>>49374843The truth is younger people have been conditioned to accept things as they are and dismiss actual criticism as mindless hate. That means low quality games are fine, so long as the intent to put in effort was marketed as authentic. The Pokemon games stopped being games and became marketing tools a long time ago. It's no different than buying a happy meal and getting a cheap toy pikachu inside. It's easily attainable for the price of a cheap meal, it introduces an easily digestible franchise to toddlers, and most importantly it keeps Pokemon in the public eye.
The intent is to scratch that Pokemon itch in people seeking escapism in an age of obsessing over one's mental health and wellness, instead of getting actual help. It provides an easy out for parents doing a poor job raising their kids, by giving children something they've been conditioned to associate joy with, in what could be stressful or neglectful households. Pokemon knows how to stay relevant by frequently re-introducing itself into pop-culture every few months with regular merch, and every annual cycle or so with games, keeping its presence fresh on everyone's minds.
It will never try to outdo or set a golden standard for video games, it doesn't have to. It is not a game. It's the subtle echoes of Pokemania that still reverberate from the past to this day. Pokemon games will never need to be quality products, they've achieved what many other franchises could only dream of. Their very existence, the very name of the brand, is what you're paying 60 dollars for. It's the chance to small talk with acquaintances instead of sitting in awkward silence, it's watching your significant other spending hours in the tutorial before fucking their brains out, it's shitposting about how good or bad it is online, it's the collective experience of bonding with someone else. Gamefreak could make a game where Pikachu shits like a Digimon in the middle of the woods and fans would eat it up like God's gospel.
