Vol. 2, Issue 50 - Interview with Smogon University
An interview with Smogon University, known as the authority in the competitive Pokémon arena. We spoke to chaos, and several other people from the team, who kindly answered our questions about Smogon
Welcome to Vol. 2, issue 50 of Johto Times! This week, we are excited to share our interview with Smogon University, widely acknowledged as the authority on the competitive Pokémon scene. Conveniently, Smogon celebrates its 20th anniversary this week, so to celebrate this historic milestone in its history, I spoke with its founder, Chris Monsanto (chaos), and many other members of the team about the history of the community and its achievements.
Please note that our team is currently taking a break throughout December, so this issue has been scheduled to go out automatically. Readers are encouraged to follow our Mastodon account and our Discord server for any breaking news announcements during this time.
Feature: Interview with Smogon University
Smogon University (Smogon) is a Pokémon website dedicated to competitive Pokémon play. The site was founded on December 17th, 2004 and its forum opened the following day. It features a wide range of articles, guides, tools, and other helpful resources. Smogon has established a tier system – currently with eight tiers that change through playtesting with the community – which dictates the Pokémon that can be used in various metagames for competitive play. Smogon adopted the highly popular battle simulator Pokémon Showdown, which is the source of its tiering.
I am happy to speak with Chris Monsanto (chaos), the founder of Smogon, to learn more about the early era of competitive Pokémon, the Smogon community, and its impact on the wider Pokémon competitive scene. In addition to chaos, I am thankful to Finchinator (OU Tier Leader), Kalalokki (Sprite Leader), Ticken (Battling 101 Leader), and mari (The Flying Press Leader), for providing some of the answers in this interview.
Prior to the interview being published, I requested an explanation of each tier from Finchinator to help readers who aren’t familiar with the terminology better understand what they mean:
OU: Overused is the flagship metagame where the best balanced Pokemon reside! Pokémon banned from this go to Ubers. It is by far the most popular format.
Ubers: A banlist that has some tiering to keep it playable — all of the box legends and almost all of the strongest ever Pokémon reside here.
AG: Anything Goes — no control, just chaos.
UU: Underused, where Pokémon that are strong, but not used quite enough in OU, reside. They may still be used in OU, but not over 4-5% of the time.
RU: Rarely Used. More middle-of-the-road Pokémon that don’t see enough usage to stay in UU, but could see rare usage there or in OU.
NU: Never Used. While not truly never used in higher tiers, they see less than 4-5% usage in RU. Seen as lower caliber than the higher-tiered Pokémon.
PU: Pee-yew. These bottom-dwellers cannot even sniff 4-5% usage in NU. Some Pokémon even fall below PU into “untiered”, but they’re still usable in PU.
It’s great to speak with you, chaos! Can you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a bit about the work you do at Smogon?
chaos:
My name is Chris, and I'm in my mid 30s at [the] time of writing. I'm formerly a programming languages researcher; if anyone reading finds that sort of thing interesting, you can probably find my publications online. I love music and play classical/jazz trumpet, as well as a variety of other instruments that I'm not quite as good at. For over a year now, in my spare time, I've been teaching myself Japanese. I taught myself how to program when I was 11, and not too long after, I made a fansite for Dragon Ball Z. That one didn't last long, but the site I made afterwards for competitive Pokémon is still kicking to this day!
My role on Smogon is roughly the following:
- "Development," in the broadest sense imaginable: system administration, backend, frontend, mentoring new developers, requirements gathering (i.e. talking to non-technical leaders of various subcommunities and identifying their needs).
- "Management," which I guess is everything else: figuring out policies for stuff like contribution rewards and bans, finding good leaders for our subcommunities, handling disputes between staff – broadly making sure the "human" side of everything runs smoothly.
At some point or another I've personally performed almost every task required to keep Smogon running, but my work isn't done in a particular section until it can run without my involvement. For example, I wrote half of the initial Gen 1-3 Pokémon analyses for Smogon's launch. However, there are a lot more people that can do that kind of work, and few people who can do development/management tasks, so it is very important to delegate.
Ultimately all of this means I have a bit of a distant relationship with actually playing the game these days, but that's just the reality of running a large organization. I continue to play the occasional Random Battle on Pokémon Showdown to keep the spark alive.
