Vol. 1, Issue 33 - Interview with PKMN.NET
An interview with the team behind one of the earliest Pokémon websites: PKMN.NET, plus the latest Pokémon news, and more from the Johto Times mailbag!
Welcome to the latest issue of Johto Times! For issue 33, we speak to Jeroen (Joeno) and Mike (Typhlosion) from the long-running Pokémon fan website PKMN.NET! We also have the latest news, and more from the Johto Times mailbag!
Before we begin today, I want to let you know that Johto Times now has a Twitch channel, where I will be doing occasional, casual Pokémon streams. Some of these broadcasts will be themed around playing video games, trading card pack openings, and looking over some cool Pokémon items from childhood. It’s also an opportunity to chat, and to speak with other Johto Times fans, so I hope you’ll consider giving us a follow! Full details on upcoming streams will be available on our Twitch channel, and we hope to include highlight videos in the future for those who missed out!
News
The highly anticipated Pokémon TCG subset: Scarlet & Violet—151, launches tomorrow! As we previously reported, the set will include the original 151 Pokémon and contains special EX cards, illustration rares, supporter cards and full-art etched cards. Several products will launch on release, such as an Elite Trainer Box featuring Snorlax, Booster Bundles containing six booster packs, a Binder Collection, and a Poster Collection containing promo cards of all three Kanto partner Pokémon. More products, such as the Zapdos EX and Alakazam EX Collection boxes, and mini tins, will be available in the weeks ahead.
On a personal note, I am very excited to pick up this set for myself, and it’s the first new set I have actively collected since Neo Destiny in 2002!
Source: Pokémon
A new trailer and more information on the upcoming Detective Pikachu Returns title was shown during the latest Nintendo Direct, which took place last week on September 14th 2023. Luxray was revealed to be a helper Pokémon, similar to Growlithe and Darmanitan, who can use its ability to look through walls. The game is currently available for pre-order and will be released on October 6th 2023.
Source: Nintendo
The Pokémon Company has announced a collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum that will take place from September 28th 2023. While no further details have been revealed at the time of writing, there’s a possibility we could see some promo trading cards come out of this collaboration, similar to how, in 2018, The Pokémon Company collaborated with the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s Edvard Munch exhibition and released five promo cards based on his famous work The Scream.
Source: Pokémon
The Pokémon Trading Card Illustration Contest 2024 has been announced, eligible to people from the US, Canada, UK, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Entries will be accepted from October 12th 2023 until January 31st 2024. Winners will have their artwork added to an official Pokémon promo card and receive a cash reward. The theme of this year's contest is "Magical Pokémon Moments", and the Pokémon to be illustrated will include Absol, Amped Form Toxtricity, Bidoof, Charizard, Eevee, Feraligatr, Flygon, Koraidon, Melmetal, and Pikachu. For full details, check out the source below.
Source: Pokémon
Feature: Interview with PKMN.NET
PKMN.NET (also known as PUK) is a Pokémon fan website and forum based in the United Kingdom and founded by Psythor (James O'Malley), which officially opened on January 10th 2000. PUK provided the latest Pokémon news, as well as game and anime guides. Members of the community could submit their Pokémon nicknames to be rated and displayed on a dedicated Pokémon Name Rater page, or send questions to the Ask Sentret mailbag, where they would receive a published answer on the website. The website held occasional meetups between 2007 and 2023 where staff and members of the community could meet and hang out together.
The website transitioned to PKMN.NET in 2004 as it gained an international audience. Psythor stepped away from the community around 2008, and the website received its latest update in 2014. It remains online and is currently managed by team members Jeroen (Joeno) and Mike (Typhlosion), who serve as Administrators.
Please introduce yourselves to our readers, and tell us how you initially got involved with PKMN.NET.
Jeroen:
Hi everyone! I'm Jeroen. I've been an admin of PKMN.NET for about two decades. I'm not sure how I found the site back then, but I joined in March 2002 as the ninetieth member after having some bad experiences with other online communities. I think because I was that bit older and more jaded, I came in as someone who came across as someone who knew what he was talking about, so I became a mod on the site soon after, wrote a first version of the rules for the forums and was there as the community started growing.
I then became more involved until the point where I became an admin on the site, I think by changing the database directly as I had the access at the time. Since then I started doing a lot of work on various aspects, until I ended up writing a decent chunk of the current code base and now hosting and maintaining the site in general as the main owner.
