The Pokémon Company Is Looking To Hire Someone With NFT Knowledge

What even is the Pokémon Company anymore.
I get that they're a for-profit company, but in the 3DS era it felt like there was a focus on quality control. Now they just feel soullessly corporate.

Wow, never would have guessed that TPC would make yet another terrible decision for their company and IP!

The business world is going to force us to like block chains, they will keep trying until they find a way.

@CharlieGirl yeah there used to be a sort of magic to the games and the franchise
it feels so artificial now

Aaaannnnnd nothing good will EVER come out of this like always. And when is this crypto-crud bizzness gonna collapse?

The future is scary indeed.

What are all these companies thinking? Do they not know that the market crashed just last year or something? Someone tell both GF and Square Enix please

No
F******
Thanks
(Character limit)

If they make NFTs a part of Pokemon in any way, shape or form I honestly think I will just boycott the series. This might be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me.

We bullied NFTs out of the industry before, we can do it again.

NFTs are the future whether we like it or not. It may be time to embrace the digital evolution of the world.

I really hate this timeline sometimes.

"Sure, you can say you like Lechonk, but do you really like Lechonk? Your profile picture is merely a PNG you have found on the internet, but mine is a prestigious piece of art I legally own. You may lie all you want, but I am the true Lechonk lover! I will reign supreme!"

@Axecon Come on, have some fighting spirit! It's not inevitable if we don't let it happen

“I spend 40K on a picture of pikachu in a hat.”

…I hate this company sometiems

Oh Dear in a worms style voice

Way to really get your customers to love you after releasing a bug filled game.

Keep in mind that these NFT "projects" aren't for the fans who actually play the games. They're for morons who have to keep convincing themselves they're not wasting their life on digital receipts because they're so deep into the grift.

I'm not in the least surprised that they're interested in NFT stuff. This company has really gone down the drain in terms of respect, if you ask me.

Well, whatever. The dip in quality of the pokémon franchise has already made me jump ship anyway, so this doesn't really affect me any more than just letting out a disappointed sigh as they take another step into pure corporate greed.

It's whatever at this point though. Moving on!

Guess it is time to complain about things that we can easily avoid and nobody is forcing to invest in.

The Pokemon Company are behind on their business decisions (NFT’s are a dead concept) and their game development (Scarlet/Violet were technologically 2 gaming generations too late).
If they didn’t have such a strong IP they would honestly be bust.

This article reassured me in my decision that gen 9 was the last gen I will buy and play. This company goes from bad to worse. I honestly preferred replaying an older gen above playing gen 9.

Let's see how long I will like playing Pokémon GO too.

I'll be done with Pokemon if this happens. Already close to it with how bad their games have been.

@MatoFilipovic you’re not wrong, but no one wants to hear about their interest in NFT’s. Because if there’s one company who would be dumb and/or stubborn enough to actually incorporate into their games, it’s Square Enix…
But also the Pokemon Company 100% too.

Okay, what is even happening at the Pokémon Company right now?? I get they've always been in the business to make money off of anything they can slap a Pikachu face on but in the past few years, they've seem to gone completely mad with greed. Going all in on microtransaction-heavy mobile games largely targeting children, partnering with a company as foul as Tencent, releasing games that are clearly unfinished and/or buggy and now the news of them expressing interest in the whole blockchain/NFT scheme. The company has always been greedy, yes but at least they were able to maintain some semblance of decency.

Good time to remind people how devastatingly bad for the environment blockchain and NFT is. We do not want something as big as Pokémon using it.

It's also just one big scam but that's a lesser issue at this point.

@GreenTea also goodtime to note, NFTs do not grant you the right to own the art. They just give you "ownership" of a specific instance of a png.

Can Pokemon fans vote with their wallet now? They're after your money, so don't give it to them when they make awful games/services/business decisions like this one and they logically should change course.

Oh for the love of god I do not have a clue what nft’s are but if companies still insist on using them even though 99.9 percent of people abhor them then they just have to be deaf.
(Seriously can someone explain nfts in non complicated terms to me please?)

Wow, of all the nothing burger scare articles that make it on this site, this it the worst in a while.

The listing is for a Corporate development principle. That's a person who works with mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. The knowledge of blockchain, web 3 and metaverse is there because they are going to need to answer investor questions on the subject. Questions like "Hey, why don't you guys do NFTs?", as an example.

If you (or god forbid, the person who wrote this) took the time to look at the listing, or even Google search the job title, you would see that isn't a programming position or even a tech job.