The history of competitive Pokémon stretches back to the very first generation of the video games, with communities such as Azure Heights and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) chatrooms. What was your introduction to and involvement with the competitive scene prior to creating Smogon?
chaos:
I joined the competitive Pokémon community in 2001. I enjoyed playing GSC link battles with my brother and thought it would be fun to play online. So I searched the internet a bit and found some random web page that mentioned an IRC server. I put two and two together and eventually found myself on irc.sorcery.net. It wasn't an easy place to find; back in those days there wasn't a lot of publicity for the concept of "competitive Pokémon." I for a very brief period of time called myself "sl" (don't laugh – Saiyan Lord, from my previous website) and participated in a small channel called #pokegsc. I made some good friends there and found myself spending a lot of my free time after school chatting.
On IRC there was a bot called GSBot for playing Pokémon. It was written by someone named Fanha, who I guess at that point was the figurehead of competitive Pokémon. There was a channel called #battlearena in which everybody's battles were simultaneously broadcasted. There weren't a lot of people playing, so it wasn't overwhelming, but to help differentiate the battles players would pick the color their battle would be reported in. There were two main IRC communities, #pokebattle and #neodome, and people in addition tended to be affiliated with various forums such as GameFAQs, IGN, and Azure Heights. I was personally affiliated with AH but I didn't post much, and I doubt anyone who considered themselves a "core" member of AH would have acknowledged me as such. I was strongly affiliated with #neodome and my status in that community was the springboard for my eventual ascent as the IRC's "figurehead" in Gen 3.
In those days my day to day was just hanging out. I loved this period; it was a really tight-knit, exclusive community, and I didn't have the responsibilities I have now. Some of the fondest memories of my life.
How important was the work of earlier communities in the formation and development of Smogon?
chaos:
The community was small but its existence proved that there was a real interest in playing the game competitively. The simulators were primitive but the research into game mechanics was invaluable for later iterations.
If none of that [had] existed at the time I'm not sure any of this would have been more than a passing curiosity for me. I could have created a simulator myself if there wasn't one – and I did, for RBY, although it was ultimately never used. But without the friends I made in the early community, I'm not sure who it would have been for.
I also wanted to create an online version of Final Fantasy Tactics, one of my favorite PS1 games. I think something like that exists now. Maybe if the earlier communities didn't exist, that would have been what I [would have] pursued.
Since its creation in 2004, Smogon’s purpose has been to provide a comprehensive resource for competitive Pokémon battling and to support fans of the game to help them compete at every level. How successful do you feel it has been in achieving those goals?
chaos:
I think [it has been] fairly successful, but how does one measure that? We've certainly produced a lot of content over the years. We've run a lot of tournaments. We've developed myriad formats for playing Pokémon that plenty of people like to play every day.
One of the things I'm most proud of is our level of independence as a community. We run our own platforms, in an era of the internet where it is common to delegate that task to Reddit or Twitter. A forum, in the year 2024, really? That's been a real challenge and one [where] I don't think we've managed to avoid compromise, considering that, in addition to our own chat platform (Pokémon Showdown), we also have a large presence on Discord.
In May 2009, The Smog was launched, a web-zine that shared information on Pokémon’s metagame and reflected the many projects that were going on in the community. What was the reason you originally opted for an online magazine to reach players?
mari:
When the Smog's creators first got the project going, they had observed a pattern of an expanding and fragmenting community where more and more things kept happening, such as tournaments, but also including smaller or fledgling projects like Create-A-Pokémon, the starts of our VGC community, and Circus Maximus, our hub for forum games such as mafia; even articles like featured RMTs could fall under this. With the status of the community at the time, they felt a need to keep the larger community informed of all the goings-on around the site in an accessible way, and they felt like a webzine could be a way to do this.
While this niche may be slightly less visible for metagame-related articles, they do perform the same job of providing an easy way to keep the community in the loop on what our flagship metagames currently look like and what other ways of playing the game we offer, and community articles have remained part of our output to this day.
