Articles

Published on September 10th, 2014 | by Crawdaunt

23

Starting a Pokémon Club at Your School

Hey there Nugget Bridge, today’s article is going to be about expanding your local Pokémon scene. I think everyone wishes there were more events nearby, more often, and with better attendance — but that isn’t going to happen overnight. Indeed, a lot of time and effort go into creating a consistent positive experience that people can visit at their leisure.

My goal in writing this article is to share my experiences with starting a University Pokémon Club. In the three years since I started the club, we’ve gone from a small student-attended university club to a thriving weekly league for the video game and card game. So let’s go over what my experience running the club has been. There have been many ups and downs over the years, and I think there’s a lot of experience that others can appreciate. I don’t know the exact recipe for success, but it is my hope that this article can generate discussion to help improve our club, and maybe help start yours!

Some Background

The University of Victoria Pokémon Club was founded in the summer of 2011 after I hosted a Pokémon league event at our local anime convention. We gathered a group together to act as eight Gym Leaders and four Elite Four members. The event was a big success and we realized we had a community that would appreciate a chance to meet up more frequently. We looked into our student society’s club regulations and went through with establishing our club and booking a room to meet in. We were pretty happy as a close-knit group of friends under the guise of a club.

Later on, we found out about the Play! Pokémon weekly league program. We thought it would be awesome to get free swag to give to club members. Additionally, it would encourage Play! Pokémon to host events in our city if we ever became big enough. I became a registered Tournament Organizer (TO) through applying on Pokemon.com, and our league application was approved. We were an official league!

In pursuit of becoming a bigger league that had a chance to host a premier event like a City Championships (TCG), I started a movement to advertise our club to the community at large. I went around to local card/game shops and asked if I could put a poster in their window. Most places were happy to put our poster up for a couple weeks at least. Using this advertising, we managed to bring some kids and others in from around the area. As a university club and registered league, we also had kids find out about our league via pokemon.com, or parents find out by visiting/working at the university. The only major advertising on campus I do nowadays is the club advertisement days at the beginning of the semester and setting my StreetPass message to “FacebookUVicPkMn.” StreetPass is a more valuable tool than you might think!

And that’s about where we stand today. We’re a league that runs every week and that league is run by the UVic Pokémon Club!

What We Do & What We Have Done

Before becoming a weekly league, our weekly activities usually just involved hanging out and playing games. We’d have fun days sometimes. Here’s a list of some of the more memorable fun days we’ve put on:

At our university, clubs get a budget each semester to put on club events and we’ve done fundraising ventures like selling booster packs at club to help pay for some of the event materials (e.g. printing costs). Selling t-shirts or pins is another great way to raise funds. We are also friends with the UVic Anime Club, who is gracious enough to lend us a projector for movie nights.

What Has Worked Really Well

Having a weekly league has worked really well for having consistent attendance, albeit from a non-student crowd. We get a lot of kids and teens from the surrounding area attending every week. I think this is great for building a Pokémon community in Victoria, but maybe not the best aim for a university club.

Fun days are always positively received. Pokémon is light-hearted childhood nostalgia for a lot of people. Very few university students are interested in the competitive scene and don’t have much to do on days where nothing special is going on. Having regular fun days keeps people coming even if they aren’t competitive.

I’d say the fun days that work out best for us in terms of “effort in : reward out” would be movie nights, finger painting, pumpkin carving and fun format tournaments. Movie nights can be anything from Pokémon episodes to movies to OVAs (like the Pokémon Origins series). Finger painting is just a fun thing to do that people should really do more often. All it takes is a trip to the dollar store to get some poster-board and paints. This also results in a poster you can proudly display to advertise your club! Win-win! Pumpkin carving is just a neat idea and everyone is looking for an excuse to carve a Pokémon pumpkin. The biggest concern is cleanliness, so it’s a good idea to bring spare tools, newspaper, and plastic bags for garbage. Lastly, fun format tournaments are easy to approach and have a lower skill cap so they aren’t as daunting to get into.

