The Pokémon Trading Card Game Online has been in private beta since March, with over 10 million games played in a 6 month period. Now it's your turn to play. In early September, Pokémon Online Game entered into the public beta phase, open to anyone who wants to sign up, allowing you to take your real world cards into the virtual world to compete against the computer or other human players. But be forewarned, there may still be bugs to work out.
My son is big on the Pokémon, and has been excited about getting to play the new online experience since we first heard about it a few weeks back. He's got literally crates full of the cards — he takes the slogan "gotta catch 'em all" very seriously. So it's great to hear that even his older cards, back for about the last year and a half to the Heartgold and Soulsilver series are good to go in the new online system. This also includes the recent Pokémon Black & White. According to J.C. Smith, who runs Consumer Marketing at Pokémon International, they are focused on adding the newest cards online first, but will likely circle back around and add older cards in the future.
You can set up an account easily enough for your kids, but if they are under 14, you will need to set up your own account as well. You then use your account to approve your kids and the accounts will be linked together, giving you oversight on what they are doing. This has the added benefit, according to J.C., of allowing you to share cards amongst family members. As long as you are not trying to compete against each other simultaneously using the same cards, the system will allow you to see and choose cards from other members of your family group.
What's also cool about the game is that you can play against the computer to practice or other players from around the world, chatting with them in real time, and eventually across different languages. The player vs. computer mode is available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. While the player vs. player is currently only available English, it is planned for other languages, and, using canned phrases, you will be able to communicate regardless of your opponent's native tongue.
If you are concerned how your kids will interact with other players when you are not around, Pokémon includes numerous parental controls, most notably when it comes to the ability to chat. In order to coordinate game play, it helps to be able to communicate with your foes. Pokémon can allow for real-time instant messaging, and has full automatic language filtering blacklists as well as human monitors. However, if you are still concerned, you can limit your child's interactions with others in the game to a series of important "canned" messages. My own bias is to trust my kids to use appropriate language and tell me if someone they are playing with is not doing likewise. That doesn't mean I haven't had to sit my son down a couple of times to review what is (and is not) appropriate, but I would rather they filter themselves than relying on a 3rd party to limit my kids' speech.
As with any good gaming system, you can develop your own avatar for playing. Right now the number of options feels a little limited, though. Although my son on got a pretty good likeness, mine still seems a bit off, especially in the hair department. The short hair is too short, and the only longer hair looks like a mullet. But again, we're still in beta, so things can only get better.
We've been playing for about a week now, and we're enjoying it. Due to some difficulties getting our accounts set up, we were not able to get online for a few days after the beta launched, but I suspect that that was due to the massive amount of traffic the site experienced when they first opened the gates, as everything has been smooth sailing since, with the exception of some scheduled maintenance.
As a novice to the game of Pokémon — I played a lot of Magic: The Gathering in the 1990s, but it's amazing how grad school can cut into your gaming time — I found the deck builder especially useful. It's no fun playing with an unbalanced or underpowered deck. The deck builder allows you to pick a card, and then it suggest the optimal deck from your remaining cards.
One point about the game I found interesting from a technical standpoint is that is built using Adobe Flash technology. This is great for computer play and ensures backwards compatibility with older browsers — although navigation can be a little tricky since the browser controls can behave unpredictably and you find your whole game suddenly reloading. However, by definition, using Flash exclude iOS devices — most notably the iPad — from game play. Given the rapid rise of tablet devices amongst teens, this may be a deciding point for Pokémon gamers, who may have to go with Android if they want to indulge in their favorite passion in an online environment.