In July 2015, The Smog was replaced with Smogon's Flying Press, transitioning to a blog-like system to publish articles without the pressure of a strict schedule. By making this change, what benefits has it brought to the site?
mari:
When the transition was first proposed, a big part of the sentiment was that the webzine format in general was dated and that releasing a compilation of articles for people to read in one sitting wouldn't work well anymore; some of the less standout articles would lose readership, which the transition has helped avoid, and the extra media exposure that separate releases would allow was always a positive as well. The webzine format in particular also came with substantial ramifications on certain quality and release stability angles; the biggest one was that time-sensitive articles, such as tournament coverages and anything subject to fast metagame changes, by default were held back until a preset date.
This not only had a habit of leaving them outdated upon release but also hindered contributor motivation to work on them at all. Similarly, there were some past issues where releasing articles in bulk actually delayed future releases outright by running us out of backlog; while some steps to mitigate this were already taken during the days of the Smog, fully separate releases meant that we'd always have a steady stream of articles to drop. Lastly, the major deadline rushes associated with combined releases made for burnout with technical contributors like grammar checkers and HTMLers as well as artists, who unlike writers have to help with many articles at the same time. The new format's spread-out releases and scheduling flexibility have been helpful with spreading out the workload and prioritising time-sensitive articles, which in turn has also been good for our contributor experience.
In addition to all the great resources the website has, it also provides a teaching and learning program called The Smogon Apprentice Program, which aims to support players who are looking to improve their skills. How does that work exactly?
Ticken:
We aim to match experienced "tutors" with "tutees" looking to improve their skills. Prospective tutors apply in advance and are vetted by their chosen format's leaders and community veterans. When tutees sign up they are then matched with a Tutor based on their availability [and] compatibility.
Typically, tutors will gauge the tutee's experience level and personalize the program based on what the tutee wants to get out of it, as tutees can range from complete beginners to those who are just plateauing and want to improve their game. On average, they are paired for 8 hours, although on rare occasions they can be paired for much longer than that. Afterwards it is common for the participants to continue working together or communicating in some fashion.
After a pairing is over, we reflect on the experience to improve for the next time. Tutees will submit an evaluation to the staff, who will then work with the tutor if there are any problems, and tutors will sometimes also directly share their experiences with other tutors to improve outside the formal evaluation process.
What have been some of the biggest success stories from the Apprentice Program?
Ticken:
The most notable success story was the pairing between Yellow Paint (tutor) and Frixel (tutee) for SV Doubles OU where Frixel won the biggest Doubles OU only tournament of the year, Official Smogon Doubles Tournament (OSDT). He then later became a Doubles OU tutor himself.
Another success story was Excal (tutor) and Sakito (tutee) where Sakito was able to make a name for themselves and get drafted into Smogon Premier League (SPL), the most prestigious team tournament on Smogon.
Beyond specific tournament accomplishments we consider it a big success that the program can create friendships between the participants, which help strengthen our community and keep our players invested in improving at the game.
What kinds of features and tools have you wanted to include as part of Smogon’s content that weren’t possible?
chaos:
Oh boy, there are a ton. I've for over a decade now wanted to offer teams in our Dex but I've never found the time – our community instead posts sample sets for each format on the forum. Stats integration would be nice too. And it'd be super cool if we had a better database of all the tournaments we run than random threads on the forum!
Just recently we added support for connecting PS and Smogon accounts, and an automated suspect test system to go along with it. If I hadn't taken so long to answer all these questions (sorry), that would have been another thing mentioned!
Smogon has developed tier systems to rank Pokémon based on their effectiveness in competitive play. Tell us a bit about how they work, and how Smogon’s tiering impacts the games within the community.
Finchinator:
The premise is that the most used Pokémon fill up a tier, but the Pokémon that are less common get a chance to thrive in the next format. They can still be used in the higher tiers, but they also can compete in lower tiers that do not have quite as stiff competition. This allows for players to have a lot of options to play and makes it so that many, but not quite all, Pokémon have a viable home. Initially, this just seemed like a creative way to expand the game, but Smogon has blossomed into so many exciting sub-communities with each tier having their own discussions, tiering decisions, and friends made along the way! The modern tiering infrastructure helps form the foundation for our whole community because of this.
Suspect Testing, a process introduced in 2008, allows eligible users to cast their vote to decide the fate of Pokémon that are considered unsuitable for the tier they're playable in. What have been some of the most interesting debates that came out of this process?