For some examples of fun formats we’ve tried, we’ve done:

  • Challenge Cup (tell everyone to bring their own computers)
  • Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors (Click here for rules!)
  • Battle Spot Special formats (e.g. Eeveelutions only)

What I’ve Found Is More Trouble Than It’s Worth

As much fun as the scavenger hunts are, the cost of printing cool cards on card stock (double sided in colour) is pretty expensive. And you need to print enough cards to hide that people won’t find them all in the first five minutes. The event cost runs something around $30 when I do it and it only entertains for about a half hour. It also requires you to print and cut the cards in advance, and then hide all the cards ~1 hour before the event. I would still run another one, but this is not something I could recommend as a frequent event (at least how we run it).

Clay sculptures was an event put on by a sculptor friend who donated clay for cheaper. Again, I think this is a super fun event, but without someone who has loads of coloured clay they can bring by, it’s hard to justify the cost of purchasing blocks of every colour of clay for a once-a-year thing. We reimbursed my friend for the clay by writing up an invoice for the approximate cost of the clay we ended up using.

What I Wish We Did Better or More

Fun days as a whole. This is more a problem with myself being busy with a Masters degree than a failure of any concept. It’s really important that events be run frequently to make sure people don’t lose interest. I also think we could do a much better job of supporting the singles format for people who are just learning about the competitive scene. Fun formats are one way of doing this, but I’m sure people who play by singles-ladder rules would appreciate having somewhere in-person to practice. I think it would also go a long way in keeping people interested, as not everyone is able/wants to make the the jump to Standard. By only hosting serious tournaments in doubles, I think we might leave a portion of our potential member base disinterested.

I also think that the weekly league is great for the Victoria Pokémon community, but not that good for the UVic Pokémon community. The kids that show up at weekly league tend to scare off new members who were looking for a relaxing night to chill. I’m currently toying with an idea to split the club into two entities: One will be the “Nintendo Club” and the second will be the weekly Pokémon League, hosted by the Nintendo Club. By giving them different titles, it’s easier to get the message across to parents that one is for everyone and the other is intended to be students-only.

Lastly, club leadership is a big problem right now. University clubs are ephemeral things. People graduate and move on, and someone else needs to pick up the reigns and carry the club into the new year. I’ve been running the club for three years now (moving onto four), and the only reason I’ve been able to do so is because I’m doing a Masters at the same university as my undergrad. Generally, a healthy leadership turnaround for a university club is to have a new leader every two years. But finding someone willing to take on that responsibility is often a challenge. Moreover, finding someone you think is right for the role is another problem altogether. I’ll talk about solutions for this a bit later, but I’m still at the chalkboard for a good idea for this one.

What I Try To Keep In Mind

As far as I can tell, the recipe for a successful club or community is this:

  • Regular and consistent events
  • Ample events with a broad target audience
  • Prizes for tournaments (even if it means charging $1 attendance)
  • A healthy community is open to new members

It’s important to not only host events regularly, but do so at the same time on the same day. If you’re having trouble booking a room for instance, it’s important to keep things as people expect them to be. Many students plan their semester’s schedule around attending clubs, so you can’t just switch days or times up without giving people a lot of notice. Otherwise, you’re going to lose half your attendance. The same goes for weekly leagues.

I can’t stress enough how important fun days are. If your goal is to build a competitive community, you need to understand the population pyramid of such a community. The base of any large community is built from the casuals-up. It’s important for the energy in the room and the vibe that the club gives off; there should be lots of people having a good time. Competitive games aren’t for everyone, but Pokémon can be. And if people stick around long enough, sooner or later they get their feet wet in the competitive scene. Sometimes they jump back out of the water immediately, but other times they’ll wade a little deeper. It’s important to not lose these people before they ever get the chance to try things out! And even more important is to make them feel welcome even if they’ve decided competitive Pokemon isn’t for them. Groups like this are built from word-of-mouth, and that means you’re going to need mouths to spread the word.