It's a accountant. A high level executive. The job responsibilities including MONITORING the tech industry, which again, is why they need to know what NFTs are. But there CORE JOB is mergers and accusations.

There is not a single large tech company in the world that doesn't have several M&A specialists with a knowledge of Web 3, NFTs and the Metaverse. TPCi likely already has several. This means NOTHING.

I don't know what's worse, that this click bait gets posted so often, or that all of you fall for it without a second though EVER. SINGLE. TIME.

As if we needed more proof TPC doesn't have a single priority straight.

Theres very little chance this actually reflects any plans from TPCi and is more for the sake of having someone at the company to investigate and monitor these new and emerging technologies (the same as if it were anything else) and clearly define how they may or may not be relevant to business in the future, which is pretty standard and not newsworthy

@Ogbert They don't grant ownership of a PNG or other any image file format, they grant ownership of the link to the image. Storing an image on the blockchain is too intensive, storing a bit of text is easier. It's so stupid.

I'd really like to know who's responsible for what when it comes to Pokemon, because the quality across all its different components is just insanely inconsistent. The merchandise mostly seems to be well made, and as far as I know was pretty controversy-free up until whatever this is. The main TV series has been a lost cause for more than a decade, while many of their mini series and other video projects are still brilliant. The spin-offs on Switch are mostly pretty good, but not as numerous as you'd think. Meanwhile, it feels like there are a dozen different mobile apps, of which maybe two or three are even worth looking at. Obviously Game Freak's job is developing the mainline games, but it's not really clear how much autonomy they have with that, and the quality of their recent games can be called a mixed bag if you want to be polite. And despite Nintendo being part-owners of TPC, it's hard to believe they have much influence over anything with how differently it all seems to be run.

At this point, I think Nintendo just needs to overhaul their entire approach to Pokemon, because the Pokemon Company is basically the root of everything wrong with this franchise now and it's just extremely at-odds with how things usually are with Nintendo to the point that it's kind of tainting their image. Stop forcing merchandise and anime tie-ins that lead to undercooked games, bring in other developers so that the entire Game Freak staff can be on one single game that gets all the time it needs, fixate more on proper spinoffs instead of mobile drivel, etc. I went back to Scarlet a few days ago, and the performance was so rough I don't know if I can bring myself to keep playing until it gets refined more. There is not a single other first-party game on Switch I can say that about. And while some of the blame is certainly on Game Freak (ah, yes, give us a sandwich building mode but cut out most interior spaces), what really sucks is that they already proved they can still make strong, more polished feeling experiences earlier last year with Legends Arceus. Would it really have been so hard to decide on a new 4 year cycle for generations so both Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet could have had more development time that the former probably could've still used, and the latter absolutely needed? Getting off-topic from the article now, but I always assumed the Pokemon Company would jump on the NFT bandwagon eventually. So I'm not surprised, just...gravely disappointed. Enough to think it's time Nintendo steps in to try and overhaul how Pokemon is handled, since no other Nintendo second-party series has these kinds of issues

I'll remain optimistic about this since there's no official NFT project announced and doesn't automatically mean they are going to make an NFT project from just the job listing description. However, should they make an official Pokemon NFT project in the future, it'll be that very same day when I stop supporting the Pokemon franchise directly. That is if I don't do that before hand, considering Scarlet/Violet's current state.

@Greatluigi Think of it as buying an expensive receipt, instead of buying the item listed on the receipt. NFTs don't grant ownership of the images they're tied too, they also don't grant copyrights or trademarks or other form of legal ownership. They just grant ownership of a link saying you own the item. They only ever seem to depreciate in value too after they're bought so they're a scam. Because there is no actual DRM or other copy protective measures on NFT images, anyone can copy them or download them.

All I can say is…. Ew.

I can somewhat handle playing a Pokémon game that runs poorly, but NFT integration is a sure way to get me to never touch a Pokémon game ever again. I'd say the same for just about any other game franchise too.

@Eagly Let me show you how to scratch it

Genuinely the only enjoyable Pokemon related media at this point is getting to see how joe merrick defends whatever Pokemon is doing, gives me a laugh every time 😂😂

https://www.vooks.net/the-pokemon-company-takes-aussie-crypto-company-to-court-over-pokemon-nft-game/

When The Pokemon Company sued PokeWorld, they made it clear that they had no interest in NFTs:

The counsel for TPCi also specifically pointed out that “TPCi, The Pokémon Company and Nintendo had made a deliberate decision not to launch any Pokémon NFTs”.