Finchinator:
Suspects oftentimes evolve into larger philosophical discussions about testing the limits of the game, what constitutes enjoyable or skillful play, and even projecting the future development of our formats. The most famous tiering discussions happen around the start of the generation when we discuss new concepts that come around like Dynamax or Terastallization; the Terastallization suspect in particular was among the closest in Smogon's history and had many strong players with contrasting perspectives. It is awesome seeing the best and brightest players using their platforms to try and shape the game around them, so you will not want to miss Smogon suspect tests!
An article on your website on Suspect Testing states that tests are in the hands of the community. However, votes can only be cast by players who create a temporary account during the test, and achieve a high ladder ranking, meaning that many people who play won’t be able to cast their vote unless they put in time and effort to meet the voting threshold. Why was this approach taken?
Finchinator:
Suspect tests are wide open for anyone to participate in, but there is a line that must be drawn in the sand somewhere when it comes to who ultimately qualifies. We cannot have someone who has played just a few games without much experience having the same say as passionate hobbyists, so the goal of suspect requirements is to be a modern competency test in any tier. Most experienced players will be able to qualify if they invest themselves and plenty of new players join the voter pool each time, too!
It is worth noting that this is intended to be an inclusive process and our metagames put out recent resources including sample teams prior to most tests, which can help players get their feet wet and rise up the ranks. This will always be a balancing act with the goal of finding what is best for our metagames and it is a work-in-progress each generation, but the process is exciting with regular improvements being implemented!
The decision to ban Pokémon from specific tiers has been met with heavy pushback from some fans over the years. How have you and the team dealt with that criticism?
Finchinator:
It is a sad reality that every ban involves removing someone's favorite Pokémon from one of our metagames, but the beauty is in the details and larger system. Every ban is intended to make our formats more competitively stimulating, so oftentimes they are seen as addition-by-subtraction. Perhaps a very strong Pokémon was deemed banworthy, but odds are it being removed frees up space for multiple new things to be tried out and potentially even thrive. We see a lot of stagnant metagames when bans slow and trends cement themselves, so tiering action is frequently a catalyst for evolution within tiers. In addition, those who oppose a specific ban or unban can always try a new format as we have more active and engaging metagames than ever before!
I would like the opportunity to get your input on some of the decisions that were made as part of Suspect Testing. One that comes to mind is the OverUsed council banning the Dynamax mechanic in its entirety. It was the first time a generation's gimmick was banned. What were your feelings on it in the aftermath of the metagame and its popularity?
Finchinator:
We take any generational mechanic seriously, holding them to higher regards than individual Pokémon or other elements (moves, abilities, items, etc.). Given this, the council cannot quickban something like Dynamax or Terastallization -- they were actually tiered by suspect tests, where hundreds of people voted on them, rather than the council deciding alone. It was decided with an overwhelming majority that Dynamax was uncompetitive in singles OverUsed with 87% of the vote in favor of removing it; this leads us to believe that we would simply have not had a sustainable and competitive format with it, unfortunately. Generation 8 turned out to be one of the most balanced formats we have had, but it is true that some people wish there was some more hype at times, which can come with a new mechanic being in the mix.
Deoxys-Speed has a lot of history in OU due to its many Suspect Tests during Generation 5. In December 2023, it was finally unbanned after spending 20 years in Uber and had 8,452% usage in April 2024. How do you feel about it now that it's been unbanned again?
Finchinator:
It is pretty awesome seeing Deoxys-Speed return to OU. It was seen as problematic due to its role as a fast and efficient entry-hazard setter, but with Heavy-Duty Boots and Defog, it is a lot less worrisome in that role than it was during generations like BW. With this in mind, Deoxys-Speed is still a strong option with a lot of different attacking and utility options. I am excited to see it continue to remain in our tier alongside other historic Ubers like Darkrai!
At the time of this interview, we are about two years into Generation 9, and the metagame has had a lot of changes since then. How do you feel about the Terastallization mechanic now, and its impact on the health of the game?
