chair opposite her. He gave her a quick finger gun and then pulled his own tablet from his briefcase. “Yoshi wants to get the heavy hitters out of the way first. How’s your panic attack going?”
“I’m not panicking,” she said defensively.
“Right, sure. So, just between you and me, I saw some leaks for Ozzara,” he started to speak in a conspiratorial whisper. “You’re doing a boxing kangaroo as one of the starters? I mean, that feels so... Gen One.”
Marsha bristled. “Its body has evolved so that its fists can knock down fruit from large trees. It makes a lot of sense if you see the whole thing in context.”
“We’re not trying to develop an environmental simulator. These are cartoons. We’re selling cute plushies,” Plava tapped his temple. “We are pitching Solara as the intersection of tech and nature. Redwood forests where the gym is like a giant radio tower. A villainous team based on crypto-miners. It’s very trendy.”
“That sounds depressing,” she shot back. “It’s like you’re viewing this as nothing more than exploiting a fad. These will be the favorite games for many kids.”
“I’m helping them develop their revenue stream,” he corrected. “This is the kind of synergy these corporate types like. They want something that is safe, where a kid doesn’t need to run away from home to have an adventure and feel like a hero. Ozzara is... it’s just a bit rugged. A bit plain.”
“I’m offering them a challenge.”
“It’s a liability for you. I heard one of the focus group kids ran out of the demo early? Parents don’t want something that will scare their kids.”
Marsha looked down at the koala on her screen. He had a point. He was the expert in Disneyfication, and her designs still looked like monsters rather than friends.
“The spiders aren’t a bug,” she sighed.
“What?”
“The ecosystem isn’t supposed to be a petting zoo. The spiders are meant to be scary. It gives them something to overcome.”
“That’s all well and good, but then they’ll need to overcome their flood of returns,” he stood up and smoothed out his suit. “I’ll put in a good word for you so that they let you down easy. Maybe I’ll get them to name one of the NPCs after you.”
He winked and then walked towards the bank of elevators, leaving Marsha to simmer by herself.
Ozzara wasn’t cute. It wasn’t supposed to be. It was about the smell of red dust as far as the horizon. It was about the harsh conditions and the creatures that had evolved to survive in it.
She closed her presentation and opened another one titled Do Not Use. It had a different set of images, ones that weren’t trying to compromise on cuteness. These were jagged, aggressive-looking monsters like a lizard with scales made of icicles and a dingo-ghost with saliva of melted wax.
The spiders were there too. Large. Terrifying. Beautiful.
She deleted the safe presentation and stood up. She entered the elevator and went up to the boardroom on the top floor, ready to sell them on an adventure.
The elevator doors opened right out to the large room. This space had far more décor. Trading cards were placed along the wall like it was the wallpaper. There was a giant television at one end of the room with Pikachu ears on top. There were a collection of stern-looking executives waiting for her.
Marsha placed her tablet on the table. It was made of marble, with some sort of tablecloth to make it look like it was textured wood. It felt cool to her touch. Her thumb brushed against the corner of the screen and the cracked screen protector.
At the head of the table was Minato Yoshi wearing a simple black turtleneck. His fingers were busy with a fidget spinner. The rest were the five people rounding out the committee with more power to direct global tourism than anyone had ever intended. The entire economies of countries were at stake.
“Okay, Miss... Rose. Please connect to our television. State your region and your core loop,” Yoshi said, not even paying attention to her.
Marsha cleared her throat. She saw there was glass of water on the table. She grabbed it and sipped it greedily and cleared her throat again.
“Welcome to the world of Ozzara,” she connected her crude slidedeck to the television.
There weren’t any slick animations of videos. She had to manually swipe between several slides marked placeholder. With each empty slide, she started to remember how little she had actually finished. This was going to be more improvisation than she intended.
Then she reached a series of photographs she had received from the minister. “We don’t have a loop. The gaming market has reached a saturation point,” her voice trembled. “Players, trainers, have been walking down pre-defined paths for nine generations. Even Paldea still had a very particular way you travel, with paths implicitly defined by levels. Gym leader levels didn’t scale.”
She pinched the image on her screen, zooming into the center of the map, a large red desert.
“Ozzara takes away these standard gameplay concepts. Most of the world is an open world desert. There are no rails. The atmospheric dust storms periodically interfere with your Pokédex map, forcing you to make the trek on foot. No Fly. No fast travel. If you want to head to a gym, you need to survive the trek to the coastal Opera House building.”
One of the executives turned to her. The woman’s glasses was blinking blue, indicating that she was recording.
“We tried open world. Our computing resources were highly constrained. This will be a title for the Switch 3, but rendering all the way on the horizon and all those particle effects could present a problem.”
“That’s why the dust storms can be a valuable benefit for frame-rates. Heavy weather effects end up reducing the necessary draw distance. It makes the world feel more intense.”
