Been a while since I’ve blogged here huh? I basically blog when I got an issue with something and oh boy do I have an issue. This one is probably going to lean heavy into the current situation with videogame publishers vs the gamers and the Stop Killing Games movement happening in the industry. If you are unfamiliar with the movement, I’ll explain a bit about it further down in the post but also, go over to their page and support the work they are doing.
I’m actually really salty about this whole wave of people discovering the Pokemon Company’s newest TCG App Pokemon TCG Pocket. I mean, good for them for creating a place that people can get into the hobby but I’m also highly annoyed. I honestly can’t help but feel cheated by it’s release.
Let’s go back to 2011, The Pokemon Company released a web based version of their trading card game Pokemon Trading Card Game Online to rave reviews. I jumped on during that initial release to just try it out. It was fun but I didn’t get to far into it as I had just moved to California. I had a lot of things going on and well it fell by the way side for me. While I had not picked it up to play, many other had picked up the game and collected away on the digital platform. The game would get updates periodically along with the physical card releases. With that also came code cards that were a variety of things that you could collect in the digital version of the game. From collectable coins, sleeves, deck boxes and packs of cards, all within that digital world that was PTCGO. From the web based version came a Windows version, then along came Mac, Android, and iOS. Each adding more and more players all collecting either physically, digitally, or both.
Fast-Forward a great many years into the future and the world is experiencing a global pandemic. Folks trapped at home are cleaning house and finding old collectables that were thought lost. Unopened cases of TCGs are popping up all over the world. Every one is rediscovering collectables. A big surge in Pokemon is seen with all these once kid collectors are now adults wanting to rekindle that childhood rush of opening packs of cards and mastering card sets thought lost to the ages.
It’s no surprise that there was an uptick in sales and a rush to play the game again, myself included. I started buying up packs, cases, collectables, toys, figures. All of it. With the packs of cards came code cards. I realized that I had been missing out for close to 10 years. Downloaded the Windows client, tried signing up with my usual username and “Username unavailable” appeared. Well, I try out what I thought might have been my username if I had already signed up and tried it out before and well, well, well, we were in! All of these cards I’ve been collecting came with Code Cards. I was now breaking packs literally and digitally. It was great! I had more codes than I knew what to do with.
It was at this point I started to see one of the games best features in my eyes, Trading. It’s literally in the the genre category. It’s a trading card game; or so I thought. I started to stockpile packs in game as I could use these packs of cards as a means to trade with other players in the game. If I needed a certain card for my deck, I would look for it as a trade or post up a “Looking For” request with a bounty of packs that I was stockpiling. Most of the time, I’d be trading Full Arts for packs to make my decks look great. I’d need a few cards here and there to complete my master sets. Packs were my trading fuel for the game.
At some point I fell off again as I didn’t have enough time to play all the time but I was still collecting. The QR codes started to stack up with the cases of Pokemon I was buying because the addiction had started to get out of hand. Then I realized much too late that the Pokemon Company wanted to transition to a new game called Pokemon Trading Card Game: Live. This new game was going to be a full update and transfer our accounts to this new system. At first I was totally ok with that. Transfer over our data and let’s get a new game going! Oh my was I wrong about that whole thing.
Here’s where things go from bad to “What did I do?!” To put it plainly, I trusted them to be making something better for the players but instead what I found out was that I trusted them too much. When creating an account for Live, you were told that you can transfer over data and your old data will not work on the previous game (PTCGO). Without question, I went ahead and transferred over everything I had but what I had was transferred in credits. All the packs I spent hours scanning QR codes in one at a time had all but disappeared. I had a collection of cards, sure, but everything else was basically gone.
Not only that, but when you got packs, you didn’t get the 10 cards you used to get. Oh no, you got around six cards a pack. So now you had to open even more packs to complete your master sets. That’s not all though, trading was gone. Trading, literally the word is in the TITLE of the game! TRADING CARD GAME! TCG! It’s right there! Gone. It was at that point, I was done. Everything I had just gone.
Now there’s another game. A new bright and shiny game being marketed even harder than the original game. Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket. To say that I’m feeling salty or cheated is a bit of an understatement. I personally don’t want to even download the game to see what it is or has just so that I don’t add my singular download to their 600K+ number on the Google Play Store. My friends are enjoying it. I’m seeing Friend Codes being passed around on multiple Discord servers. I’m just going to sit this one out. I’ll continue to collect physical cards.
So let’s bring it back to the top of the post and talk about the Stop Killing Games movement. These folks have realized that Game Developers/Publishers are truly screwing over the consumer with games that will require an “Always connected” system. Basically, even if a game is single player, if the publisher doesn’t wish to support the game any further but it requires something from them to keep the game connected, they can simply turn it off and no one can do anything about it. The same thing can be said about PTCGO where the game doesn’t exist anymore as the Pokemon Company wanted to push out something different and not support the older game.
The talk about how consumers don’t own anything but a license to use content is becoming a hotly debated topic. From music, movies, TV shows, and even a Tesla car. We gave all of that up for the benefit of digital media being easier to consume. What’s better than instant gratification? Well, not being able to keep it all.
Oh well that’s enough ramblings from me. I’m out. TL;DR: I’m not going to play PTCG Pocket unless they give me back my old account data and trading returns. Not one or the other. Both.
There’s also a whole other conversation about their greed with Pocket Pair and Palworld. That’s a whole other problem we’ll see if it becomes a much bigger story. I really hope Pocket Pair wins and doesn’t crumble to the might of the Pokemon Company.