Finchinator:
Terastallization is the most controversial mechanic and tiering topic ever, but it is awesome that we got to keep it in the mix! Initially it was as close as humanly possible to being restricted with a ban being eventually possible, but thankfully it remained legal. With more time, adaptation happened and some more people accepted it. There are still lots of people that do not love Terastallization, citing that it adds certain variance to the game. However, it also makes team building more dynamic and offers a brand new method of counterplay or breaking, which is a rewarding strategy for our players!
In December 2023, Terrakion came back with the Indigo Disk DLC and fell all the way down to PU (Smogon’s fifth usage-based tier), getting banned from it almost instantly. What led to it dropping several tiers in one go?
Finchinator:
Quickdrops involve usage in OU, where it is only allowed initially. With Iron Boulder being released at the same time, there was never a reason to use Terrakion, putting it in a unique situation where it is clearly better than a PU caliber Pokémon despite being outclassed to that extent in the preliminary stages. Thankfully, swift tiering action helped Terrakion land where it ultimately belonged, but situations like this are fun outliers that will go down as footnotes of our most chaotic generation yet!
Back in Gen 8 DLC, OU veteran Kyurem-Black returned to the game with a new incredibly powerful tool in the form of Dragon Dance, leading to a quickban only a few hours later. What is the process behind the decision of quickbanning a Pokémon instead of Suspect Testing it?
Finchinator:
A quickban is when the council votes on a Pokémon internally rather than the playerbase after a suspect test. This requires extreme circumstances and a larger supermajority than a suspect, so they are less common. Kyurem-Black gaining Dragon Dance and Heavy-Duty Boots made it very hard to stop, limiting teams to running the same few checks, which were hardly reliable, or losing outright. Rather than taking up multiple weeks of time in what was going to be inevitable, the council read the room and voted. This vote helped Kyurem-Black get quickbanned after all of their internal discussion and some listening in on forum discussion with the playerbase.
In January 2024, the OU council decided to ban the sleep status entirely! What caused this decision, and what was the community reception of this news?
Finchinator:
Self-induced sleep can still be used, allowing moves like Rest, but moves intended to induce sleep on the foe were banned earlier this year. Previously, they were only kept legal by Sleep Clause [a rule that only one Pokémon could be put to sleep at a time], which dates all the way back to RBY and has no modern precedent tying back to the games themselves, unfortunately. When two prominent Pokémon used sleep moves to turn game strategy into repeated rolling of the dice in Darkrai and Iron Valiant, it became an option to kill two birds with one stone, removing the clause that had no backing while solving the problem in the metagame: ban sleep moves.
This removed the inconsistency in tiering while balancing the tier, which became much more playable with the moves removed. Sadly, more balanced sleep users like Amoonguss suffered, but we focus on the policy more than collateral in cases like this. Some people were upset by this ruling initially, but upon explanation and some more time playing the metagame, these voices have either been drowned out or stopped complaining altogether.
How often do you and the team evaluate the way decisions are made at Smogon, and what message would you give to those who take issue with the way you approach bans?
Finchinator:
Frequently! We have a Policy Review forum that seems to always have a thread or two reviewing our practices. It is vital that we keep an open mind and adapt to the growing needs of our community. Staying stagnant or being stubborn for the sake of tradition is silly. As for those who have insight or criticism, get involved and speak up. We are only as strong as our community permits, after all, and this is perhaps the most exciting generation for pushing reform. We have already seen recent shifts in suspect etiquette and deep discussions of tiering philosophy, so who knows what will come around next!
The Smogon StrategyDex is a collection of in-depth analyses into the most suitable movesets of a Pokémon. It's a community project that anyone can contribute to, across all generations of Pokémon. How did the idea for this project begin, and how important is it to the community?
chaos:
I don't remember precisely how we came up with the StrategyDex. It's kind of an "inevitable" idea, I guess? The concept harmonizes well with the established concept of a Pokédex. It's an attractive and sticky idea, which is maybe part of why the project has persisted over so many years. A former administrator, Brain, wrote the original StrategyDex in PHP. I rewrote it shortly after (and again and again over the years).
The StrategyDex is our oldest project and I think central to our mission. Having a repository of vetted movesets and explanatory text for individual Pokémon is useful for educational purposes, in a way that I think sample teams (another popular approach to onboarding new users) isn't--the granularity is such that the reader is encouraged to engage with teambuilding beyond blindly copying wholesale what someone else has created. In addition to being available to read, they're also available for easy import into Pokémon Showdown and for convenient reference in our damage calculator. Off and on we've discussed using them as the basis for a Random Battle-like format.
