Would Pokemon work in a modern market, without it's name?

So a few weeks ago me and a team of friends sat down to design a Pokemon-like game.

Including things like random battles, capturing creatures, battling trainers and gyms.

It seemed like a great idea on paper there was a lot of us and Pokemon is pretty simple from a gameplay point of view and with a large amount of artists we could easily produce the art for everything.

But then it hit me, a very odd question I couldn't answer. Why had no one else tried to make a Pokemon clone in recent years? Sure there's a few but none seem to do very well. Why is this? Then I started to think about maybe Pokemon as a name works on basically anything, so even if the game is a little rubbish it will still do very well.

My question is pretty simple, do you think Pokemon would work if it was called something utterly different? Or is the name now so well known that we all just kind of accept it. Is the lack of Pokemon-clone games simply because the market can only hold one Pokemon type franchise?

 

I think the question is, how exactly would you define "Pokemon clone"? because Pokemon is many things.
Turn-based combat and random encounters are mechanics in most RPG's altogether. Are RPG's with these elements considered Pokemon clones? I don't think most people would say so.
The idea of virtual pets, on the other hand... I think this is something that humans are innately attracted to no matter what. We as creatures like to nurture and take care of things, even if they aren't real. Without Pokemon, I think this concept still would be conceived eventually. And, well, even if we were in an alternate universe without Pokemon, Digimon and Tamagotchi came out at the same time, if anybody recalls... :^)

 

History of Pokemon - relevant reading

"Collecting games" have been around a lot longer than Pokemon- but Pokemon achieved great market saturation by diversifying the brand- Multiple similar games (think how cheap it was to make those!), Collectable trading cards, toys and a tv show ect... this ensured that even those who weren't in the video game market would probably be exposed to Pokemon via one of their other markets. The Pokemon name works now because they put a lot of effort into making it known. Once you're known as the top dog, everything similar becomes a knock-off of you.

The market can certainly support multiple games of the collect-em-all variety, but you don't want to try and compete directly with a brand like Pokemon- you want to emphasize the differences and show what your product does better.

 

Any pokemon game today wouldn't be nearly as successful without the already established franchise. I was working on basically my own pokemon GO before pokemon GO was ever announced (didnt expect nintendo to release anything for mobile). I thought I was the only one at the time, but then after GO was announced I stumbled upon another game that was RELEASED before, called geomonsters or something. Im glad I didn't invest more time into my game than I did, pokemon would've stole all my potential playerbase off it's name alone (so long as the game wasn't horrible). GO is hundreds of times more popular than the other games like it released before it, even though those games are just as good. Having an established brand name makes a HUGE difference. 99% of GOs success is the name alone in conjunction with the easily accessible gimmick (that anyone could've come up with and developed).

 

Marketing is a huge factor in whether ANYTHING becomes a success. Just like what LMan said; Pokemon made itself known literally everywhere in the 90's, and they "conquered the world" (according to that wiki- and it's true). Pokemon is still relevant because their (Nintendo's) marketing strategy consistently stays relevant; and what does this generation of kids love more than anything...? Their phones!
I think what I would conclude is... Brand recognition gets you far. Much farther than a random guy named Chris on a forum without decades of history behind him lol. But if the brand name "Pokemon" didn't exist, well... Digimon would have had more limelight, I think, and therefore would have taken off. They were overshadowed, and nothing is as marketable as Pikachu. I still think virtual pets, as a genre, would exist, and would still be successful somehow.

 

The biggest problem is that outside Japan, most of these games go under the radar. There might still be a Yokai Watch anime airing in Japan, but I never heard much about people playing it.

Pokemon is deceptively simple, and most copycats never manage to scratch the surface of what makes those games stellar, much less revitalize the formula for the modern age. These are games that I play entirely differently now from how I played them nearly twenty years ago... that hurt.

That would be because they didn't make it. Nintendo had absolutely nothing to do with Pokemon GO.

 

"Would Pokemon work in a modern market, without it's name?"

No.

 

yokai watch
monster hunter
puzzle and dragon
...

 

Each morning I've considered posting exactly that.

 

It wouldn't. There has been tons of other games that tried this and the whole AR thing, they all failed pretty badly. They seem like a cool idea but they can't get past the idea of looking goofy or weird I believe. Pokemon adds a cool factor of running around the real world playing a video game that others cant. Plus anything Pokemon gets people riled up about living their childhoods again. Then I think kids see it from older people and try it because older people are doing it and everyone wants to do things older people are doing. "Cool" factor

 

You do know I didn't mean Pokemon GO right? I had no interest in making a GO type game. I meant the actual Pokemon games.

Thanks for the advice, rather than push the "this will work because its LIKE pokemon" I should be posting more "This will work because it's different" makes sense now I actually think about it, cheers!

 

So when red and blue were released, there was no such thing as the Pokemon name. So it can be done.

But have a look at what Pokemon did when it was released. There was a TV show that was on prime time (English and Japan and who knows where else). There were movies released in cinemas. There were action figures in every store. There was a trading card game made by the same people that made Magic, the most valuable tabletop franchise in the world.

If you can summon that much marketing power on one go, and sustain it for a decade, you can do the same thing as Pokemon. And then in ten or twenty years you can release a terrible mobile port of your game, and everyone will be playing it.

 

Well I said modern market for a very clear reason, back when Pokemon came out there was nothing like it, so obviously it did well, people like Pokemon that much is obvious my question was more, are people interested in different takes on Pokemon or are they just happy with buying what ever new Pokemon game comes out each year or so.

 

But that's not true, there was plenty game like pokemon, Dungeon quest monster predate pokemon, you catch monster and make them fight. So yeah they did well because they were good not because they were new.

 

I think you missed the point. Just because something is unique, doesn't mean it will do well. If Pokemon even is unique, I seem to recall several other games around the same time period with similar themes.

Pokemon was driven by the whole eco system around it. It was the flagship game of the GameBoy colour, which was one of the leading portable gaming devices of the time. Plus all of the marketing and merchandise tools I mentioned in my last post.

It was much like Thomas Edison's light bulb. Edison wasn't the first to invent a light bulb. But he was the first to produce a light bulb, a power plant, a power distribution grid, a light socket and a slick marketing campaign all in one go.

 

Also pokemon didn't catch fire instantly, it had a period of maturation.

 

I also never said that all unique products will catch on, not once. But it's just very strange that in the modern market (Not a number of ps1 games that have been listed) You don't see many AAA or even many indies trying to copy the Pokemon concept. Even if they'd never overtake pokemon (That'd be a silly idea) they could still ride behind pokemon and catch some of its marketing by being on alternative platforms (Like for example a PC game) it just doesn't seem to happen.

 

Plenty have. None can catch the same market. That's Nintendo for you. Things they touch succeed, in a way that no one else seems to be able to manage. When you get down to it Nintendo's success comes down to understanding their target market, and having a massive marketing machine. Same recipe Disney uses. You can succeed on the same way, figure out who your market is, and figure out how to tell them about your game.

There are some good reasons why Pokemon has stayed on portable devices. Not matching the game to the device is a common reason behind failed game ports.

 

Yokai watch was plenty successful, it oversold pokemon twice and there is only two games. Puzzle and dragon have been thriving on mobile charts too, both involve collecting monster using rpg mechanics.

I don't understand the blind revisionism I see in this thread