Still, there were glitches, bugs, and errors. The artwork in the game (e.g., sprites) needed to be updated to match the more refined artwork from the packaging and marketing materials, which was a big change too. Art director Ken Sugimori and the team had an opportunity to refresh the in-game artwork. Bulbapedia has some of the original artwork in that first iteration of Pokémon Red and Green. 

After eight months of polish, the refreshed Pokémon Red and a new Pokémon Blue came out in Japan. Red and Blue would be the versions of the games that made it to North America as well. Here’s a before/after comparison at Reddit:

While Charizard looks a little rough, none of the Pokémon looked that far off at first glance. That gives us a sense of how minor the polish was. (Rhyhorn looks literally the same!)

It reminds me of how the original Kirby also needed a year of polish, although developer HAL and Nintendo decided to push the release date out and cancel pre-orders. Pokémon took more time than that, and still needed more polish. One of the leaders must have decided that Pokémon Red and Green were acceptable to ship in 1996, even amidst the rest of the bugs—which weren’t dealbreakers—and imperfect artwork. That decision worked out well.

Pokémon launched first and made it perfect later. One way to see this: the initial momentum from the release gave the team much needed money and energy to keep going. They would do this once again with Pokémon Yellow, a game where a Pikachu would follow you around. 

If you find yourself blocked by perfectionist tendencies, maybe this story and approach will be useful for you.

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Satoshi imagined bugs crawling back and forth between the Link Cable, and children being able to collect, compete, and connect. Later on, legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto came up with the idea to split the Pokémon up between two different versions of the game. If you owned Pokémon Red, you needed to trade someone with Pokémon Blue to collect all 150, and vice versa. As an added incentive, a Pokémon you received through a trade would level up faster in your game as well.

As a child, I logged a lot of hours in Pokémon Red, though I don’t remember trading much. I didn’t have a sibling or a Link Cable, and I didn’t bring my Gameboy to school or daycare. 

In elementary school, I did collect and trade Pokémon cards, though. I wrote about my regrettable Chansey trade here. What was much more fun was just looking at friends’ card collections, shuffling through decks and binders, making sure precious cards were in sleeves, and so on. It was an occasion to talk about each others’ favorite cards, latest finds, and stores to buy from.

After I stopped collecting Pokémon cards, a friend and I started drawing our own. We folded a piece of letter size, A4 paper into eighths, ripped them up, which approximately was the size of a card. Then we started our designs. Our cards really had “Yes, and” improv comedy energy—the best official Pokémon card had 120 HP, while some of our custom creations had 1,000 HP—but we had a blast.

Pokémon was special because there were so many ways to participate, even if you weren’t a part of the video game or trading population. Before I got a Gameboy, I cherished my original Pokémon Official Handbook. I remember a man drawing a Charizard watercolor on cardstock for a church fundraiser, which my dad bought. That man, I realized, was an artist. 

My mom similarly drew a Charizard picture for me when I was obsessed with the card. When my friend Larry was a kid, he even created an internet community for fans called Pokétown, which drew in hundreds of thousands of people. Communities like Bulbapedia, Pokémon Vortex, and many others have stood the test of time.

Satoshi’s original idea may have been for Pokémon to crawl between Link Cables. They’re everywhere now, and there are all sorts of ways to participate. Some business-related takeaways:

What made Pokémon so fun and worth collecting? The TV show and video games laid the foundation for the story and popularized it. Extending beyond those core products, the official toys were very well designed, and cards were beautifully illustrated. It’s a great example of how people have always cared about craft, and always will. While the bar is high in intellectual property like Pokémon, it’s much lower in most other fields. (Here are some interesting conversations about that.)

Merch is a great way to communicate these product extensions and offer a chance to collect. There are lots of software companies that express their brand through merch—Figma, Shopify, Salesforce, YC, amongst many others—that serve as examples of this. 

As a businessperson, when you follow your enthusiasm, you create new ways to get lucky. Pay attention to your creative fevers. Worth its own post, but Stripe Press is one example of this. So is Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke’s obsession with Starcraft.

This level of engagement and connection is how a business retains its customers and advocates. And, perhaps, the most important and deep connections have their own funny ways of escaping quantiative metrics.

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When you want to ground your energy and be calm, rotate your palms down to the ground. You can elaborate on this, and put your palms flat on a table or surface if you find you’re talking too much and want to focus on listening. 

When you experience intense emotions, and want to stay calm, sit on your hands. This grounds your emotions, and loosens up your shoulders. 

