Finding and Re-Finding Players

The Pokémon games are played by many people, as can be attested by the so many things that have resulted from them playing the games. Some parts of the games can even provide a great challenge, which results in things like the World Championships. But what is perhaps also a great challenge is finding (local) players to play with - and then finding them all over again - for any of the games. This sometimes can turn out not as well as it should, by way of what I've been through.

When I started out playing the main series games, I very rarely found any players to play with. Most of the people (friends) that I came into contact with would look at me with a "huh?" expression when I discussed Pokémon. Once in a while, there were people who knew what it was, and we did connect through that, though not intensively, so we never spent any real playing time together. Since then, I've also lost contact with them and never recovered any real method of communication. I still wonder what happened to them.

As I've mentioned in a number of posts on this blog, I'm also a part of a local association of players. But beyond the first tournament we had, nothing else really ever materialized, and it has come to my attention that some of us may be off on other pursuits that may not involve Pokémon, leaving the local association in disarray. Thus the issue becomes how to seek out players who will want to join to keep it alive. So far I've not succeeded; I've met one person, but that person is not convinced. This is a real issue and something has to be done.

In the realm of Go, there seems to be better luck in finding players. I've come across them occasionally by walking and playing, as did my other raid group members. However, this is also threatened by players that are part of "invisible forces" or are generally recluses to begin with. On the whole, this does not seem to be a major concern, but the unification of them seems to be, as well as what happens later on out of that unification. In time, maybe all the local players might just be found.

It's great to play the Pokémon games, but it would be greater still to play them with other people. For that, the challenge of finding players becomes an important one. It may be hard to find players and harder still to re-find or continue finding them, but this is something that is really to be done. Once that's done, all that is really left to do is to enjoy playing the games, as they should be enjoyed with a multitude of players.

One year ago: The (De Facto) Series Mascot