Tournaments are fun ways to encourage people to try out the competitive aspect of the game; they don’t have to be a competitive format. Having prizes for tournaments is very important. These can be little toys like Pokémon Kids, but it’s important that people come away with something. That little $2 prize is a trophy that sits on their shelf saying “remember how much fun this was?” I think it’s important to hand out little prizes randomly to non-winners as well, for the same reason. Everyone should remember a tournament fondly, no matter how they placed. For the random prizes, we give out league promos which helps keep our costs down.

One of the biggest challenges with running a club around Pokémon is that your member base can be more socially awkward than the average person (I’m generalizing). A lot of people have a tougher time making friends because they have a bunch of niche, introverted hobbies with little in-person interaction; Pokemon can be like this. There are groups of friends that are happy to come together and they keep each other entertained and have a good time. But really keep in mind: for university groups, first-years have often moved across the country and don’t have (m)any friends in their new city. University clubs offer a social experience where people can meet and greet. As a leader, you have to make a conscious effort to introduce yourself to anyone new, explain how it works, and become a friend. At the same time, it’s good to encourage members to meet new people. This can be as simple as saying “Hey, I think ____ is looking for a game, would you be interested?” Tournaments and fun days also offer a chance for people to meet and greet. It’s important to help shy individuals become part of the community.

Plans For The Future

  • Leadership
  • Splitting of the “club” and the “league” and incorporating into a larger community
  • Connecting with other universities

First and foremost, our leadership scheme needs to change. I’ve been running it as a monarchy because I’m treating my job as a 1-person job, when it really isn’t. I’ve generally asked a friend to help with leadership duties, but this has completely avoided the normal 2-year turnover we should have strived for, and now I’m left scrambling for a new league leader and a new club president. I’m very thankful that a friend (that’s you Ben!) has stepped in and expressed interest in running the club. But by running our weekly league and inviting kids to attend, we’ve really reduced our student attendance. This makes the club aspects of our… club… kind of difficult. For instance, we don’t have many go-to people to sit at our booth during the Club Advertisement days. We also have a very small group of people to potentially take over the club.

Moving forward, I think I’m going to take a page from our local Anime Club which I help with. At the first meeting of every semester, they vote on Club deputies. These deputies don’t really have much of a leadership role, but they do highlight people who are willing to help out. They also help deputies recognize themselves as someone who can take an active role in helping the club. Jokingly, I describe them when describing the positions as people who can help run the club in a pinch, and maybe bring cookies once. This has the positive side-effect of getting free cookies sometimes! Candidates would then give a 30 second speech about why you should elect them, and then we do a “face down thumbs up” vote. The club would also then (ideally) elect a vice president and president. This creates a stable leadership group with potential up-and-comers who would be more comfortable stepping into the role in the future.

The only issue with this system is that you need an appreciable student attendance in the first place. I think if attendance is low (~10), just asking for a couple of deputies to nominate themselves is appropriate. As the leader, you can talk to people on the side about stepping up into a club president role later. However, if you get a larger group of students together (~20), then adding in presidential elections would be good. Presidential candidates should also hopefully have expressed interest prior to the voting night, and maybe have been a deputy for one semester.

I’ve also been considering splitting our Pokemon club into two entities: the “Nintendo Club” and the weekly “Pokemon League.” The big advantage of this is to regain a student-based club. Community members would be welcome, but by re-branding the club as a separate entity from our weekly league, it would define a time that’s for everyone, and a time that’s for students/older folks. I really really love having the weekly league and I don’t want to see it go, but at the same time, we have to start recruiting more student members and the kids that attend league aren’t helping. If we were a local games shop, it’d be a different story; but we’re not.