When you want to change, start with the hands, which affects your head, and then your heart.

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In 1990, Satoshi approached Nintendo to publish and distribute the games on their Gameboy. He was inspired by the Link Cable. They set a release date for late 1991. Nintendo owns roughly ⅓ of The Pokémon Company.

If the timeline worked out, Pokémon would have debuted at the peak of the Nintendo Gameboy. Unfortunately, Game Freak needed more time, and spent another four years designing and developing the first Pokémon games. That brings us to the third company that owns Pokémon.

When money got really tight for Game Freak, Creatures Inc. offered funding in exchange for ⅓ of the company. It also took on the role of producing the Trading Card Game, the merchandise, and several spin-off video games. (Did Nintendo make an offer? I’m not sure; possibly not, if it was managing risk.)

By the time Game Freak completed the first Pokémon video games, the Gameboy was near the end of its life cycle and had lost traction. Pokémon’s initial debut was very shaky, and success took a few months to find it. The debut deserves its own post.

What caught my interest was how the team of 10 people at Game Freak sustained the business and bought more time to make Pokémon. Here are three ways they adapted:

Game Freak made other comparably simple games, like Quinty and Smart Ball. Income from game sales was passive. It also seems that the passive income wouldn’t keep the lights on at the company either.

In addition to developing Pokémon, Game Freak made its team available for hire. It helped develop many games involving other companies’ intellectual property, including Yoshi and Pulseman. While I’m not sure what the deals looked like, I imagine their clients provided cash to help keep the company afloat. This took time and energy away from Pokémon development—extending the time it took to ship. 

The Game Freak team also made due with frugal and often late paycheques. For most of his late 20s, Satoshi didn’t pay himself and lived with his father to save money. Frugality bought him the freedom to sustain a small bet that turned out to be bigger than he thought.

I imagine while the excitement propelled the process, there was an undercurrent of discontent and frustration. While this story lacks a primary source, five people—half the team—once quit at the same time.

The takeaway was how Game Freak pivoted and sustained themselves for a longer haul than they’d originally hoped, while still eventually delivering the product in spite of delays. Again, working on other people’s products helped sustain this process, even though it also pushed the actual Pokémon release back. 

Sometimes, you just need to accept, commit, and endure.

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There was a lot of material I couldn’t find a place for in this article. Here are some I wanted to highlight:

• A student, feeling depressed about trying to make a living as a musician in New York  City, messaged their teacher Max Alper, who wrote an incredible response (I previously mentioned here)
• Sara Benincasa’s essay makes the case that real artists have day jobs
• Derek Sivers makes the case for doing a well-paying job for money, and separately pursuing your art for love
• A paper suggesting that side hustles enriched day job performance (moreso than distracting away from it)
• The first person who ran a mile in under four minutes was a med school student named Roger Bannister. He eventually became a neurologist. He was the spitting image of what running shoe brand Tracksmith describes as “non-professional yet competitive,” a phrase which resonates deeply with me
• Molly Conway wrote about the modern inclination to turn activities we love into activities we monetize
• Isaac Asimov makes the case that the secret to academic freedom (and possibly professional freedom) was outside income
• Dana Gioia, featured heavily in the post, wrote for 90 minutes a day—I could probably have sandwiched this in there somewhere

Tightening this piece was tough, and these were some of the leftovers. I’m sure I can make something interesting out of them. Maybe you can, too.

One question that emerged from this process is, what’s the future of day jobs? Composer Philip Glass—who worked many day jobs!—compares jobs from the past with today’s jobs:

In those days you could work three days a week, maybe four sometimes, and you could live on that. It was the quickest and easiest way to make an honest living. I thought it was a pretty good deal. I didn’t have to teach any classes anywhere. I just drove the car and I got paid. I liked that. I had my independence, which was very important to me. But also, it didn’t take much time.

But, look, the thing to remember is that life was financially much easier. Actually, for the young people trying to make a living today, part-time, it’s almost impossible.

People work six days a week. No one can work three days a week. It’s just gotten to be more expensive, the rents are higher, there are more people around trying to do exactly what you’re trying to do. When people ask me how I did it, I say to the young people, “Look, I have to tell you. It was much easier when I did it.” I said, “It’s hard right now.” But people are still coming to the city, to the big cities where you have concert halls and museums and galleries. There’s a lot of part-time work. There are all kinds of things that you can do.

