Game Theory - How RICH is a Pokemon Master?

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he figures out how much money you'd make as a Pokemon Master!

I wanna be the very best so I can pay my bills. To catch them is my real test until my wallet feels. I will travel across the land. Can't afford a home. Teach Pokemon to understand the power that I have to pay for every month. The phone bill, the internet, car payments, and then there's the house payments. Stop! No, just stop it! Stop! Stop the song! I'm just... I'm just sad now. Real life sucks.

Hello internet. Welcome to game theory. You know what? Screw this. I'm sick of paying bills every month. I'm sick of the rat races and the adpocalypse. It's time to leave behind all that YouTube drama and start traveling the land to catch animals and make them fight an eternal blood sport to the death. Sorry, I meant to the faint. To the faint. It's much better. That's right. Today we're talking about our favorite Pita-triggering game, Pokemon. More importantly though, we're talking about how to make them Pokebucks. Pokea-Dollars? Pocus Skrill.

Pokey Bones. Pokey, whatever they are, the Pee with the two weird lines in it. You know what I mean. We've all had that dream though, right? To be teleported to the world of Pokemon armed with only a few Poked balls and rise through the ranks to become a Pokemon champion? We'd make friends thwart Team Rocket a couple times, maybe hit on Misty a little bit. Or Brock, if you're into having no eyes. be a great time, or so we'd like to think. You see, video games tend to gloss over the rest of life that comes along with

You know living you'd still have to eat sleep use the bathroom or whatever the most convenient tree in Viridian forest is Which means that all those hard-earned pokey dollars you're ripping out of the pockets of the bug catcher after burning his metapod to a crisp are gonna have to pay them bills So it got me thinking how rich would you be if you became a Pokemon champion? What do the earnings of a Pokemon master truly look like? That's our question for today, so with that, Pokemon Joto, let's go. Game Freak, the developer behind Pokemon, doesn't give us basically anything for the day-to-day expenses for a Pokemon trader, but they did model a lot of the game's geography and culture to places IRL. I'm sure Guy Jin Gumba did something on this in some video in the past. Hey Gumba, give me your notes!

Stop! Thanks! For a guy with no arms, you throw surprisingly well. So, the regions of Kanto, Joto, and Hoin are based on the real-life regions of Kanto Kansai. and Kyushu found in Japan. Unova is based on New York, Kalo's is northern France, and Alola is based off Hawaii. We even get hints that this is actually an alternate version of our own world.

Parasex Pokemon entry from Fire Red directly references China. To quote the Pokedex, It scatters toxic spores from the mushroom cap. In China, the spores are used as herbal medicine. This is further shown with the first entry for Lieutenant Surge in the Fame Checker that calls him the Lightning American. So it's both China and America confirmed as countries as countries in the game, it seems safe to assume that we can easily compare the cost of living in Pokemon with the cost of living in our own world.

That means we need to figure out the exchange rates from pokey dollars to real-life scrilla to figure out some sort of yearly income. To get the most accurate conversion, we're actually going to be starting by converting pokey dollars to Japan's currency the yen. The reason that I wanted to start here is that in the original Japanese versions of the games, the currency used is in fact yen. And the simple used is, uh, this, line, box, line. the kanji for yen. The Pokemon dollar was just created for the English translations of the games. But staying true to its yen roots, it kept the similar symbol, the pee with two lines through it, as well as the yen's lack of decibels. But that's not all.

We can even get an insanely accurate conversion rate of real yen to in-game yen using the nice, cold, refreshing taste of lemonade. Could've been you, Diet Coke, but you never write me back. Come on, Coke! I need that sweet brown liquid in my mouth. Phrasing? Throughout every Pokemon game in the series, you can find a vending machine or store selling three different drinks. Bottled water, soda, and lemonade. These prices are consistent across the entirety of the Pokemon universe, from Pokemon Red and Blue all the way to the newest re-release of Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra

Mood. What we're most interested in though is Lemonade or in the Japanese version Miku Suori. Yeah, sounds about right. Line line line line, line, Swoop, Swoop, Luritow Run, One-Legged Balance, and Stupid L. You see, when translating the game, the drink was actually turned to lemonade. But But the Japanese versions translate closer to Mixole, which is a French term that translates to mixed with milk. And wouldn't you know it, but you can actually purchase Mixole at Pokemon centers throughout Japan in real life. During one of my last trips to Japan, I actually visited one of these Pokemon centers to sample some of the food. Everything there is so super cute.

The Mixole, in case you're wondering, is a fruity milk drink that reminds me a lot of Lossi, if you've ever had that. It's kind of a watery, fruity yogurt drink. But as you would expect, everything at the Pokemon's drink. on center including the Mixole was super overpriced and totally tors trappy. So instead to stay as true to the game as possible, I found that there were vending machines actually selling cans of Mixole for the low low cost of 150 yen. Compare that to the in-game cost for lemonade at 350 pokey dollars and we're actually able to get the conversion rate of 2.33 pokey dollars to one yen. Basically what that translates to is one poca dollar equal to just under half of a real-world yen. Or to translate that to dollars, a hundred pokey-dollar is equal to about 39 US cents. So now knowing that, before we calculate how much we earn as a Pokemon trainer, we should figure out the costs of being a Pokemon trainer. Thanks to Sun and Moon, we know that the Pokemon world functions on the same 24-hour time cycle that our own Earth functions on. Sun shows us that day in the real life is day in-game and the same with night. So with that in mind, I headed over to how long to beat.com, which is a website that tracks how long to beat games.