The additional advantage of this approach is that we would be able to schedule our club meetings at the same time as other related clubs like the UVic Smash Bros. Club and the UVic Anime Club. These communities have a large overlap of potential member bases, and people often appreciate the chance to attend multiple clubs on their one free night a week. It also helps people organize their schedules, as they don’t have to choose between two clubs that interest them. This would expose members of the other clubs to our group, and members of our group to the larger UVic club community. The problem with this has been the kids, and the fact that other UVic clubs are not an all-ages atmosphere. Another reason for splitting into two entities.

Lastly, there have been grassroots efforts to unite university clubs, but I don’t know of any that ever got off the ground. I think it would be amazing to have a competitive circuit with competition between universities, but before a club can really put together a team of VGCers, it needs the base membership. I think there’s a lot of promise in an organization like the National Collegiate Pokémon Association, but I think the bar was set way too high when everyone was really just taking their first baby steps. For anyone that is reading this article and has a university or high school Pokémon club, or is now interested in starting one, I’d love to propose an annual tournament as a starting point. I think the details for such an event are best left to the forums for discussion. All I can say is we could totally order a plaque to ship to the winning school as a point of pride.

In Closing

So, there you have it. This has been an in-depth view of my experience running the UVic Pokémon Club. Hopefully I’ve been able to offer insight you can take and use for running your own club. No two areas are the same, and I don’t think you can approach things exactly the same from all four corners of the globe, but hopefully I’ve provided some ideas you can take on board or sparked new ideas you can share with me!

My main goal in posting this article is to try and generate discussion about how people can get into running clubs. So hopefully everyone doesn’t leave it here. I really look forward to hearing about all the neat ideas people have, and feedback they can offer, in the forums.


About the Author

started playing VGC off-and-on in 2011, but only really jumped into competitive play starting in 2014. He founded and runs the University of Victoria Pokemon Club and weekly league, and hosts Premier Challenges in Victoria BC. He also writes for the blog http://www.vgcwithhats.com/



23 Responses to Starting a Pokémon Club at Your School

  1. Firestorm says:

    Thanks for writing this so quickly after I suggested it Mark! Hopefully this can help some of you as the new school year begins. Though he didn’t really cover it too much, the UVic Pokémon Club is not only likely one of the most successful Pokémon clubs around, but Victoria has produced a ridiculous number of top level players and I think the environment that Mark has cultivated in the area is a big part of that. Even though their closest Premiere events are a ferry ride and 3+ hours away, Victoria had 1 Junior in VGC qualify qualify for Worlds this year as well as 2 Masters and 2 Seniors in TCG. In fact, they even have a Senior Division TCG World Championship title and multiple Top 32s in TCG Masters to their name. Their Junior Top 4’d at US Nationals this year. This is a city on an island off the coast of Vancouver with a population of 80,000 people. It’s good to listen to his advice!

  2. shinryu says:

    I remember NAU had a Pokemon club, met some of them. They got the school to pay for their travel expenses to regionals, so I always thought that was pretty sweet.

  3. sohaib says:

    Thanks for the article , I was thinking of making a pokemon club in my college but didn’t have much knowledge on how to do it.

  4. Bopper says:

    I’m currently in leadership for the first year pokemon club here at Texas Tech. So far it’s been great, this info will be very very helpful, thanks for posting this!

  5. 13ulbasaur says:

    neeeerds.
     
    Oh god I’ll get beaten up if I do this in my school. I mean I’m a senior now, and it sounds really fun, but I’m still short af. JUNIORS PLEASE. EMBRACE.
     
    oh wait i’m in new zealand clubs don’t really exist in my school :B

  6. Cipher says:

    This is cool.  I checked league presence in the town I just moved out to for grad school, but they seem to only or primarily play the trading card game.  There’s another one about ten minutes out, but it seems to be the same.
     
    I’d love a little VGC community to practice with locally, but oh well.

  7. Cinaclov says:

    Having run an anime society at Uni for the last two years (with lots of bias toward Pokémon events from me XD) I have to say this is all really good advice for pretty much any club or society. There’s lots of stuff I could point out in particular or add my own experiences inorder to emphasise a point you’ve made but there’s not any real need, it’s pretty much all there in the article.

