VS Game Freak – Contextual Essay

Final Web Story – VS Game Freak

My digital artefact seeks to provide an analytical counterpoint to a broad mood of outrage within the Pokemon community as a result of the removal of a core feature of the Pokemon RPG series in the upcoming Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield – specifically, the ability to “Catch ’em all”, through the omission of a National Pokedex incorporating all Pokemon ever created. The removal of this feature, blamed by developer Game Freak on technological and manpower limitations of bringing the series to the Nintendo Switch, has resulted in a broad loss of goodwill and trust in the series’ userbase, many of whom have conceptualised the series not as a consumable gameplay experience but a participatory activity central to their identity and experience of growing up. Through a web story developed with Adobe Spark, I have examined the intersection of Pokemon’s’ business strategy, userbase…