Pokemon Unite's Future Shines Brightly at World Championships

By Christian Hoffer

One of the voices of Pokemon Unite sees a bright future for the MOBA-style game. Earlier this month, Pokemon Unite crowned the team BLVCKHVND as its first-ever World Champion after an intense three-day tournament involving thirteen teams from around the globe. The Pokemon Unite matches were one of the highlights of the Pokemon World Championships, thanks to fast-paced gameplay and a slick streaming presentation. 

The Pokemon Company brought in some top-tier talent to call the Pokemon Unite tournament, including the self-proclaimed Content Cowboy Spragels, who has been casting Pokemon Unite games and following the competitive scene since the game's start. We had the opportunity to speak with Spragels after the conclusion of the Pokemon Unite tournament to discuss the rise of Pokemon Unite, where the game fits in with the wider Pokemon franchise, and how the game can grow as it enters the second year.

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ComicBook.com: It really struck me about how Pokemon Unite was presented at the Pokémon World Championships, and that was due in large part to you and the other casters. The game's presentation is very high energy and really draws the viewers in and keeps them captivated during the entire match. How do you keep that energy up for the entire match? How much of it is performance and how much is just getting drawn into the excitement of the matches?

Spragels: I think it's a bit of both. So Pokemon Unite is set up by the developers in a very specific way. It's a 10 minute game, no matter what. And they have set up multiple moments throughout the game that are clear big moments. You usually have three or four big moments inside each match. So Pokemon Unite is set up to be a really easy game to be excited about because they have set up exciting moments inside of it.

As far as what we're doing on the broadcast, my job is to show people why those moments are exciting. So, I think I would say it's a bit of both – Pokemon Unite is exciting, the game sets up exciting moments, and I want to bring that energy to it as well and I want to show people what is really cool about the game. And it's pretty easy also when you have the best teams from around the world competing. And there were big question marks as to what teams would be good, what regions would be good as well.

What were the big surprises in the first year of Pokemon Unite, particularly in terms of the competitive scene?

Spragels: I think it's amazing that Pokemon Unite did a world's tournament in the first year. That's incredible. They knew that they had an exciting game here and they wanted to capitalize on that. I think that's big because everyone in the competitive scene for Pokemon Unite, no one had any idea whether or not there'd even be a World Championship. When Pokemon announced it, teams from all over the world got really into it, especially in a few of the big regions. Everyone got really, really excited for it.

It's interesting to see the game grow from just some companies hosting little tournaments here and there to Pokemon really getting behind it and saying, "No, we're doing a world championships and we're flying out teams from 10 regions or something like that." . And then seeing the games start from everyone picking random Pokemon and now it's "No, we know what the best Pokemon are and who the best teams are and also Greninja has a hat on." The game feels like it just keeps changing and growing.

They've also done an amazing job of feeling like we're moving through big moments inside the games' history. The launch felt pretty special. They're always giving gifts to players and things like that. Then they had this winter event where the whole map changed. There was Zapdos in the middle of the map and all of a sudden, the whole thing changed to a winter theme. Articuno was there. It just felt like they were moving you through big moments in the game. And then very recently, we just had the anniversary. And just even when you log into the game, there's fireworks and there's all this stuff going on, and it really feels like, wow, this game is evolving and growing. Hey, evolving like a Pokemon.

Speaking of evolutions, what changes do you think Pokemon Unite needs to make in order for the game to take the next step?

Spragels: Yeah. That's a great question. Well, there are a few things. I think the more they can do to make each kind of player excited about the game, the better.T hey're doing an amazing job right now with the World Championships for the professional, serious player, and I think they do a pretty good job for the more casual players. I would love to see them do something for sort of the solo queue warriors like me and a lot of players out there, where we're not always in groups of five. I would love to see a way for us to climb a ladder and things like that. I think when people log into play, they want progression, they want to feel like they're climbing and growing and getting better. So things like that would be amazing.