Mike:
Also hello everybody! I’m Mike and I've been an admin of PKMN.NET for… also just under two decades. I think I was a few years behind Jeroen in becoming an admin but was actually member number 80 so we joined within a really really close time frame of each other.
I think I found the site when looking for information on Mew which then led me to the forums - I’m sure a lot of the original generation of fans all remember the rumours about it being under that bloody truck.
I had a very different route in that it was my first experience in online fandom and I was very raw and… dare I say naive, ha, in how a lot of online things worked. Certainly had next to no coding experience but my role was typically site content and filling out the sections - especially RSE, I remember us getting to 100 pages of content within that section which broke the CMS at the time as it couldn’t handle 3 digit page IDs, [something] we never thought would ever happen! I just loved the idea of having my name on something online and being a writer of content, and slowly the team helped me to learn HTML and CSS so I could add pages on my own.
I recall being “promoted” to a forum mod and being able to select a forum to give myself experience doing that, which I think was the main gaming forum we had at the time as that was definitely my area of expertise - which in hindsight was probably more of an audition for starting that path towards becoming an admin. I can’t recall exactly when that happened - Jeroen might have a better idea than me - around 2005.
The history of the website goes back to January 2000, at the height of Pokémania in the United Kingdom. Since Jeroen joined PKMN.NET in March 2002, can you tell us what the website was like in those early years and how it evolved as the years went on?
Jeroen:
The big thing we had early on was that Matt - Pokedude - had written a PHP driven CMS - updating the site could be done using simple forms, rather than manually updating HTML files as most others did. Although you still needed some HTML knowledge, it made it easier to get others involved and make changes to the site and let us do a lot more with Pokédexes and cross-linking information (although I always had the ambition to do more).
It then also allowed us to get other unique features going. Just after I joined, the enigmatic Name Rater started on the site - a place where people could submit their own Pokémon nicknames and get them rated. It's something we really focused on over time - aside from covering some information quite in depth, we managed to engage people in other ways that I think had them checking back - getting their names rated, questions answered, commenting on articles or seeing how their caption contest went. I think that gave us a really strong community that stuck together because we all cared.
The website has lots of sections dedicated to the video games, anime, and content specific to PKMN.NET. Which content do you consider to be the most popular with the community?
Jeroen:
I can give you the numbers based answer: We are still one of the top results for Pokémon nicknames and it's clear people keep coming back to find them and get theirs rated. It exemplifies where we went with the site as well - engage people and work with the community, rather than just putting content online, and I think it contributed to the atmosphere as well, with a lot of people feeling a stronger connection with the site.
Mike:
I think what set us apart was how we tried to be entertaining and a bit different, and we certainly had a lot more content than other sites at the time around the main series games. We were certainly years ahead of our time with the amount of interactivity on the website and we tried to make the news entertaining and make people laugh. We didn’t always get it right but the site had a real character and I think you could tell the kind of voice we had within the community at the time and how that helped us to stand out.
We were generally seen as pretty reliable too (except for those legendary April Fools jokes…) - a few sites would put stuff out straight away and then delete it when it turned out not to be true, which always amused me - through this desire to be “first” with news regardless of how reliable it was or not. We tried to be more thorough and reliable and provide more analysis and thoughts on things. I always felt that was the gap that we filled.
What is your favourite piece of content on PKMN.NET and why?
Jeroen:
Probably the fondest memory I have is of our April Fools’ 2005 prank, where we announced a new Pokémon during the time information for Diamond and Pearl was coming out - which turned out to be James, the original owner. It worked so well, when I Googled it a year later there were still a few sites (including one French one) that had it as a legit news article. When it comes to our longer lasting content though, I personally have a soft spot for Ask Sentret - that guy's optimism is infectious and I always looked forward to reading more about them.
Mike:
Two answers for me. The Name Rater certainly is what we were and continue to be best known for, I think. I still remember the excitement behind that when it launched and all the theories about who it was. It’s still not really known who is behind it - all we used to say was that the Name Rater wasn’t an admin, which remains true. But we did drop a few clues that were never picked up on or found (including the coverage we did of the first ever meet up if anyone does want to go search for that). And sold the answer at some of the original meets in return for drinks at the pub, so a fair few people ended up knowing. Because we were tight lipped and professional like that 😂
PokéMole will always be close to my heart too. I loved The Mole, the reality show, and loved the idea of writing my own version of it. Series 1 and 2 weren’t as developed as I was still quite young and inexperienced but I remember the furore that encompassed the site when the 5th one came out. That was two years of writing and planning, probably one of the biggest things I’ve ever written. Jeroen was always amazing as a proofreader; he was literally the only one of the staff who got to see it before it went live. And the satisfaction when so many people were surprised by the reveal when we were worried how obvious certain clues made it… it was always a fairly niche sort of thing to do but again I think it really illustrated the amazing community we had and the sort of things we did to make it a bit “different”. Seeing how many people actually took part in that and actively read and engaged with the series was amazing and still a real source of pride for me looking back.
