New Pokémon MMO Merges 4 Classic Regions Into One Game, I Hate It

The next evolution of the Pokémon video games is allegedly codenamed Project Seed - a multi-region massive-multiplayer-online (MMO) game currently in pre-production at Game Freak.

This isn't a typical single-player Pokémon game, it’s a living world, similar to The Elder Scrolls Online or World of Warcraft, where you could see thousands of other trainers in real-time.

Apparently, this new game would connect Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh and Kitakami into a single world, where you could play with millions in the same world.

And yet, despite being exactly what I thought I wanted, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s the worst thing that could happen to the franchise.

Pokémon captured the hearts and minds of schoolyards around the world. I distinctly remember perching on a low bark bench, wood chips digging into my thighs, trying to convince a boy who liked me to pick Chimchar in Pokémon Diamond, so I could trade him a Turtwig and complete my Pokedex.

He’d make up these wild stories his ‘uncle at Nintendo’ totally confirmed - if you beat the Elite Four 100 times, a boat would take you from Oreburgh City to Hoenn.

I never tried it myself, but I’m pretty sure that’s made up.

Now, if the information from the massive internal leaks from Game Freak - now colloquially known as the "Teraleak" - are real, Project Seed could bring that boy’s dreams to life.

According to Centroleaks, a Pokémon leaker, players can allegedly walk between Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and the Kitakami province in this new game.

While Kitakami might feel a bit like a rogue choice, there’s a simple explanation why - all these regions are based on actual real life Japanese geography. This makes them physically easy to connect by land and sea compared to "international" regions like Unova (NYC) or Kalos (France).

Game Freak has been testing the waters with MMO functionality for years. We saw the prototype for shared spaces in the Pokémon Sword and Shield Wild Areas, and the multiplayer of Scarlet and Violet was clearly a technical dry run for something much larger.

But ambitious does not always mean better.

The primary reason I hate the idea of a Pokémon MMO is the shift to server-side saves. One of the greatest joys of Pokémon is its portability. It’s called Pocket Monster, not Connect to the Internet Monster. A true MMO requires a constant, high-speed internet connection.

Pokémon is, at its heart, a game about individual attachment. I still own my Blaziken from the original Pokémon Ruby on the Game Boy Advance. I can move him from a 23-year-old cartridge into a modern game today because he lives on my hardware.

In an MMO like Project Seed, that ownership would vanish. Your Pokémon become entries in a centralized database owned by The Pokémon Company. If the servers go down for maintenance, that’s it. Live service games haven’t had a good time recently, and the idea I could lose my Pokémon stresses me out.

In fact, something like this has happened before with Pokémon.

Does anyone else remember Pokémon Crater? This was a fan-made online Pokémon MMO from the mid-2000s. Created by a developer named Aaron in 1999, Pokémon Crater (later renamed Pokémon Vortex) was the unofficial proof of concept for Project Seed.

It was a browser-based MMO that allowed millions of kids to walk around interactive maps, capture Pokémon, and battle for a spot on the coveted "Top Trainer" list (which I made, once). I was absolutely enamored with the fan-made Pokémon MMO as a kid, so I can see why some players are excited by the news of Project Seed. But then, when the site shuttered on 1 December, 2007, millions of accounts and teams disappeared overnight. Do you want that to happen on a much bigger scale if Project Seed isn’t profitable?

Saying that, there are parts of Project Seed, if the rumours are to be believed, I’m excited by.

The prospect of "Dungeon Runs" with a group of friends is arguably the closest we will ever get to a high-budget Pokémon Mystery Dungeon successor, one of my favourite games of all time.

Updates could theoretically be endless. Once the "Japan" map is finished, they could drop "The America Expansion" featuring Unova and Alola, or "The Europe Expansion" for Kalos and Galar. It sounds like the "Final Pokémon Game" - a platform that grows forever.

It’s fine for an experiment, but please don’t make it the future of Pokémon.