    I think it is worth re-stating the importance in not pushing the competetive side so much however. As part of my society we had gaming nights every couple of months and once in each of my years I decided it’d be good to try a Pokémon evening, consisting of one of the movies and a tournament. The first year I went all out with it; it was going to be on Battle Revolution (5th gen had only just been released so 4th gen was still more or less current), I wrote up a full VGC style list of rules and there seemed to be lots of interest on the Facebook event (at least 10 definites, lots of maybes). Come the actual day 5 people showed and only 1 bought their DS, the rest saying they just wanted to watch. I tried it again in my second year but less prescribed (using Stadium and Stadium 2 so people could use rentals) and actual battles were still dropped in the end in favour of mini-games.

    What I guess I’m saying is be aware that competetive battling can seem a bit daunting and people might just be wanting to have fun; be open to that. From my experience I’d say the most important thing is not to push things like that too heavily, especially at first.

    On an aside. that’s some really good ideas for things to do there, I wish I’d thought of soe of those during my time running things. Thanks for writing this 🙂

  8. Crawdaunt says:

    This is cool.  I checked league presence in the town I just moved out to for grad school, but they seem to only or primarily play the trading card game.  There’s another one about ten minutes out, but it seems to be the same.
     
    I’d love a little VGC community to practice with locally, but oh well.
     
    But I’m a ne’er-do-well grad student now and would totally join a Pokemon club if one popped up for the actual video-game.  And I’d still look cool doing it.

    You know what, the best approach there (if you don’t have time to run things yourself) is to ask a friend to go with you to one of those leagues. If you guys go and play DS, I’m sure you’d be welcome. And if you bring a friend, you won’t be alone. What’s more, you’ll be a presence for anyone else who shows up and wants to play DS.

    I think the thing that hurts the most is when 5 people show up wanting to play a game, but they only come once and they never meet each other. And if they all showed up on the same week, they’d have a blast. But because they only came once, they never got the chance to find out that there were other people looking for a game.

  9. Gh3ttolizard says:

    Ball State University in Muncie, IN actually has a Pokemon Club. Founded in 2012, we officially became a university club in 2013. We are dedicated to bringing fans of the franchise together to join in a fun and friendly environment. On average we have about 50 students attend our weekly meetings which last about 3 hours. We would be very open to having university competitions! If you would like to contact us please visit the following: cms.bsu.edu/campuslife/studentlife/studentorgs/pride-guide/browse/p/pokemon-trainers-union

  10. Scott says:

    Appreciate the write-up here. I get asked about this by people once in a while and never have very good advice because I didn’t do this in either HS or college, so it’ll be nice to have something to point people to.

  11. Cipher says:

    You know what, the best approach there (if you don’t have time to run things yourself) is to ask a friend to go with you to one of those leagues. If you guys go and play DS, I’m sure you’d be welcome. And if you bring a friend, you won’t be alone. What’s more, you’ll be a presence for anyone else who shows up and wants to play DS.

    I think the thing that hurts the most is when 5 people show up wanting to play a game, but they only come once and they never meet each other. And if they all showed up on the same week, they’d have a blast. But because they only came once, they never got the chance to find out that there were other people looking for a game the week before or the week after.

     
    I dig that idea.  The trick is going to be finding another competitive Pokemon player here first.   That said, I’m sure they’re around; just none in my immediate circle.

  12. Thundershock1234 says:

    I have a club at my school called “Asian Bridges” (don’t ask why it’s called that. I didn’t come up with the name) and we have been trying to make a pokemon tournament for a long time. This has really helped! (Just need to find people who are geeky enough lol )

  13. Bullados says:

    Hey Crawdaunt,

    Thanks a ton for posting this! There’s really a ton of excellent advice here, not just for University-run communities, but for the general community as well. Most-to-all of the suggestions here could probably be used in a good number of venues and arenas, and would go a long way towards helping the community in general grow and become more cohesive.

