>>55634326Gen 5 felt like it had the biggest hype season, the most fan site activity, and it felt like the most significant era for pokemon content on youtube / wi-fi battles, to me anyways. Pokemon showdown, the greatest simulator of all time, was also created toward the end of gen 5.
Gen 6 felt like it had the most online activity for in-game, wonder trade and all that, and Showdown felt most "alive" during the time as well to me. Like the lobby, and the battles, and the community around it, especially after the release of ORAS, even if most people were young and retarded. Although when I look up the stats, it doesn't really appear that things have gone too far downhill since then, gen 5+6 still felt like the most active time for the "community". (Honestly, I might even be inclined to agree with the claim that "ORAS was peak", as silly as that sounds..)
Gen 3 and 4 were my childhood, but in my childhood it was just me and the single player games with only my sibling(s) and a few irl friends to talk about pokemon with. I had no concept of a greater pokemon community at that time. So when you ask about "peak", I answer that pokemon was in the process of peaking during gen 5, and realized its peak during gen 6. It's been down hill after, not a steep decline necessarily, but downhill nevertheless.
Dead internet theory or something. Idk. I know that pokemon is not dying. Plenty of people are buying the new games, but I guess it's mostly just zoomers, and zoomers are not as tech savvy. So while the pokemon franchise as a whole might remain similar in prospect, its consumership is changing.
Of course, I'm surely a newfag relative to true pokeboomers who experienced pokemania. I guess each of our experiences with pokemon is different, so while pokemon as a whole may live on, the specific aspects of pokemon that we personally knew and loved might fade, and they will never be replicated again. Just like with everything else in life. Something can only be special once..
