Monsters vs Humans

A young Indian in Bangalore is part of a team that’s vying to win the Pokemon World Cup this week

This is an important week for 16-year-old Sidharth Jha. By 29 August 2009, the Pokemon world champions are to be decided. And this battle-hardy student from cybercity Bangalore will help determine how his team from Asia fares in the final sticky moments of this virtual tournament.

Sidharth has lost valuable time already since he was taking his internal examinations at school during the last one week. As a result, he is yet to make his contribution in the Pokemon World Cup finals by playing a game. His parents had confiscated his laptop during this crucial week—of course, both he and his parents view the reason for the week being crucial very differently.

“He just got his laptop 15 minutes back,’’ says his mother Divya Jha. She fails to understand why the children participating in this so-called ‘tournament’ play the game when there are no prizes involved. “If no one comes to know outside the community, then what’s the point of playing it?” she asks.

“Bragging rights,” pat comes the reply from young Sidharth.

Sidharth started playing Pokemon, said to be the world’s largest and most addictive Nintendo game, for fun when he was just ten years old. Six years later, between attending school during the day and four-hour-long IIT-JEE coaching classes in the evening, Sidharth sits down to play the game at a competitive level.

Currently ranked 25th on the Smogon University ladder, a competitive Pokemon community that organises tournaments, including the current Pokemon World Cup, Sidharth was invited this year by the organisers to play for the Asian team. A huge honour.

“They selected me after watching my game and analysing it for many months. I got interested in competitive battling last October, and have been playing in my free time ever since,” says the 11th grader, a thin line of moustache just beginning to show on his face.

The Asian team having won the ten preliminary matches in the World Cup, Sidharth now finds himself part of the team of eight competing against the Oceania team in the finals.

“It’s a highly complicated sport,” says Sidharth defensively of a game that’s not too many people outside the Pokemon community are ever heard referring to as a ‘sport’. Pokemon, a media franchisee published by the video game company Nintendo created by Satoshi Tajiri, was originally released as a pair of interlinkable role-playing video games. Since its debut in 1996, it has become the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind Nintendo’s own Mario series. Pokemon, in fact, is an English contraction of the Japanese brand Pocket Monsters.

In the Pokemon universe, a trainer captures wild Pokemon creatures by throwing a specially designed tool called the Poke Ball at it. If the Pokemon is unable to escape the confines of the Poke Ball, it is officially considered under the trainer’s ownership. Thereafter, it has to obey whatever commands its new master issues it.

Trainers can also send out any of the Pokemon they’ve captured to wage non-lethal battles against other Pokemon. If the opposing Pokemon is wild, the trainer can capture that Pokemon with a Poke Ball, increasing his or her collection of creatures. In certain games, many species of Pokemon also possess the ability to undergo a form of metamorphosis and evolve into a similar but stronger species of Pokemon.

In competitive battling, like in the ongoing World Cup, there are 493 Pokemon characters, each with six statistics or manoeuvres. It’s like a complex game of chess, but played with characters, explains Sidharth. The one-on-one game played between the eight members in each team, plus a few substitutes, is played online in real-time. “The matches can get quite long drawn, as it involves complex strategies,” says Sidharth. As of Sunday, when this correspondent met Sidharth, the Asian team was 2-0 up.

The Smogon University website lauds the 16 combatants in the two teams vying for the title of most powerful poke-nation on the planet. “It has been a wild ride and both teams that remain are very deserving; the notorious Asia looks to threepeat while the up and coming Oceania looks to cement themselves and prove they know how to do more than just play cricket! This is a final you will not want to miss.’’

While the tournament is not being played for any prize money yet—surprising considering that gaming has the backing of several chip and programme makers—analysts foresee a change in the future. “I can see it getting big. In four to five years, it will be a big game with lots of prize monies,” says an analyst who declines to be named. “I know it’s bad for kids, but it is going to get organised in a huge way. It’s at a stage where soccer was 40 years ago,” he adds.

Playing under the code name Eraser, Sidharth is well-respected among the fraternity. “There are over 35,000 people in the community and I know at least 300 by now. They are from different nationalities, but there are very few Indians among them,” says the youngster.

So, is this just a bit of fun on the side till Sidharth grows up to become an engineer? “I would like to write and invent games when I grow up,” says the boy, whose has also influenced his ten-year-old little sister Antara into playing the game. Though kids as young as Antara play Pokemon, there are not too many who opt for competitive gaming because of the strategies involved. A game can last a couple of minutes to a couple of hours, depending on who your opponent is and how good you are. “Once the guys are in the top 50 of the table, it doesn’t really matter whether you are number one this week or number 50 next,’’ says Sidharth. But just for this week, he would really like to come up on top.

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