    I do have a question, though, about how you run your TPCi-sponsored League. In my area, there’s also a University Pokemon Club, and I’ve been wanting to sign them up for an official TPCi League for a while now. However, they have the usual University problems with the type of arrangement that TPCi usually prefers. Namely, that the leadership tends to leave the area after a relatively short amount of time, that the Club doesn’t meet in the summer, and that the exact venue can tend to move around campus once a semester. How did you manage to reconcile some of these difficulties with TPCi and manage to run a successful League and Club?

    Thanks for your help!

    ~Bullados

  14. Tmac says:

    Great article! I was lucky enough to have a thriving Pokémon organization at my school when I arrived, but leadership has transitioned this year due to people graduating, and now I’m actively seeking ways to retain members and keep the club running smoothly. Regularly held, accessible events definitely seem to be the best way to keep people entertained. Even just bringing in an N64 for some Stadium minigames (with prizes, of course!) kept the meeting lively and exciting for everyone. I was also glad to see the more competitive players grouping up with their handhelds, trading advice and discussing whatever metagames they were playing in. Many of them seemed to be playing Smogon formats exclusively, so my next challenge is going to be converting them so we can get more people traveling with us…

  15. Crawdaunt says:

    Hey Crawdaunt,

    Thanks a ton for posting this! There’s really a ton of excellent advice here, not just for University-run communities, but for the general community as well. Most-to-all of the suggestions here could probably be used in a good number of venues and arenas, and would go a long way towards helping the community in general grow and become more cohesive.

    I do have a question, though, about how you run your TPCi-sponsored League. In my area, there’s also a University Pokemon Club, and I’ve been wanting to sign them up for an official TPCi League for a while now. However, they have the usual University problems with the type of arrangement that TPCi usually prefers. Namely, that the leadership tends to leave the area after a relatively short amount of time, that the Club doesn’t meet in the summer, and that the exact venue can tend to move around campus once a semester. How did you manage to reconcile some of these difficulties with TPCi and manage to run a successful League and Club?

    Thanks for your help!

    ~Bullados

    Thanks Bullados :)
     
    To be honest, I haven’t had the same issues with TPCi; they just approved our league when we applied. We have actually jumped around a little bit, but I’m currently seeking a more permanent building. The venue address is listed as the university general address (3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria BC). Here’s our league page: External
     
    This address doesn’t actually contain specific info on the building we’re in, and that means people that find us through pokemon.com are compelled to contact us by email, phone or through social media before showing up. I’ve had many an amusing phone call with shy 8 year olds asking about the club :P
     
    The best way to reconcile jumping around campus is to try and jump around only within a building if possible. Same building, different room isn’t a big deal. If you’re jumping all over campus, it’s important to advertise in the first couple weeks that the location has changed by putting up signs at the old room and lots of signs directing to the new room within the building. We’re going to be sharing space with the UVic Smash Bros. club and the UVic Magic club, and sharing a building with the Anime club in the near future. They have been operating out of the same building for the last few years without issue, but occasionally change rooms. By grouping with other clubs, we prevent competition for room bookings and get to be part of a bigger community.
     
    We do meet over the summer. I live in Victoria, and have been able to host the league throughout. During exam periods, the league does close down for a couple weeks to a month, but we handle this both by registering our play times on pokemon.com, and by advertising to our community through email lists and our facebook group. I send out an update email every week one day before club. We let people know that things are running as normal, or if there is anything going on. 
     
    The change of leadership would be quite troubling… if I hadn’t been around so long. I think the best way to reconcile this is to have the club politics run by students, but the league run by a community member. If a parent is willing to step in, or any student that lives there permanently, then they are optimal league leaders. That is the approach I’m taking in splitting up my duties as we prepare for my eventual moving-on. But as long as I live in the city, I’ll continue to act as TO and try to take an active part in the league.