If this new job listing is indicative of NFTs being integrated into Pokémon in the future, then it would seem like that decision was made in the last ~3 months.

Still the best explanation of what NFTs are and why they're terrible on all levels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

@Tourtus You expect Pokémon fans of all people to actually vote with their wallet?

@Tourtus wow that is dumb. No wonder people hate nfts. (Besides the damage to the environment)

@westman98 I guess that’s why this is just a job description, they’ve made the decision recently and want to get the ball rolling as quick as possible (a bit like the games lol)

Oh Great, MORE reason to avoid Pokemon...

How about they hire more devs instead

After the complete trashfire that was Scarlet/Violet and now this, I think now would be a good time to hang up my Pokemon coat and leave the franchise behind permanently.

@GreenTea Honestly NFTs get a very bad rep. If used responsibly, they can be very helpful for digital assets and ownership handlings. They are an easy way for struggling artists to get commission work and make money to do other more time-intensive but less pay passion projects.

I mean, people are going to be stupid and spend their money on NFTs, now or in the future. Just don't buy them.

I want to think that they look for someone with that knowledge because, ya know, it could be helpful. No matter how much I like Pokémon, not gonna touch any NFT garbage even if it's with a stick.

The absolutely most charitable explanation for this is that they're looking for people who can crawl through the blockchain looking for infringements and ripoffs (e.g. PokéWorld, Animoon) to crush before they can falsely claim sanction by and affiliation with TPC.

That's being charitable.

@Axecon

How does an NFT help anyone own anything?

Are they wanting to kill it?

If Pokémon Company does go down this road, I'm not buying any of their games... It's like I've been avoiding Square Enix games because of their interest in NFTs. NFTs are a scam to make money and I won't be part of it.

I am NOT a proponent of any kind of blockchain or NFT.
I hate NFTs with everything I've got.

But sadly there is SO MUCH NFT potential in a Pokemon game that someone ought to notice it someday...

Might be making a real digital card trading gave? Sounds like a good idea.

Man. This gets more and more hilarious with every comment. It's like people are proudly declaring that they can be fooled by a single headline, never check sources, and just believe any information spoon fed to them.

This is an executive position changed with monitoring the tech sector as a whole for accusation and investment targets. They need to know what Web 3, NTFs and Metaverse are because ... well that's the tech indestry.

To put into perspective how insane everyone is right now, this would be like if Nintendo had a job posting for a "Head of Loss Prevention" that included a requirement that you have "Knowledge and understanding of ransomware", and Nintendolife posted an article saying that Nintendo was branching out into cyber crime.

Here is the full job listing.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/pokemoncareers/jobs/5540422003

The actual list of job responsibilities mentions NTFs exactly never.

What you’ll do

Lead the identification, assessment, and execution of investments, strategic projects, and partnerships to support TPCi’s long-term growth strategy.

Source, research, and recommend potential strategic partners to the President and executive leadership team.

Monitor and assess technology and market players and trends in gaming, media and entertainment, and related sectors.

Establish and lead robust processes to source and assess new ideas and opportunities, including the TPCi Internal Innovation Challenges.

Design and build a process and platform to test new ideas’ feasibility and enable iterative development.

Effectively partner with cross-functional teams and business unit leaders to ensure your three initiatives make strategic sense and are operationally feasible in the long run.

Bring in a group of advisers for the President, executive leadership team, and relevant business leaders to understand the trends and implications for the future of Pokémon businesses.

Play a role model and advocate to enhance the innovative culture at TPCi.

You will conduct other duties as required.

I still do not know exactly what an NFT is. When I google it, I usually get a weird looking monkey.

@RareFan

If you had a $1 bill, I could steal it from you. Or, I could try and make a counterfeit $1 bill. I could even change the value of $1 bills by printing more of them, giving any $1 bill is the same as any other. Bills are "fungible", meaning they can be replace or imitated.

But what if instead of a $1 bill, there was a record I could access that told me who ONWED $1. Instead of giving me a $1 bill you present a "key" or token that lets me access that record. Instead of paying with the bill, we simply update the record so that it says I'm new owner. That key would always be unique and could never be replaced. If the token was lost, that $1 is simple gone, but at the same time no one could make a counterfeit token. We could even assign a different value to each token, as they are all unique. That token is "non-fungible".

Long before people were selling ugly pictures of aps, NFTs started being used in network security as an alternative to PGP to create certificates and public facing encryption. When you hear "NFT" today, it's generally just paying for acknowledgement that you own a publicly accusable thing.