One thing I appreciated about reading past news articles and content around the website is how close-knit the community and the team were. I saw a lot of nice comments from the community, and members of the team were referenced on birthdays and across articles. Can you tell us what efforts you went to in order to keep your readers a part of what you do, and the benefits and drawbacks of doing so?
Jeroen:
I think it was a core part of the site, at least from the moment we started working on features like the Name Rater. We were quite tightly moderated, but in a way that seemed fair - I tried to have some unambiguous rules rather than doing it by feel as was on other forums, and keeping the communication a bit better and family friendly. There were plenty of discussions - it wasn't always that friendly either - but I do believe that it made for a more welcoming atmosphere. As for the team who did more regular updates, it felt similar - we argued plenty, but we had a larger group that all worked on improving the site and had the team to do so. There was a lot of passion there.
The other side that came through is that we tried to have more levity in what we did, and James especially brought a lot of that, together with Iceduck (Steffan), who I hope doesn't mind me outing [him] as having a decent stand-up career now. I think it always broke the tension a bit and made us seem more human than most, which created that sense of community. It meant that we had plenty of arguments and had to deal with difficult people, but it also ended up bringing us closer together. Considering our Discord is being run by our biggest critic, we seem to have done something well there!
Mike:
I’ve already referenced this but I really think we were years ahead with the level of interactivity we encouraged. And those community events as well that you didn’t get anywhere else - Pokémon Big Brother, PokéMole, The Poképprentice… Sometimes they were just ideas we came up with to amuse ourselves for a few weeks, but we just had an absolute blast working on the site at the time and I think it showed. We loved what we did and we always wanted to meet up with and engage with the community, hence the meetups.
Certainly for me, too, I was going through quite a rough time in the late 2000s and the site acted like a family to me and really supported me through that. James, Steffan and Jeroen especially all really supported me through a lot of difficult times whilst mentoring me to develop my skills too.
I don’t really recall there being many drawbacks to it, to be honest - yes, we had arguments, and yes, we had people who disagreed with how we ran things. But I think you’d get those regardless of how you ran things, especially online. I think we were always upfront and honest about things - certainly I’ve made some of my best friends in the world even now nearly 20 years later from my time on the site. I don’t regret any of it.
The original owner of the website, Psythor, stepped away from the website in 2008. Can you recall why this was, and do you know how he is doing these days?
Jeroen:
There's a number of things going into it. If you know where to find him, you'll know he's doing well as a journalist now and made the news a few years back with his petition for London to become independent from England. It's something he always had an interest in, and around that time he finished university and started to become more public with it. I remember a discussion he had with a fairly major newspaper editor where he made a good point, and part of the retort was "But you run a Pokémon website", [which] got to him.
In addition, we had our occasional arguments [within the team] that I think started to drain on him, and we all started to have less time to spend running it, so he started moving away from it, transferring everything to Mike initially, and moving on. At that time we all started getting busier anyway, with less time on the site as we were starting our careers and adult lives, which meant the site was already starting to lose momentum. I think we reached the end of the road with each other and have lost touch since then.
Mike:
Yeah, he seems to be doing well. We still see him on TV sometimes; he’s done The Answer Trap and Pointless over the last few years - and I recall him winning The Weakest Link when he was still on the site which was really exciting. We drifted apart a while ago which is a shame but of course just happens sometimes - but we’ll always have a place for him here; he was such an important part of the site and the original creator, so we owe him a lot for that.
I remember how much he used to love politics and tech and wanted to move to London and be a writer - incredibly proud and happy for him that he’s become so successful doing exactly that. I remember him introducing me to a site before it became mainstream that he was raving about called “Twitter” (whatever became of that) - he always had his finger on the pulse with things like that.
PKMN.NET has had several in-person meetups in 2007, 2015, and most recently in July 2023. What was it like to meet staff and community members in person, after speaking to them online for so long?