  16. Crawdaunt says:

    Great article! I was lucky enough to have a thriving Pokémon organization at my school when I arrived, but leadership has transitioned this year due to people graduating, and now I’m actively seeking ways to retain members and keep the club running smoothly. Regularly held, accessible events definitely seem to be the best way to keep people entertained. Even just bringing in an N64 for some Stadium minigames (with prizes, of course!) kept the meeting lively and exciting for everyone. I was also glad to see the more competitive players grouping up with their handhelds, trading advice and discussing whatever metagames they were playing in. Many of them seemed to be playing Smogon formats exclusively, so my next challenge is going to be converting them so we can get more people traveling with us…

    Mhm… It’s tough to get people to play VGC when they’re used to singles. I think holding fun-format tournaments and mixing VGC into that would be one way to go about it. Alternatively, you could use something like the National Collegiate Pokemon Association and some sort of annual tournament (cough cough) as motivation to learn VGC to play against other clubs. We also use our fundraising or club funding to sponsor gas costs for travelling to events sometimes. By saying you’ll sponsor VGC trips, people are a bit more motivated to learn the format.
     
    But really, you can’t force this sort of thing. People will try VGC if they want to. Offering prizes for tournaments and rewards are a good way, but you can’t just ignore the formats other people play. Essentially, make everyone and every format feel like they’re treated equally. But point out that the official format is VGC, and that’s the format big tournaments are played in.

  17. zandodak says:

    Awesome idea, and great timing, too! Might want to make one of these at my high school.

  18. Enigne says:

    Thank you so much for this! I’m starting a Pokemon club this year, and I was just noting that there was an unfortunate lack of advice on this about two days before this was published. Quite a wonderful article to have on site!

  19. ChazBazz says:

    If anybody is in the Seattle Area there is a Pokemon club that meets every Friday at the University of Washington. http://students.washington.edu/pkmn/wordpress/

  20. Scott says:

    Specifically targeted toward StarCraft rather than Pokemon and High School, but this showed up in my Twitter feed today and might also have some more helpful advice for aspiring club founders External

  21. Crawdaunt says:

    That is an awesome article Scott! The dynamic is certainly a bit different with it being a High School club, but that’s a great resource.

    I’d add that for anyone reading that article, as they point out: 
     

    When a student joins something like the chess club, it’s obvious that he’s there to play against some fellow avid chess players.

    That’s a very very relevant point. They emphasize the 3 cornerstones of a club being the gaming, social and competitive aspects. But with a game where the main form of play is vs. human opponents, as in e-sports like Starcraft 2 or LoL, you’re only getting gamers walking through your doors. I’d argue that Pokemon intends on having both extremely casual appeal while not completely ignoring a competitive side. As such, the community dynamic tends to function a bit differently in Pokemon. I feel like Pokemon TCG players better fit the dynamic they depict, but the video game as a medium allows for a far greater diversity of casual-competitive.

  22. Crawdaunt says:

    I just had a great suggestion for a fun day sent to me. “Card trading day.” This could even just be a big ol’ “trading day” involving VG mons as well, but cards make more sense.
     
    Essentially, tons of people don’t want to play the game but collect cards. But they don’t have a place to meet up or any way to meet other collectors. Though you can always say “come by and see who’s interested,” very rarely is there anything for anyone to do. By organizing it as an event, it tells any collectors out there “if you come on this exact day, there’ll be plenty of fun to be had.” So overall a great idea. No real work involved, just a good fun event that almost anyone can appreciate.

  23. GuardianDiancie says:

    I wish someone would start a Pokemon Club at my college. I only know of one other girl who loves Pokemon as much as I do, tho, I doubt there are more on the campus. If there is they must be hiding there secret “I Love Pokemon”

    I got picked on in High School for loving Pokemon by a teacher and a few students. Only club I know has a club that Pokemon fans can join is the “anime club”. Tried asking my sister to make me join it and she said I might get side tracked by the group and fail course work

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