Some questions: what do day jobs that offer artistic independence actually look like? In an age of unstable employment, is self employment a more feasible option? Authors Soman Chainani, who helped students with SAT tutoring, and Susan Cain, who taught students negotiation skills, come to mind.

If you find this topic interesting, you’ll probably like these blog posts:

• On quitting, failing, and, “I find a lot of people who should quit don’t” (and ensuing discussion at Hacker News)
• How to Make Art Without Worrying About Money
• What a Multi-Hyphenate Career Actually Looks Like
• You can’t judge creative work by Sales
• “Quarter million a year, and that don’t bounce”
• Creativity, for fun and profit
• Seizing your right to make art
• The 90% tax on your creative work

Read more about artists and their day jobs at 3 Quarks Daily.

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James Somers writes that he thought Neal Stephenson had the best job in the world, because Neal uses his novels as occasions to dive into topics that interest him, including interviewing smart people and doing original research. That’s an approach I want to explore here, at a smaller scale and with a much lighter topic. 

Due in no small part to this statistical research, last night, a stream of Pokémon–memories bubbled up in my mind:

A trading spectacle: My parents occasionally bought me Pokémon cards when I was a young boy, maybe a pack every two to four weeks. If you haven’t seen a Pokémon card before, each one has a little icon in the bottom right corner. A circle icon signals a common card, a diamond signals an uncommon card, and a star indicates a card is rare. These icons were the first rule I learned about Pokémon cards as a kid: shiny, rare, cards were good. The best rare cards were often holographic, known as “Shiny cardboard,” a piece of slang I learned from my friend Nik who has developed an expertise with the cards. 

On a ride home from the card shop, I opened a pack and felt confused. Did I just strike gold? I was now the new owner of a Chansey card. The only other card I’d seen with 120 HP was a very coveted Charizard card.

I tell a couple of friends and word gets out at school, starting a small spectacle. That week, I found myself pestered into trading my Chansey card with an older kid. He offered me a Machamp for it, and eventually raised his bid to a Gyarados. I liked those Pokemon better—as a young boy, I thought they were more macho—and I realize now that a part of me also wanted to avoid trouble, maybe make a new friend, and not disappoint the people who wanted to see a trade happen. All three cards were shiny and rare, with a star in the bottom right corner, and I was getting two for one. So I did the deal. 

At the end of the day, it’s no small consolation that I liked both the cards I got, but the whole trading business made me feel really awful and stressed. I still felt confused, and a small sense of regret at making the trade. You live and learn. I didn’t do many trades after that, and I developed an aversion to the spotlight. I didn’t brag about my cards anymore, and if I struck gold again, I resolved not to tell anyone.

There are many other memories, too.

The Pokémon virtual world: Around this time, I urged my parents to buy me a Gameboy so I could play the Pokémon video games. I honestly can’t recollect how this happened, but somehow I got one—they must’ve bought me one. On my first and only trip to Hong Kong, I spent a fair amount of time in the world of Pokémon Red or Silver. For example, I vaguely remember playing for two hours—plausibly beating a couple of gym leaders—at someone’s wedding dinner.

Pokémon as lullaby: During those years, my grandfather had health problems and was occasionally rushed into the hospital. One particularly urgent night, my parents had me stay with a family friend who happened to be a neighbor. I watched Pokémon that night, and the show effectively tucked me to sleep on the family friend’s couch. I felt comforted and reassured by the familiarity of the show and characters. I forget if my parents picked me up late, or if that was the first night I slept on my own.

Pokémon as babysitter: There were a couple of years when my mother picked me up from school and had me sit at a desk in her office while she finished her work. Pokémon kept me occupied; I remember battling a gym leader named Whitney in Pokémon Silver one winter night, trying to make sure Quilava didn’t faint when it battled her Miltank. The Rollout attack was giving me a lot of trouble. It took many tries, and when I finally did it, I saved my game a few times to make sure I wouldn’t need to do it again.

These are the experiences that the stats don’t convey on their own. I could easily have written, “Pokémon gave many young kids their first experiences with trading,” or, “Pokémon video games and TV shows helped millennial children with their loneliness,” and while those statements are true, the stories help convey depth.

These stories were really fun to remember. I hope they’re relatable.

Throughout this process, I discovered some really interesting books: Pokémon Story by Kenji Hatakeyama (in Japanese), Pokémon by Ángel de la Iglesia (in Spanish), and Monster Kids by Daniel Dockery (in English). It’s a sign of Pokémon’s international impact and, dare I say, universality.

