PokéTerminology

For many game series and franchises, once they have established themselves and/or expanded into further versions and variations, they begin to have something in common: they at least have a body of terms for all the elements of their games. Pokémon is no exception, as it has accrued a great deal of terminology from its long-running main series games, which can then be used in other games, especially where core mechanisms are similar. This has prompted me to discuss what they constitute and how to deal with them.

There are, of course, terms that have been around since the beginning, like Pokémon "species" and "moves" and all the terms for their associated statistics. And then there are terms that came as a result of new things added to the games, like "Abilities" and "Berries". Some terms are exclusive to certain games, as the "Enhancements" in Shuffle and "Incubators" in Go; other terms can cross over, though their references are different, like IVs and TMs in both the main series and Go. There are obviously many more terms than these, but these serve as examples of the terms involved in the Pokémon games.

It is a certainty that players should know about them, and that's where things like guides and walkthroughs would help. However, since the terms are used in communication both orally and in writing, it would be helpful to have and establish standards for their usage; as an example, names of Pokémon, which constitute terms of their own, are used as they are whether referring to one or many. Such usage standards would conceivably have to deal with different languages as well, since Pokémon is known in Japanese, English, and several other Western and Eastern languages, not to mention other language communities where the people may default to borrowed English usage. If anything, this would at least ease communication where these terms may be used.

The point is that Pokémon as a wildly popular series and franchise has expanded so much, and this is also true regarding terms that are used in all the games. Such a popular series and franchise is only due to expand further in the future and will only accumulate more terms as part of that expansion. Management of these terms then becomes as important as knowing what they are, so that people can talk about the games as well as they play them.

One year ago: Cosplay Hair