Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s delightfully irreverent South Park doesn’t typically forego a chance to put the latest societal or cultural fad through the ringer.
The creators revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that they have received numerous requests to cover the latest craze, Nintendo and Niantic’s Pokemon GO (via IGN). To those who requested it, they’ll be disappointed to learn that a Pokemon GO themed episode won’t be coming, but not because they don’t think the product is worth riffing on.
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“What’s really funny, people keep telling us about this Pokemon Go thing and asking if we’re going to do something on that and I’m like ‘We did, in 1999!’”Parker said during the panel.
In South Park’s third season, the show debuted an episode titled Chinpokomon, where, you guessed it, the craze of little toy monsters hits South Park. While Pokemon GO does introduce some new things to that formula, I can see Stone and Parker not wanting to retread the same territory. Parker sarcastically quipped that it was their idea all along.
“I’m like ‘they ripped off our f-ing thing!’”
While there won’t be any Pokemon GO related material, the duo is in the thick of finishing their sequel to the successful South Park: The Stick of Truth RPG. Stone, Parker, and the animation team are renowned for their quick turn around time on the show, but game development is a different beast, and it’s taken some adjusting for the team at Ubisoft, which Associate Producer Kimberly Weigend explains.
“Game development is different from the way that Matt and Trey run the show. We are very familiar with their process over there. They do a six-day sort of turnaround from nothing to making an actual episode for the show, and we do have to elongate that a little bit for our game development process.”
Senior Producer at Ubisoft Jason Schroeder elaborated on these differences even further, and how they’ve had to meld both worlds to make sure the project keeps the course.
“One of the challenges that we knew we’d face is that Trey wants to try stuff and change stuff and we need to be as fast as the show, or at least try to get somewhere close.”
South Park: The Fractured But Whole hits consoles and PC on December 6th.