Jeroen:
It was really exciting! It was my first holiday abroad on my own and it made a lot of sense to finally meet everyone. I remember spending a lot of time making sure it all went well and that we'd be safe, but it all went really well. It was great to actually meet in person that first time (and made my time there less lonely for a day, which was nice). After that, it grew a bit - for the next one, Mike and I stayed for the better part of a week, with James joining us for the first few days, and I think it's where we really bonded - having those days together grew our friendship and staying for a few days around the meet became a tradition for us, with my (now-)husband (who both started helping out and mediating) joining as well.
I think that was the general experience - it brought a community together and worked really well to be meeting up in real life. But while coming from a community, it really is a reason for a bunch of friends to meet up, bringing in new people each time without the awkwardness of introductions!
Mike:
It was really nice to put faces to names finally. Given the era and how it was before social media really took off, a lot of people really weren’t how I imagined them. And I think that’s probably when it started to transition to friendships outside of the site too - I’ve still got a lot of old members on Facebook, etc.
What have been your happiest memories of working on the website all these years?
Jeroen:
Personally, it's hard to avoid the coding based ones - I've had a bigger hand in the two big code upgrades of the site after I joined, but looking even earlier, even before becoming an admin I released an offline Pokedex (the Pkmndex, still linked somewhere) which was my first programming project. I doubt there are many people who'd start with a Win32API C application, but I somehow made it work.
There have been lots of other projects - the search for a new Rule 20 (our constant rule joke) was a neat treasure hunt. On a more personal level, there were times where we as a team soared and did some amazing things. What I look on most fondly now, though, is the whole thing we created - the community, the website and its content, and that the core of the site that started in September 2001 with its new forums is still there in the friendships (and several attendees to our wedding!). And as Mike said, I think our friendship in particular has been really meaningful through the years and we've helped each other through some tough times.
Mike:
Definitely the offline meets and the friends I made on the site. The first ever meetup in 2007 is a highlight as it was actually my first time ever travelling down to London for the day and it was amazing meeting everyone for the first time and putting proper names and voices to faces - then 2008 when we properly spent time together as we stayed in London for the week.
I was actually in a horrendous place mentally at that point. A lot was going on in my personal life and I think that was when Jeroen and I properly bonded. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying but we argued a lot in the early days - we had very different ideas of how the site should be run. But during that week we spent together in London he was incredibly supportive and we talked and bonded a lot - which has continued to this day.
So ironically given how traumatic a time I was having it’s probably one of my fondest memories for what it led to. Him and his husband are two of my best friends in the world as we usually try and get together every few months even now - I think it was one of my first proper trips post-COVID too, heading down to London to meet up again.
PKMN.NET hasn’t had any news or updates made to it since 2014, but remains online as a record of what it used to be. After so many years online, why did the updates end?
Mike:
It’s just been a time thing for me - and I guess seeing how things have changed. Forums largely aren’t as popular as they used to be; obviously you’ve got content creators on YouTube now, which is where most people get their content from, and that just isn’t something that interests me. Plus I used to put a lot of time into the site whilst I was at school / college, and now [that] I have a career, that time just isn’t there anymore. It still has a huge place in my heart - hence going to the Meetup this year - but putting so much time into the site was very much a previous space in my life vs now.
Jeroen:
As Mike said, it's largely a matter of time - working full time means that my free time is a lot less, and in particular, working as a programmer (in games even) means that I don't really want to do more coding when I get home! Plus, I'm married, my interests have shifted, so I have other things I want to do in my free time. Despite everything ending around 2014, the site wasn't getting as much done for a few years by that point. Still, I am obviously still fond of the site, so I'm keeping it up - it's not going anywhere and I don't see a reason to change that!
Despite the dormant state of PKMN.NET since 2014, Pokémon has continued to thrive in the years that followed, with products such as Pokémon GO, the resurgence of the Pokémon TCG, and the release of open-world Pokémon games like Scarlet and Violet. How do you feel about the Pokémon franchise in recent years?
Mike:
I know Jeroen doesn’t really play it anymore but I still actively play Pokémon Go. I was really happy to reach Level 50 a few months back (9200 2347 9657, feel free to add me!). I think we both loved SV - we actually discovered it together; I went and stayed at Jeroen’s and alongside his husband we played it together pretty much non-stop the weekend it came out. We still have that passion and enjoyment of the games, and I hope that sets a new tradition for us; it really was a wonderful weekend. I’m quite excited to see where they go from here; the SV world had its flaws but the leaps forward they took vs. previous generations was so exciting to be able to explore.