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More specifically, as the Earth’s environment changed, the dinosaurs that adapted were the ones that survived. Some species developed in size, smarts, or stamina. Others learned to fly or swim which expanded how much food they could hunt.

While physical evolution happens slowly, it’s a useful metaphor for a person adapting in uncertain times. Both AI and labor market corrections have continued to make career paths that used to seem safe appear riskier.

“Evolve or die,” is a phrase that appears in both 50 Cent’s and Jeezy’s memoirs, for good reason. 

Everything is impermanent. Reality doesn’t care if you agree with it; you either choose to respond to change intentionally, or choose to resist and eventually get swept away by it.

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Small talk, its own form of ice breaker, can help make the rest of the meeting smoother. I’ll jog my memory on what I’ve been up to, and some projects I’m working on that might interest them, or a topic I know we share a mutual interest in. I don’t fixate too much on this; maybe I’ll write down three to five words that remind me of what I want to ask or say. 

Plus, when you talk to interesting people, you’ll probably learn something useful that you didn’t expect to, because they do interesting stuff. This creates space for that. We might talk about what we’ve been reading, or podcasts that have caught our interest, or music we like. It’s energizing to learn about interesting ideas, and also what makes that idea interesting to the person you’re talking to.

Sometimes, it’s very tactical; a coworker once told me that because their hairstylist is very busy, they like to book the next appointment right after their haircut. As simple as it was, I thought it was a great idea, and it has alleviated a lot of frustration for me.

Small talk builds trust and rapport, which can make smoother discussions for the rest of the call and working relationship.

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He didn’t know the answer, of course, and it wasn’t clear things were getting better. 

At the same time, if he told them so bluntly, they would leave feeling an even greater sense of despair. The best answer he could come up with was this:

“Everything is impermanent, even war. It will end some day.”

There are many takeaways from this simple story. Here are three:

Emotions are like seeds. You can choose which ones to water, for yourself and other people. Nhất Hạnh was mindful, and told a story that watered people’s seeds of hope, while still being very honest about the situation. The best reality checks are simple, positive, and hopeful, while acknowledging negativity and accepting inconvenient facts.

When people asked for a prediction of time, Nhất Hạnh was wise not to give them one. It reminds me of Admiral Stockdale, who was captured in the same war, noticing the people who didn’t make it out died of a broken heart; they were constantly hoping to be out soon, and left disappointed.

There is no “happily ever after.” Happy exists, and you can find it in many small moments, however “ever after” does not. Whenever you catch yourself wishing for an escape, or wishing you’ve “made it,” remember that such a destination doesn’t exist. Prepare accordingly, and don’t panic.

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Game designer Shigeru Miyamoto once noticed kids sending text messages to each other on the train; that was fun. When I read that passage, I realized that I also had a really fun game on my phone—the Notes app, where I tap and swipe many of these blog posts out with my thumbs. I had joined the infinite game of blogging.

The best thing I did for my writing was to intentionally approach it in a way that made it fun again; to make it fun first. Fun needed to be a priority. There will always be business to be done, and of course results matter, but it all grinds to a halt when there’s no more fun to be had. It’s on me to infuse practice with deliberate play.

“Without play, only Shit Happens. With play, Serendipity Happens,” David Weinberger’s line comes to mind. In Creative Doing, a prompt calls for you to Make Time to Play, “We already know how to play—to do something for its own sake, to explore, to imagine. It’s just that sometimes we go without it for so long that we may forget. No wonder there are classes to teach us how to relearn this valuable skill that was squished out of us.” 

The best type of game requires effort and intention. It’s fun, and it comes with a thick reward, an intrinsic memory or experience that you can feel proud of for a very long time—maybe even the rest of your life. 

Fun doesn’t have to be short-term. If you know something will cause suffering in the long-term, but feels exciting in the short-term, that’s not fun. Edward Slingerland describes one extreme in Trying Not to Try: the early Greek hedonists saw pleasures like sex, food, and wine as ephemeral—to them, vulgar, unsatisfying, and ephemeral which didn’t make them feel good—and instead found philosophical reflection more fun because they could come back to over and over again.

Fun is what keeps everything moving forward and growing; it’s a key nutrient that feeds the roots and trunk of the tree. Discipline happens in service of fun; it’s what keeps players of games coming back to play.

Defining what’s fun for yourself, and deciding to make hard work fun: that’s the choice and challenge.

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