Something they've done so well is new Pokemon. They are releasing tons of new Pokemon, and the more they do that, I just feel like you keep getting more and more people excited. I think they just really need to keep going with it. They've had such an amazing Pokemon release schedule. So I think they just need to keep that going, because that keeps so much excitement around the game. They release new Pokemon all the time and it keeps the game fresh and exciting. There's a new thing to check out all the time. What are we going to do about Tyranitar? It's a new thing all the time.

The metagame in Pokemon Unite is constantly shifting and that's a big difference from the core Pokemon games. We know what Pokemon are going to appear in the core VGC. And while there's a little bit of that in Pokemon Unite, we saw a bunch of different team combinations. With the meta constantly shifting, how do the players and how do you as a commentator keep up with the changes?

Spragels: Well, I am in Pokemon Unite all the time, so it's not too difficult for me to keep up with. And I try to help my audience understand what's going on as changes are happening. The best part about games like this without question are balance changes and when things shift around. All of a sudden, a Pokemon that people didn't use like Mr. Mime is rebalanced and suddenly Mr. Mime is amazing. I love that. And also it's really cool to see that teams from different regions sort of solidify their own metas and then bring them together. I don't think anybody would've expected that one of the best teams in the world was playing Gardevoir. It's a really cool Pokemon but it doesn't see almost any competitive play, at least in NA and EU. Very, very little. And then all of a sudden, Renaissance comes in here and is absolutely dominant with a Pokemon that I think people would've said is not in the meta.

Talking about this year's tournament, what BLVCKHVND did in this tournament was really impressive. They just ran to the finals and dominated in it. crushed the finals. That was a clinic. Have you seen a dominant performance like that before?

Spragels: From time to time, you do see teams, especially with certain metas, where you go, "Oh wow. They have figured out this version of the game so incredibly well." And we have seen it in Pokemon Unite . For instance, one of the teams that made it to the grand finals, Noun Esports, there were months on the broadcast in EU where they were unbeatable in a way that was... You couldn't believe how good they were. And BLVCKHVND did that here at Worlds. BLVCKHVND was amazing here. To do it here on the world stage against every kind of team that could be thrown at them, extremely impressive. No one would've ever expected, I don't think, them to win in that commanding of a fashion. 3-0 in the grand finals. Come on.

So now we're entering year two, do you think that BLVCKHVND can keep up that sort of performance going into next year's Worlds?

Spragels: If they keep playing the way they're playing and keep consistent with the game, I think they're going to be an insanely difficult team to beat. People are going to need to figure out how to play against BLVCKHVND. That being said, the more time passes and the more new things are discovered, every region has an opportunity to come with something that you wouldn't expect. I have not gotten to see every Korean broadcast, every Japanese broadcast. I try to watch as much of them as I can because I really want to see what every region is doing, but I think a lot of regions really impressed here. So I don't think they're that far behind, however, BLVCKHVND is the pace car. I mean, everyone's chasing them at this point.

How do you want to see the World Championship tournament grow? How do you want to see the competitive scene grow in year two?

Spragels: More teams obviously. If you can get more teams involved, that would be great. If there are other regions that would like more representation, I think that would be exciting. The more teams that you could bring together at Worlds would just be incredible. 

More Pokemon obviously, because it just makes the strategies deeper. And there are a lot of ways that they can increase the level of strategy inside of a tournament as well. There are other games similar to this that have things like a pick and ban phase. They have ways where Pokemon cannot be selected by a team in a certain round. There are a lot of things that you could do to increase the complexity of it and I think also increase the excitement from a spectator's point of view. So I think a lot of that could be really cool.

They had an amazing year one. I really didn't expect... I think almost everyone who was covering the game didn't expect it to be this big at year one. It was so fast and they really hit it out of the park.

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You can follow Spragels on both YouTube and Twitter, while you can keep up with the competitive Pokemon Unite scene via the game's official eSports Twitter account.

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