Beyond that it's simply a good way to get the community in a "contributor" mindset, to give people an outlet for meeting people and being a part of something bigger than themselves. I think that kind of energy is necessary to do anything truly worthwhile and I feel like it's something that is often missing from the today's internet, which feels a lot more individualistic and competitive (in the uncooperative sense, not the "be the very best like no-one ever was") to me than the internet of my childhood.
The current simulator that Smogon uses is Pokémon Showdown, adopted in July 2012. You are credited for its development and as a system admin. Can you tell me a bit about how your roles have impacted the battle simulator?
chaos:
Basically, what I said in question 1. A lot of this type of work isn't particularly interesting to talk about – does anyone really care years later that I investigated some MySQL queries that were lagging the server? – but here are some examples.
* I wrote the infrastructure for logging and searching private messages, originally for the purpose of ensuring user safety on the platform. I was also a key investigator and policy maker in this area.
* On the subject of policy, I spent a lot of time advocating for policies to mitigate staff burnout and increase staff retention, especially related to the "ticket" system, which allows users to request assistance for various things.
* I spent years mentoring one of our current developers, who went on to do a lot of high-impact work, such as modernizing PS' "loginserver" (the component that handles user authentication and the ladder, among other things) from PHP to TypeScript.
A lot of work has been done by the community to create Pokémon Black & White–style sprites for later generations of Pokémon for use in Pokémon Showdown. What is the process for sprite creation and approval?
Kalalokki:
The process started in the months leading up to XY, when the trailers had shown the shift towards fully 3D modeled Pokémon. While this collaborative project first started and was contained entirely within its forum thread, later transitioning to a more closed invite-only project inside its own chat server, the overall process has stayed mostly the same.
1. A sprite artist checks the reservation list for Pokémon that are available to be sprited and reserves those they’d like to work on. This usually includes both the front and back sprites, with the front sprite being worked on first. There are two reservation lists available, one for static sprites and one for animated ones, where the animated ones use the completed static sprites as their base.
2. Once the spriter believes they are finished, or has hit a snag and needs some feedback, they post their progress and the Quality Control (QC) phase starts. The QC team generally consists of the project leader and other experienced sprite artists that are there to make sure the sprite meets the standards and feel of the BW style of sprites, consisting of several criteria such as a size of 96x96 pixels, [a] total of 15 colors + transparency, [being] shaded in the correct style, etc. For animated sprites you also have them consisting of several shorter loops strung together, with a rare animation at the end and it all looping back to the start. A member of the QC team can either relay the edits necessary to the artist or make the edits themselves directly. When the front sprite has been accepted the spriter can start their work on the back sprite, which should mirror the pose used for the front sprite, and the process starts anew.
3. When enough sprites have been completed, they’re sent in batches for upload to both Pokémon Showdown’s and Smogon’s infrastructure and are now ready to be used and enjoyed by thousands of users.
The sprites created through this project are also free for non-profit use in other projects, such as fangames.
What are some of the future plans you and the rest of the team have for Showdown?
chaos:
Showdown is a fairly mature product at this point. I think the most important task is maintenance and training the next generation of maintainers. Feature-wise, I think it would help if we had better mobile support, but I don't know if that's actually something "planned".
NetBattle was another simulator you worked on prior to Showdown in the early 2000s. It’s something I personally used a lot as a kid, and it gave me the opportunity to battle my friends between different continents. What was your involvement in that, and what did you learn from your time working on it?
chaos:
Originally NetBattle had its own community with no connection to Smogon, and [it] competed with our community's IRC-based simulators. The story of how I – and by extension Smogon – got involved with NB is fairly interesting.
The NB client and server communicated using an encrypted protocol, and I guess because they didn't expect any other client but the official one to be able to speak to the server, there were some security oversights. When someone is banned from the server, instead of the server disconnecting the client, what happened was that the server sent a message to the client telling them they [were] banned, and the client by its own volition [was] expected to disconnect from the server.