You know that card under a painting in an art museum that says "This painting you are currently looking at in this public place is part of this collection and owned by this rich person"? That's an NFT, with the records of ownership that are kept for works of arts acting at the blockchain. It is NOT a new concept.

Make sense?

Wait until they actually properly announce something Web3 related.

THEN we can all scream in horror. Got it?

Doesn't money have to be honoured by an amount of gold anymore? Iwould have thought with all this crazt virtual moneies that there isn't enough gold in the world to honour it all lol.

@HeadPirate
Agreed, looking at job openings are a very bad way of trying to predict what a company wants to do in the future.
Problem always being that we don't know why they want that skillset.

Heck, in theory, even if they actually want to do something with NFT, it could just be a fancy way of booting out cheaters who try to generate Pokemon using third party software...

Anyway, to early for outrage. Should wait for actual announcements.

@Friendly I just fired up Pokemon Shield again and oh boy it both looks and plays so much better than Violet.
Just the stable framerates is enough to win you over. Not to mention Max raids that actually work and not crash, hang, freeze half the time.

I was also highly surprised when I went into online mode, how many people are still playing Sword/Shield. Wild areas busy with people and it's actually still fairly easy getting into Tera Raids as well.

@Kirgo They probably try it out with their Mobile phone games/apps first, since the Mobile game/app market is completely ruined by Micro transactions already anyway. So can't get any worse with NFT there.

@GrailUK
Not sure how true the gold thing really is in praxis. After all, every country can do whatever it wants with it's money. If one doesn't want to use gold as counter value, well then they won't.

Also not sure what NFT has to do with that though, since NFT isn't necessarily currency. And NFT currency like Bitcoin don't really need anything like that, since there is, technically, a finite amount of Bitcoin that can be owned (can't simply print more Bitcoin, like with normal currency).
There is also no easy way of actually stopping Bitcoin and co. being a thing even if there is an issue with that.

@GrailUK The gold standard is gone in a lot of countries. The U.S. dollar used to be backed by gold and now it isn't. President Nixon was the one who changed that so it's been decades in the U.S. since our currency was backed by gold. Not sure how many other countries' currencies are still backed by gold.

NFTs and Crypto have never been backed by a tangible asset like gold, and instead their value is speculative. Supposedly, there is a set limit to how much Crypto currency can exist for some types. Bitcoin's mining limit is 21 million coins, once all 21 million coins are mined then that's supposedly all that will ever exist for that coin. No more can be mined after that. The blockchain limits how much can be mined and no one person can change the limit, you'd need the entire blockchain to change at once which should be impossible to do.

NFTs aren't even a big thing now are they? I feel like that fad passed last year. I haven't seen a cartoon monkey in 2023.

@Keyblade-Dan One can hope. I like Pokemon but I have been avoiding their games and products for awhile now. So I'm voting with my wallet, wish others would do the same.

The Pokémon Company deserves hell. Zero quality and the most aggressive monetization possible.

I don’t expect much of this, I just wanted to say I really liked the choice of the crying Jigglypuff as the header image. 😆

corpse of NFTs burst into flames as it all crashes down

Pokemon Company: I want to be a part of that

Pokemon Company CEO : We will consider about NFT.

Me :

I was not impressed by Scarlet and Violet (I don’t care what people say. Those games were low effort open world crap.), Pokémon TCG live left me with a bad impression after hearing the news that not all cards will transfer and other such issues, and now Pokémon is getting into blockchain? Screw The Pokémon Company. Pokémon is one of the coolest media franchises and it’s being ruined by a actual brain dead company that is pandering to their fervent fan base of white knighters that wouldn’t criticize them if they gave them actual dog turds for a game. I’ve got a vast collection of previous Pokémon games and media that I can revisit without having to support this company that doesn’t actually care about the product they’re selling. I’ll come back when they decide to make real Pokémon games again.

what a bunch of jokers

Whatever. As long as none of it ends up in the games in anyway then crack on. Bubble’s gonna burst at some point anyway

This is where the 33% Nintendo stake ultimately fails. The Pokémon Company has already done a lot of things that Nintendo normally would disapprove of, and if TPC decided to go into blockchain, that's gonna be one helluva big issue.

I’m not defending it, but just don’t play it if it ever comes to fruition. What can they do about that? Nothing!

You know it really is amusing how many of you have just entirely ignored HeadPirate's explanation just to bash on TPC.

Look. I wasn't terribly impressed with Violet either and not happy about it's quality at launch but good grief can any of you put your heads in the sand harder.

