Pokémon is the perfect franchise
Last week I wrote a post for my Substack on how I missed out on Pokémon but it found me anyway. It's a great, smart franchise.
Working in games you spend a great deal of time thinking about onboarding, accessibility, retention, and long-term engagement. Pokémon addresses all of these concerns almost invisibly by allowing people to enter from almost anywhere. There is no single starting point that defines legitimacy, and no penalty for arriving late.
A lot of the article is about the hilarity that was playing the Pokémon boardgame with my niece and nephews. Well, one of my nephews. The other one refused to fight and just wanted to roll dice and collect Pokémon.
We also watched a completely generic Pokémon movie. But the kids loved it and have all the stats memorised. The perfect franchise.
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