So, I ended [up] hacking NB – I wrote a custom client that bypassed their encryption and flooded the chatroom with an unbannable wave of spam. Afterwards, I became a developer, and Smogon adopted it as its primary simulator. The rest of my involvement as a developer was less interesting, if I recall correctly, just miscellaneous performance improvements and maintenance-type stuff. I don't have any source control history on my machine (did NB use source control at all?), so information like that is lost to the sands of time.
What are some of your favourite Pokémon teams that you have personally run throughout the years?
chaos:
I'm not much of a teambuilding guy, which is probably why I've settled into playing Random Battles for the last however many years. Teams are ephemeral, and highly dependent on the current metagame, and I feel "favorites" need a more timeless quality to them. At least, that's how I feel about favorite TV shows and music and what not.
Nevertheless, I'll try to give some examples.
* RBY is infamous for having a very small pool of usable Pokémon, so it's a lot easier to teambuild. My favorite RBY team to use was Alakazam/Snorlax/Tauros/Starmie/Eggy [Exeggutor]/Golem. It'd probably be improved by fitting in a Chansey somewhere, but I've never liked that style of play. Also, [if I recall correctly] Rhydon is more popular to use than Golem, but I like having a third Pokémon that can explode.
* I used to run a very stally team in ADV [Generation III] with Skarmory/Blissey/Claydol/Dusclops. Jumpman16 (a former Smogon admin) and I made a Tyranitar set called "Tyraniboah" for breaking cores like that: Substitute/Focus Punch/Crunch/Thunderbolt. My memory is this is one of the first instances of naming a moveset and it really catching on with the general public.
* I used to like running Baton Pass teams, whether the classic full BP with Ninjask, or a half BP with Celebi. Baton Pass is banned now, sadly...
Pokémon’s official competitive play differs from Smogon; it is played in a double battle format and changes annually with each new game release. How do you personally feel about the official rules?
chaos:
I don't have any particular opinion, as I have never played VGC seriously. There was a brief period of time where I was #1 on the Smogon Doubles ladder but that's about the extent of my competitive Doubles career. Part of this is because I retired from super serious play after ADV [Generation III].
If you had the opportunity to advise TPC on their approach to competitive play, what kinds of suggestions would you make?
chaos:
We've always worked downstream from the games; whatever they give us, we try to balance it and make something fun out of it. [It has] been like that since the days before its developers took competitive play as seriously. If it's not fun and competitive I see it as a failure on our part. On that note, I wish we could have found a clever way to retain Dynamax and preserve the spirit of what we were given.
There's a sizeable community on Smogon that likes playing "National Dex", a format that seeks to retain all the things cut from the games over the years like Z-Moves and Megas. We don't know how all of these things interact so sometimes it is just guessing. I think it would be popular if the games had a mode of play like this.
I’d like to hear more about your early memories of Pokémon. What was your first introduction to the series?
chaos:
Pretty much my answer to question 2: playing the GSC cart with my brother was my introduction, and all of my early memories are [of] the IRC competitive community. I don't have a lot of experience with the franchise beyond the cart games; I've never been into, say, the anime or card game.
What personal items related to Pokémon do you have that you’ve kept hold of and mean something to you?
chaos:
In person at VGC Nationals 2010 a member of the community gave me a paper mache Koffing. I still have it to this day.
I have a copy of Time magazine from this year which contains a small write-up of Smogon. The fact that this happened still feels surreal to me.
I'm not one for memorabilia like cards or plushies or whatever. It is the feelings of the community, the acknowledgment that my work touched other people in a positive manner, that mean something to me.
What are some of your favourite Pokémon, and does their competency in competitive battles influence those picks?
chaos:
Ho-Oh, Victreebel, and Dragonite are all pretty cool. Their competitive viability doesn't mean too much to me; it's all based on vibe. And when we're talking vibe, I must say I prefer that old-school Red/Blue edge. The sprites looked intimidating back then! They made Dragonite a lot cuter in subsequent games. Vibes aside, I think the Crystal sprites were the overall best of the franchise, very high quality pixel art animation. Anyway, this is all to say that they're only my favorites when they are rendered appropriately – I feel nothing for the 3D models.