Pretty self-explanatory there to find the average time to beat a typical Pokemon game. That turned out to be 52 hours. So if you were to work the average work day of eight hours, your journey would take you seven days. But seven days to be a fully fledged Pokemon master doesn't seem right. I mean, sure, in-game you might be able to speed run your way to the top of the poca charts, but if we're looking at this seriously, like literally walking between cities, battling trainers, spending time to train up your Pokemon, a trainer's journey to the top is gonna last way longer than a week. So instead, to figure this out, I followed a different trainer's journey.

Ash from the anime. Sure, we all joke that Ache, Stayed 10 years old for 20 years of the show, but if you stop and look at the narration and context clues There is in fact a clear passage of time that gives us a sense of how long Ash's Kanto journey takes him According to Takeshi Shudo creator of the Pokemon anime in Palet Town, the rule is that new trainers begin their journey on April 1st Following their 10th birthday in episode 9 the school of hard knocks we actually hear that Ash has had two months of experience and two badges With two months of Pokemon experience you got two badges with only three Now fast forward to the episode Holiday Hijinks, which, according to official numeration, is episode 39.

That puts us at Christmas of Ash's first year as trainer. Another handful of episodes later, we have Princess versus Princess, which we know is set on March 3rd, because it specifically refers to the celebration of Hina Matsuri, also known as Doll's Day or Girls Day, a special day in Japan dedicated to celebrating women. That trip to Sinabar Island for Badge Number 7 takes place during the early summer, and shortly thereafter, we learned that earning is 8th badge, the Indigr League is only two months later. The Pokemon League only meets once a year in the exact same place. Where is it? When is it? You gotta tell me. Atop the indigo plateau, exactly two months from today.

Which places the yearly Indigo League Championships around July or August. In short, Ash, and quite honestly Gary, who we also see in showdown at the pokey corral that specific episode, have their first shot at being a true Pokemon master a year and three months after they started their journeys. According to online cost to raise a child calculators, the cost of a single parent raising a 10 year old in the Kanto region of Japan for 15 months is gonna be about $12,000. That translates to a million 30012,12, 128 yen, or just over 3 million poca dollars. Geez! With it costing that much, it's no wonder that the parents are sending their kids out into the woods to fight dangerous creatures for the better part of a year. Anyway, those costs are broken down like you see on screen, but remember this is if they're living. at home. Ash stays intense most nights and doesn't get himself an education so we can eliminate some of those larger ticket costs. Let's even eliminate the cost of clothing since the most Ash has ever gotten himself is like a new hat.

That cuts our costs for his 15-month journey in half, now sitting at $6,000, $656,000 yen, or 1.5 million Pokeybox. That is a whole bike and a half, which doesn't make it sound like that much, but seriously, that is a $4,000 bike that the shop owner just gives you for free. It is the best free voucher ever. Okay, so $6,000 is the base cost of your journey. I'm of course leaving out the prices of all Pokemon related gear. Pokeballs, revives, potions, food for the Pokemon, etc. But then again, Ash tends to get himself distracted on his journey, so his quest may take him a little bit longer than your typical trainer. It should all balance out the end. Now it's time to start beating up on some random kids' pets and stealing their cash. The way to earn money as a Pokemon champion is defeating other trainers and taking their money. I went through the entirety of Pokemon red and blue adding up what you earn from every battle each psychic bug catcher and lass out there and then double-checked that amount via some player guides for the games and if you go undefeated against every random trainer on your journey you conquer every gym the first time and you send every member of Team Rocket you would make a total of drum roll please $325,450 poca dollars, which equates to $156,216. Or only $1,421, and 57 cents.

Uh, honestly, I expected it to be much, much higher when putting this theory together. But then I stopped and thought about it, and it actually makes a lot of sense. Just take for instance the Elite 4, which should be the most profitable fights in the game. Sure, earning 5,000 polka dollars her fight sounds great, but not so much when you're shelling out $350 for a feeboss and lemonade. The Elite 4 plus the rival battle gets you a total of 29,799 poca dollars, which sounds great until you consider that it's only 85 Kansas soda from the vending machine. It converts to a whopping $117.

And that is the top of the top. We are talking the Elite Flippin' 4. And don't forget, this is just the base adventure. If you're doing the Pokemon journey a second time, I don't think Team Rocket has the turnaround time to take on the sylf company every week. Plus, Misty isn't gonna take you on again if you already have her badge, so if you take out the special events that you most likely wouldn't be able to do again, like the Silf company takeover in the gyms, the journey actually pumps out significantly less. 187,069 polka dollars, or $729.57.00, that is a hefty pay cut. Literally cut in half.

And I'm not even including the trainers who aren't gonna fight you again since You beat him so badly the first time. The long story short here is that being a Pokemon trainer is the single Worst financial decision in gaming ever. You spend a year out of your life slaving away, climbing to the pinnacle of your chosen field, living outdoors and getting shocked over and over and over again by Pikachu, and you end up with a net loss of $4,578.43 cents. You lose money on your journey even if you get to the end of it.

Honestly, it's like pursuing a career in theater where most places make you pay them to work there. Good times. True story. All this is probably why you don't see too many adults out there trying to become Pokemon champions. They eventually have to support a family. And that is simply something that you cannot do as a traveling battler. Unless you're a gym leader or part of the Elite 4, there is no way to make a living off of being a Pokemon champion. Chase your dreams! Just prepare to file for bankruptcy later.

But hey, that's just... A theory. A game theory. And we didn't even talk about taxes. Don't even get me started on taxes.