Jeroen:
As a developer in the games industry, I have my thoughts on some of the technical merits (my servers are still more stable), but as a fan I'm still involved. I'm writing this between levels of New Pokémon Snap, which I'm playing as my husband points out where to go, and Mike joined us for the release of Scarlet and Violet to do the trading necessary so we all started with all three starters.
I don't keep up with it all as much anymore, but not having to worry about it for the site helps as well. It helps that my partner also loves Pokémon - we have a lot of Pokémon plushies in part thanks to him - so I have a reason to keep playing as well. There's some nostalgia that's obviously stronger than it would be for others because of how intensely I worked with the games, but I think they still do enough to hit that part of the brain, and it still helps me meet people and share things with them, including our large Slack Pokémon group at work.
Is there any appetite within the team to bring the website back to its former glory and update the website regularly again with news and content?
Mike:
I know how busy Jeroen and I both are with our jobs and I do think we had a pretty perfect mix of staff at the time that would be very difficult to replicate now. It really was just a perfect mix and a case of the right place at the right time with things just falling into place. We still have a lot of the community and that for me is the core that we always strived for, so in many ways we have what we wanted from it. I’m actually down in London next week for work and meeting up with Jeroen for a drink then too - for where we are in our lives right now I think that’s everything we could have wanted from what started out as a little online side project. I don’t think it’s on the cards but I’d never say never.
Jeroen:
I agree, the community is still there as we have migrated to Discord, and I think that's made it stronger than it was for several years. For updates, there are other people who do it better and have done for a long time, so I don't think we'd add much to the current landscape. I think I'll always have my dream of the mega Pokédex - crosslinked between places in a more systematic way than other places do, so you can run more interesting queries - but I also know that's more interesting to some people than others. I don't see us coming back to full speed unless we get a new batch of volunteers, and they (quite rightly) would want to work on a site that meets the current zeitgeist more than our habits and thoughts.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with Johto Times! Do you have any closing remarks you would like to make?
Jeroen:
Thank you for giving us the room! I've always felt our community is one of our strengths and there are a lot of us who were part of the success of the site - I just ended up running it because I happened to be the one who knew how to do so and had the money to spend. I didn't get to mention Dan, Bre, Rex, Kay, Lottie and a bunch of others that made the site what it is. It's been a life altering experience - I wouldn't be doing the work I do without it, I wouldn't have had the friendships I have without it, and I wouldn't be who I am without it. And all of that on a site that at least partially had a philosophy of "Do what you think would work best".
Thank you for giving me the chance to revisit the memories, and if anyone wants to check out what a Pokémon site that would be modern circa. 2010 (just before smartphones really became a thing) [looks like], PKMN.NET will be around for as long as I can keep it online!
Mike:
Likewise thanks for talking to us, lovely trip down memory lane!
Just reiterating a lot of what Jeroen has already said really - our lasting legacy will always be the community but similarly to Jeroen it’s been a real directive on where my life has gone. Many great friends who I’ve made - even being a best man to someone at their wedding recently who I originally met through the site and similarly it ended up impacted by professional life too. I went down a slightly different route but now lead a UX team at an agency, with a lot of that initial digital experience coming from my time on the site and learning about how web development works and how users behave.
The site might not be as active as it was in its heyday, but I love that it’s still going and that the community still exists - I suppose nobody knows what the future holds but it’ll always be a special time in my life. And there’s a few things in the background I should probably get better at keeping on top of too…
We are deeply thankful to Jeroen and Mike for taking the time to speak with us about their roles on such a historic Pokémon fan website, and to its original creator Psythor who we hope is doing well in whatever path he has taken since the creation of the community!
Mailbag
Want to be a part of our newsletter? You’re welcome to submit content including (but not limited to) questions, fanart, short stories, your cherished memories, photographs of your collection, and anything else you think you want us to see. Today we have another question from newsletter regular, Rosie!
[Do you have] any favourite underrated/overlooked Pokémon? Any Pokémon you'd give a bit of a 'stat makeover' to?
Rosie Kenworthy, United Kingdom
It’s always a pleasure to answer your questions, Rosie! In terms of underrated and overlooked Pokémon, I need to say in advance that I am not a competitive Pokémon player, so it may be obvious why this Pokémon is overlooked in competitive play. However, I was always a fan of Jumpluff back in Pokémon Crystal, because I would use Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, and Giga Drain to put my friend in a difficult position. This can also apply to a stat makeover, because it has poor stats across the board. As a third stage evolution, Jumpluff needs all the help it can get!