Your website claims that Smogon is widely acknowledged by the web as being the authority in the competitive Pokémon arena. In your opinion, how has Smogon earned this, and what more does it need to accomplish to further deserve the title moving forward?
chaos:
I wonder how old our About page is. Did I write that? I wonder. Perspective changes over the years.
I feel like the frame adopted here suggests there is this independent thing called "competitive Pokémon", an internet marketplace aiming to represent it, and Smogon happened to win in the hearts and minds of consumers. Historically, I'd argue that wasn't the case. Smogon became the "authority" because our community – from even before it had the name Smogon – took the idea of playing this game competitively seriously at a time before anyone else did, and [that] built the foundation of what you see today. We are, historically, the competitive community, in a precise sense.
Competitive Pokémon in the year 2024 is a lot larger than Smogon, but I think most players continue to interact with us to some degree, if not directly with our community, then through the simulator we run or the formats we develop. I hope that we can continue to attract players to engage with us more deeply in the future.
To that end I think it would help a lot if we had a front page that wasn't written with Internet Explorer 6 in mind. I don't think we give off a good impression to a modern public that is not familiar with us. I had planned to do that at the beginning of the year, but there's always so much to do, and now it's November. Time flies.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Smogon University. What do you think the future holds for the community and its role in the competitive scene?
chaos:
I think our success is largely predicated on continued interest in the franchise as a whole. It's hard to predict what the future holds for Pokémon. We've had trouble adapting to some of the changes like the faster release cycle. Sometimes I've seen the sentiment – not just from competitive players – that the newer games are less inspired than the older ones. Personally, I still have a lot of fun. I thought this generation's mechanic, Terastalization, was a huge improvement over Dynamax, and am looking forward to seeing what's in store for Gen 10. I hope that people will enjoy playing this game for many years to come, and if they do, we'll be here in some capacity to support [them].
After reading this interview, there might be some players who are curious to learn more about competitive Pokémon battling. Aside from visiting your website and its wealth of information and tools, what would you recommend for those who are interested?
chaos:
Just play. Easiest way to get started: go to Pokémon Showdown and hop on the Random Battle ladder. No team building necessary. Play a bunch and you'll gain intuition for what Pokémon are good, how much damage things do, etc. After you get your foot in the door the next steps will become clear, based on what you want to get out of the game and our community.
chaos, and the rest of the team, thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts on Smogon University, Pokémon Showdown, and your memories of Pokémon! Before we wrap this up, do you have any comments you would like to make?
chaos:
Apologies for getting sentimental, but it would mean a lot to me if subsequent generations have as much fun participating in our community as I did when I was a child.
Once again, thank you to chaos, mari, Ticken, Finchinator, and Kalalokki for taking the time to answer my questions. Johto Times would like to wish Smogon a happy 20th anniversary, and we wish the community the very best of luck for its future.
Favourite Starter Pokémon Poll & Fansite Word Search Puzzle
As the holiday season approaches, we’ve decided to put together a couple of fun events! We are currently running a poll to see which starter Pokémon is the fan favourite. This poll will run from November 22nd, 2024 at 18:00 UTC until December 31st, 2024 at 18:00 UTC. The winner will be announced via the Johto Times newsletter and our social media pages on January 9th, 2025! You can cast your vote here.
We received some great feedback last year on our word search, so we have decided to make another one for this year! This time around, we want you to try and find the names of Pokémon fansites, many of which we have interviewed in our newsletter since we began in February 2023! If you are able to find them all, send us a picture of your result along with your name via email before December 19th, 2024, and we will publish the results in our 100th issue on December 26th, 2024!
That’s all for this week’s issue! If you enjoy what Johto Times provides, be sure to share our newsletter with your friends and loved ones to help us reach even more Pokémon fans. For Discord users, you’re welcome to join our server for the latest notifications from our project. We are still open to sharing your mailbag entries for 2025, so if you have anything you would like to share with us, drop us a line by visiting this link to contact us directly!
Smogon is the definitive when it comes to building any team rly. :)
This was one of my favorite interviews so far. I've always had an interest in how Pokemon get placed into the tiers, and the thought processes behind managing the community.
I don't play competitively myself, as I have a strong dislike for the entry hazard mechanic, but I do occasionally like popping in and playing a random battle or two on Showdown.