Yoshi stopped playing with the fidget spinner. “Yes, that’s fine and something we can decide ourselves. But show us your biology.”
Marsha swallowed hard again and moved to the next slide. This was the moment her national economy was saved or that they’d be in a crisis for another four years.
“Normally, your Fire-type starter is a mammal. It balances cute and fiery.”
On the screen was a frilled lizard with long black flaps around its neck giving off an orange light. Its body was a bright yellow.
“When this Pokémon is threatened, its flaps open. Unlike having fire inside of it, the frill acts as a photovoltaic array. It uses the power of the sun to shoot out powerful attacks.”
“That sounds like Heliolisk. Even has the same color,” Kamata criticized.
“What about the regional variant?” Yoshi had already moved on.
“Well, we thought about a standard canine at the start. But in the harsh ecosystem of Ozzara, they don’t develop loyal packs. They are individualistic and opportunist.”
The next slide showed an image of Snubbull on one side next to something far more intense. The lean creature had hollow eyes and a ghostly vapor coming from where its tail should be. Its fangs were large, the size of its mouth.
“This is based on the dingo. Instead of barking, it mimics the cries of injured Pokémon to lure trainers into patches of grass. It’s the furthest thing from a pet.”
The air in the room had shifted. While the executives had looked bored before, they were now looking uneasy.
“We are a family-friendly brand, we need something that can act as a mascot,” the woman noted. “Something that we can put in commercials. That can appear in the anime. Big head and small limbs.”
“Yes, one of the ‘Pika-clones’ that appears in every region,” Marsha had prepared for this. It had come to her in the middle of the night.
She swiped to the next slide.
“This is based on the quokka,” she gestured to the small, round creature with honey-brown fur. It had big black eyes with a berry floating between its pays with jolts of lightning passing around. There was a large, mischievous smile on its face.
“It has no natural predators because its muscles are so dense. It is basically a walking brick. It smiles all the time because it feels no fear. I think it would best be an Electric/Rock-type.”
“Well, that’s adorable,” whispered one of the executives who hadn’t spoken yet.
“It generates fifty-thousand volts of static electricity if you try to hug it,” she added, but it was clear the board was already sold on the concept. She knew that she had finally gotten their attention.
Then the slide shifted on its own. One of the few timed effects she had added early on. The smiling quokka disappeared and was replaced by a trainer in a large cave with a flashlight. Behind the trainer, hanging on the ceiling, was a large spider the size of the character. It was hairy and nightmarish.
“That’s interesting. Is it scaled correctly?” Kamata asked.
“It’s based on the Heteropoda. It doesn’t spin webs because it can run faster than its pray. It would have a speed stat of 130.”
The next slide appeared on its own with the words “GAME OVER”.
The boardroom was absolutely silent. Yoshi placed the fidget spinner down with a gravitas that drew everyone’s attention.
“Ms. Rose, we sell empowerment,” Yoshi said softly. “We want anyone, even children, to feel like they can safely explore the world. It seems like your vision of the world eats children.”
Marsha looked at the two words and thought of Plava’s Disney world.
“If you focus too much on safety, people don’t feel like they actually overcome their challenges. They just get participation trophies. They play to pass the time, not to have fun.”
She flipped to the next slide, showing her original koala design with poison ivy growing on its back.
“Kids these days know the world is messy and dangerous. They have ample access to the Internet. Too much sometimes. It would be patronizing to give them a padded room. It would be talking down to them.”
She looked Yoshi in the eyes, ignoring the glare of his glasses.
“If you want to revitalize the franchise, and get more sales on the new console, you need to give them the joy of winning. Make them struggle to survive. Remember how scary it used to be leaving town and wandering in the tall grass? When they finally defeat that spider?”
She picked up her tablet and held it carefully against her chest.
“They’ll know that they earned it.”
Yoshi stared at her for several seconds. Then he reached over and picked up his fidget spinner again.
“Now let’s talk about birds. How do they deal with the constant dust storms?”
“A finch. Depending on where you find it, it will have a different beak shape and type. It’s an allusion to Darwin’s observations on finches. So it encourages players to explore all kinds of terrains.”
“And the antagonists? Every region requires some personal challenge. A set of characters that get in the way of the character completing their own story.”
“Yes, that’s actually my next slide,” she swiped on her tablet to the next slide, showing figures in high-visibility mining ear operating mech suits. Full robots were standing in the background.
“Team Iron wants to strip-mine the desert, clearing out all that red dust and all the wildlife there to collect evolution stones to fuel their business ambitions.”
“That’s a little political. It could be risky,” Kamata muttered.
“It is relevant though. It ties the evil team directly to the entire region, like Team Magma and Aqua. Plus, it directly ties to the legendary Pokémon.”
She went to the final slide which presented a massive dragon with a serpentine coil which extended off the screen.
