The Pokémon Company explains why the trading card game has become a free online game.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game has been around for nearly as long as the franchise itself and became the focus of playgrounds the world over in the late 90's and early 00's. The popular game has recently been put online by The Pokémon Company so that everyone can join in.

Speaking to Gamasutra The Pokémon Company's director of online and community management Andrew Finch and consumer marketing director J.C. Smith discuss why they decided to make the game available online for free and how they did it with very little input from Nintendo.

While Nintendo is the publisher of the Pokémon titles and have a large stake in The Pokémon Company it is, in fact, its own separate company and that is why they have released this game online, a strategy not typically adopted by Nintendo themselves. Andrew Finch notes that while Nintendo's consoles can do some great things, and a game was released on the Game Boy in 1998, given the flexible and ever-changing nature of the trading card game, with new packs being released several times a year, they felt online was the way to go.

The Pokémon Company has worked hard to ensure new players could learn how to play the game and participate. Mr. Finch and Mr. Smith discuss how they thoroughly tested their tutorial sections on kids who owned cards but didn't know how to play and they claim it was a great success. This is just one of the numerous decisions that The Pokémon Company has taken to encourage people to play. Speaking about the decision to go online Andrew Finch said:

"Some other online games make you decide paper and digital. We don't want anyone making that choice because we don't think it's a meaningful choice. We think the interesting thing is for people to play Pokémon and to play with people around the world. Sometimes that is online, and sometimes that is face-to-face. Both of those are meaningful experiences."

At the moment Pokémon Trading Card Game Online is completely free, although this may change in the future. Mr. Finch notes that as the game is still in the beta stage they wish to increase "access and awareness and basically general skill with the game", although the title does have a built-in monetising feature called gems, which will allow players to purchase cards and items for their avatar in the future.

For the full interview be sure to check out Gamasutra. If all of this sounds appealing be sure to check out the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online and let us know what you think of it in the comments section below.