How did I miss this? Now I have to read all the comments

@Kirgo @Tourtus Ty for the replies. (You may be able to tell I'm a noob with this sort of thing!)

I thought NFTs were dead

Do it, give me a reason not to buy any of your games! I had all the reason in the world, and I only justified it with how fun the games are, ain’t no way I’m justifying this.

@Nintendo
@GameFreak

We know that this company (The Pokemon company) was born from you with the purpose of supporting you in the control and distribution of everything related to the IP of Pokémon, and that more than obvious, it is only an "Administrative" Company.
However, in recent years, instead of supporting them in the positive, they have really put you in a position that you literally "pay the piper", and it is not fair, and above all, affect the image of the franchise!!
It is already necessary that you take action on the matter!!!

*it would be good to put this in the feedback from Nintendo and Game Freak

I can just see it now: The only way to obtain a Unique Mythical Pokémon in the future being tied to the purchase of one of their NFTs lol!

POKEMON ARE BASICALLY CURRENCY AT THIS POINT,,,, VERY SMART COMPANY

Oh dear god no. For the love of all that is good and right in the world, I hope they aren't serious about this.

@Kirgo

Welcome to everything wrong with the Western world. A single unscrupulous website willing to stoke animosity, fear, and hatred within it's own community with incomplete, out of context information just to get a few dollars worth of engagement reaches more eyes and ears that 1000 people trying to explain what's actually happening.

And it's not just the fact that this hiring has nothing to do with game design or that having NFT experts on you M&A team is normal. The comments also repeat the same misinformation about how controlling interest and investments work, or even who owns who that comes from other articles posted to scare people. Like the one about how Saudi Arabia was buying stock that left out the part where the board makes all the decisions, hold 10 year terms, and how foreign investors don't get to vote. Heck, 90% of people don't seem to even know what an NFT actually is ... no fault of there own, just again, the articles they read about them do more to scare then to inform.

Oh well, I'll keep doing what I can for people actually interested, answer any questions I can.

I know a lot about NFTs, I can help!

Step 1) Do NOT touch NFTs

Please hire me to remind you hourly to not touch NFTs!

@HeadPirate I agree that I think too many people are jumping g the gun here. It’s important to know how the world is developing so we need positions that know the ins and outs of NFTs and crypto tech - but this DOES NOT mean developers will incorporate it into games

I mean...yeah, nfts sure are awful. And Pokémon fans sure will buy anything related to Pokémon.

@HeadPirate I wish more were reading your comment instead of just posting their outrage.

Haha oh dear, I thought we had moved on from NFTs already!

@HeadPirate you know I feel like even if you put up some good points no one's going to read them because they just hate the Pokemon company. And well they do have reason to, I mean Pokemon unite ,Pokemon TCG live, and various other mobile games with egregious micro transactions though not going to pretend like there wasn't micro transactions in their other free to play games on 3DS Pokemon picross anyone? Heck I'll probably just get a response because I'm not blindly throwing hatred at the Pokemon company even if it is a little deserved for their past actions.

The Pokemon Company has become an absolute joke. Not only are they hopping on the NFT train, but they are doing after they lost what inflated value they had. How incompetent can you be? Oh yeah, enough that you release a game with massive memory leak issues with little chance of a fix ever coming.

@Jeronan Not to be that guy. I think you mean Max Raids. Tera Raids are Scarlet and Violet

@Eagly Does the average Pokèmon fan even know what a NFT or blockchain is to defend?

I feel like I've read every article about the concepts and still don't have a clue about them, why they're good or bad, and what they're purpose is in the end.

Shame on them

I hope someone gets the job.

LOL as if we needed further evidence of how low they view their customer, and how out of touch they are. What clowns.

Hopefully the person they hire will be an actual expert, someone who will tell them what a terrible and pointless idea it is

i hate NFT's because they made Jigglypuff cry..

maybe they should hire someone with basic programming knowledge first

Ok, but is anyone surprised about this? The Pokemon Company's greediness plus the variety of Pokemon makes this franchise perfect for NFTs

Where do I sign up!?!??

@HeadPirate "I hate this site! So much clickbait and uninformed people acting on said clickbait! Guess I'll do the only logical thing possible and stay here while screaming into a void! Surely that will make me look sane!"

My guy... What are you doing? You okay?

@G_M

100s of people read what I had to say, over a dozen cared enough to take the time to agree with me, 3 responded positively, leading to a polite and enjoyable conversation ... even got to share a laugh over a troll!

If this is what you think screaming into the void looks right, you might be doing it wrong.