The State of Officialness

Some weeks ago, there was a slight discussion among some of my Pokémon fellows on the state of some things that have links to Pokémon. The discussion concerns the officialness of those things. On the surface, this might seem obvious and only two-sided, being that things are either official or not. However, I'm inclined to think that there might be a certain gray area in that characterization, depending on how close they are to being official. Official things remain official, of course, but beyond that, it may be possible to delineate their degrees to becoming official.

Something that really illustrates this point are some things related to Pokémon Go. The game itself is official, as TPC gave blessings to Niantic for the creation and development of this game. But then there are also certain tools that coexist with the game (but not intrude into the actual game, which would invalidate them) to aid the game; though unofficial, they seem to be welcomed, and these could be considered to be one step away. There is also a tracker and competition helper system which is also popular - and probably deserves its own post sometime later - but it's by no means official either. It would suffice to consider it two steps removed.

To a further extent, there would be the various other web sites related to Pokémon. There is a Pokémon portal site that is hugely popular among fans, and its popularity and standing puts it at two steps away. A step away from that would be sites like this blog and other sites of devotion or with a personal nature. After that, everything else (for example, sites that hold other Pokémon content - without specification) is just plainly distant and plainly unofficial; they're just so far removed.

Could some of these become closer? It's possible, but it would take some advancements as well. If a functionality in Pokémon Go could supplant the use of the tools above, then that would make the tools closer to official, though arguably it could drive them out as well. If the tracker and competition helper were to be blessed in some way, it would become a step closer at the least. As for the sites, if they could leverage a connection to something official, then it would bring up their standing, though maybe they'd still be a bit distant. The rest would remain where they are.

Still, for hard-and-fast purposes, things are either official or aren't. But for certain unofficial things, they may have distinctions or features that set them apart from others and makes them appear closer to official, though they still aren't. Regardless of their official nature, if they exist for fans of Pokémon, fans will surely make use of them somehow. And somehow that may just bode well for the continuance of Pokémon and everything related.

One year ago: Pokémon Go Community Day, 6/16/2018
Two years ago: Limited Editions