Game Design Blog #11 - Competitive Battling

          In the world of Pokemon (our world of Pokemon not the game world of Pokemon) there exists another community of Pokemon players devoted to something called competitive battling. This scene is devoted to playing the Pokemon games seriously and as a sport. Many see these competitive players and think that battling Pokemon is an easy task but this is not so. Competitive battling is basically a Pokemon battle taking place between different players of the games battling each other.

          In every Pokemon generation after the third generation Pokemon were given stats known as EVs, Natures, and IVs. These are what play huge factors in competitive battling. Natures give a Pokemon a boost in one stat and decrease in another. These are random when a player receives or catches a Pokemon. EVs are known as Effort Values and when battling other Pokemon, each Pokemon gains an Effort Value in a certain stat when they defeat a Pokemon thus receiving a boost in that stat. IVs or Individual Values are automatic boosts each Pokemon receives in stats. It is ideal for a Pokemon to have perfect IVs in every stat and gaining a Pokemon with these stats is very time consuming. 

         Judging from the explanation alone a lot of time, patience, and luck goes into raising Pokemon for competitive battling. Many individuals wonder why Gamefreak would go to the trouble of including all these features but the simple answer goes back to why they released the Pokemon games in the first place. They wanted to have players interact with each other through trading and battling. 

In terms of actual battling competitive player Giancarlo Parimango “You have to be really good at reading your opponent’s mind. You have to ask yourself, ‘if I was battling myself what move would I go for next?” 

           Competitive battling is very complicated and is not meant for casual players. It is very time consuming and if one were to be interested to getting into it they would have to be in it for the long haul. The Pokemon community is very famous to having very many different sub cultures and this helps the players find a community for each person.

Resource: Magdaleno, Alex. "Inside the Secret World of Competitive Pokémon." Mashable. 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2014. <http://mashable.com/2014/02/20/competitive-pokemon/>.