“This is the rainbow serpent. It plays a role in the story, directly changing the topography of the region as you’re playing it. It’s the Terraform Pokémon, a combination of Ground and Water. At certain story beats, it draws new riverbeds through the desert. The climax is when these mines are to be flooded, with all the antagonists and you. It then becomes a battle to escape and survive.
“These are not pets. It is a force of nature, a living god of the Ozzara region, and it requires respect.”
Yoshi looked down at his fidget spinner and contemplated all these ideas.
“Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Rose,” he said flatly. “We will deliberate now. Please wait outside.”
The corridor felt colder than the boardroom. Marsha found a bench and despite its stiffness, she fell right down and the adrenaline flowed out of her. She found her hands were shaking, so she tucked them under her thighs.
You showed them a spider as large as a person, she thought to herself. You told Nintendo that children should see the outdoors as a primordial threat. The tourism board is going to hate this. Better start looking for a new job.
“Looks like you just went twelve rounds with a Hitmonchan,” Plava remarked.
He was standing in the corridor with a bottle of sparkling water in his hand. He still looked calm. His hands weren’t shaking. His suit was still unwrinkled.
“I messed up. I tanked the pitch. I went too dark,” she admitted, resigned to her fate.
“I think I heard the screams of executives through the door,” Plava mocked. Then he noticed she was not in the mood for his humor more than ever. “Look, showing them that giant spider? Bold strategy, Cotton. I’m a fair guy though. When we win, we’ll need someone to design a new eco-park to mirror the one in the game. I’m serious about a consulting gig. You’ll be able to get away for a while.”
“I don’t like petting zoos, Plava.”
“What if it’s tasteful?”
“I’m not looking for some cushy job that gives a comforting view of reality.”
“But that’s what people want. Sure, they say they want ‘nature’, but they want a walled garden. You tried to focus on the mosquitos, but that’s the part of nature they hate.”
Marsha pulled the rabbit’s foot from her pocket. Plava had a point, and she hated to admit that. Her personal obsession led her to take a half-baked idea. This was a business. They had more important things than her personal philosophy.
Then the boardroom door opened with a loud pneumatic hiss.
Rather than Director Yoshi, it was Kogana, the company’s head of design. He wore a hoodie that looked casual at first glance, but she knew it cost more than he rent. He shuffled into the corridor and rubbed his eyes. They were not the only two pitches. The entire week had representatives of every country and state try to explain why they should be picked.
“Cobalt?” the designer stared at his tablet.
“I’m ready for the news, sir.”
“Your proposal has been rejected.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s too clean. Too predictable,” the designer scratched his beard. “The players would get too bored before reaching the Pokémon League. Nothing stands out. Nothing is unique. It’s just middling content, like it was written by AI.”
He then turned to Marsha.
“Rose?”
Marsha stood up and her legs felt like lead.
“Your terraforming serpent, what if it had its own in-game logic that you could control? Like, depending on choices in the game, it changes the rivers. Then, you’d feel like you were part of the region as well?”
“I suppose that makes sense. Maybe that could tie into the fossil restoration too?”
A smile spread across his face.
“I like these ideas. Yoshi love the spider. He said it reminded him of the first time he played Green all the way back in 1996. When you find something in the tall grass that could actually hurt you.”
“My first game was Sapphire, but I remember having the same experience.”
“We are going to be greenlighting the Ozzara project. The Board believes it will bring the best gameplay for new and returning players.”
“You’re going for a dust bowl over the embodiment of Silicon Valley?” Plava scoffed.
“We are picking the concept of a new wild that can be explored,” the designer affirmed before returning to the room.
Plava looked over at Marsha and realized that he had lost for the first time in his life. He didn’t have anything to say, not even a dumb remark. Resigned, he turned and walked away with his sneakers squeaking against the polished floor.
Marsha had won. She almost didn’t believe it at first. Then she realized that others needed to hear the news too. She fumbled for her phone and dialed the number of the tourism board.
“We got it,” she stammered out as soon as the other end picked up. “We won the bid. Generation 11 will be in Ozzara. The game will be out in three years, and then we’ll see a tourism boom.”
“That’s incredible! We need to start construction on the Opera House immediately.”
“Actually, I think we will need to reallocate the infrastructure budget,” she interrupted.
“What? But the cities...”
“No, we’ll need to focus the budget on our ranger program. Training and gear. And probably a new medevac wing at our hospitals. And a research grant for antivenom. Something that can work for multiple kinds.”
“What are you talking about? Our bid was to bring in tourists to our cities, not for field hospitals.”
“I sold them on the outback, sir,” she swallowed hard. “They wanted to see the spiders. And the lizards. And even the dingoes. Tourists will spend more time out there than the Opera House.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“I don’t understand what happened, Marsha. Didn’t you sell them on the beauty of our country?”
“I sold them on the beauty of adventure,” she laughed. “Players will be spending more time in the desert than the cities, and so will tourists. So now we have just thirty-six months to make sure they won’t die out in the real wild area.”