“Everyone has played Pokemon, everyone knows what the deal is,” Twitch streamer Cookeeh tells me. “People want to see something different, and Nuzlockes provide that.”
So many people in the Pokemon community know what a Nuzlocke is, but few seem to know exactly where the series’ toughest challenge comes from. The biggest Pokemon YouTubers and Twitch streamers have all done a Nuzlocke run by now – hell, some of them have built entire careers around them. But where did the Nuzlocke begin?
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Back in 2010, student Nick Franco decided to skip studying and play Pokemon Ruby, making up some additional rules for himself along the way: only the first Pokemon encountered on each route could be caught, and if a Pokemon fainted, it was dead forever. He later added a third rule stating that you had to nickname all your Pokemon to strengthen your bond with them. After dabbling with this all-new ruleset for a while, Franco eventually turned the playthrough into a webcomic, and the rest is history – history I was keen to dig up.
“I’d probably hazard a guess that not many people who do it actually know where it came from,” says Twitch streamer Erinus. “It’s such a huge thing. 90 percent of the time, you watch someone playing Pokemon on Twitch, they’re either shiny hunting or they’re doing a Nuzlocke. I found it through Tumblr. However long ago the guy who did it made the comics, that long ago. I haven’t read it recently. I did an interview and went back and found it and thought ‘Wow! This looks very different to how I remember.’” Erinus’ knowledge of the comic is the exception to the rule, however. He’s the only streamer I interviewed who had read it, and admits, “I don’t think of that original comic when I think about the origins of it.”
It’s probably for the best that people don’t know about the original comic. I reread it while I was researching this piece, and unfortunately, it contains quite a lot of homophobic, racist, and misogynistic language. It’s the sort of edgy gamer ‘humour’ that was rife throughout shooter lobbies and any multiplayer game in the late ‘00s, and still persists to this day. It was shitty then, and it’s shitty now. It’s also something that needs to be purged from the gaming community. In September 2017, YouTuber PewDiePie called someone an atrocious slur while live-streaming a game, while Twitch streamer and former Overwatch pro xQc was once fined for being homophobic towards a rival gay player. Erinus is a queer creator, so he is all too familiar with the bigotry that runs rife throughout online communities, especially in Pokemon.
“In my head, what Nuzlocking has become is very removed from that original comic,” Erinus says. “We’re definitely more aware of things like homophobia and casual racism. There’s a lot of it still in the Pokemon community now. If you go into someone streaming on Twitch and they’re not using the LGBT tag, chances are it may be the sort of thing you run into. It’s a minefield, and not the best of communities sometimes.”
Another Twitch streamer, Mahin Kesore, is perplexed when I ask about the comic. “I didn’t even know that was a thing,” he admits. “I couldn’t pinpoint an exact time I first saw the word Nuzlocke, but I remember thinking, ‘What does that word even mean?’ I remember hearing it on YouTube first. YouTube was the place I saw Nuzlockes happen the most. I saw Nuzlockes, randomiser Nuzlockes, egglockes, this locke, that locke.”
Cookeeh’s knowledge was also spotty, but importantly, he did know the history of the /word/ Nuzlocke, not just the playstyle. “I know that it was made by a guy, but I didn’t see [the comic],” he says. “There’s a Nuzleaf that resembles John Locke as a recurring character.” Nuzleaf, John Locke, Nuzlocke. I can’t believe I didn’t put that together myself. John Locke is a character in Lost – and a famous philosopher, although I doubt this Nuzleaf was knocking about with An Essay Concerning Human Understanding under its arm. Anyway, Lost was at peak popularity when the original Nuzlocke began, and Locke’s infamous propensity for doing things the hard way – plus his catchphrase, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do” – was a perfect fit for the most gruelling challenge run in Pokemon history.
Despite the comic’s problematic origins, much of Nuzlocking focuses on community. Nuzlockes are a great way for creators to engage with viewers, and everyone in a Nuzlocke chat knows they have a shared love of Pokemon challenges in common. “In my first attempt we had a Geodude named Tree after a dude [in my chat] named IrishGuyInATree,” Cookeeh tells me. “We had one unfortunate situation where he ended up being poisoned and then one-shot, and I still have a command in my chat that has an emote that looks like a cookie with two arms coming out of the sides of it. It looks like a Geodude and we named it after him.”
As well as creating memorable moments, Nuzlockes are a great way to encourage viewers to invest in your channel, and therefore your community. “I had channel points on, so if someone had enough they could revive a Pokemon, and for even more they could kill a Pokemon,” explains Kesore. “The people you draw to your streams if you’re [streaming] Pokemon are people you can talk to about Pokemon. You can go a bit more into detail about what you think.”
Despite the origins of the Nuzlocke proving controversial, these days it can be a force for good. “The first Nuzlocke stream I did was a charity stream,” says Erinus. “I agreed to [the stream] before I knew what I wanted to do and thought, ‘Shit, how do I incentivise people to actually spend money on charity?’ Pokemon’s a really easy one: donate a fiver, name a Pokemon. With the Nuzlocke rules it’s like, donate 20 quid and bring back a Pokemon or give it an extra life. It was January this year and I was like, ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my channel’. I got to a point where I was like, I’m just going to do what I want. So I started streaming a SoulSilver Nuzlocke and I won. I had a lot of fun with it and that’s what I do on Sundays now. It’s a really community-focused thing. My viewership is twice the size on a Sunday for the Pokemon stuff. It’s definitely much more involved to stream.”
My own experience of streaming a Pokemon Nuzlocke has shown me that it really is harder than it looks. Not just the challenge itself, but regularly interacting with chat, keeping everyone engaged, and making sure you’re talking consistently – seriously, if you ever go onto someone’s stream and they’re silent for more than 30 seconds, the existential dread you avoid by filling your life with noise and entertainment comes flooding back. Fortunately, Nuzlockes create spectacle and drama. There’s a lot on the line, and a single wrong move can mean the end for one of your beloved Pokemon, so there’s always a lot to talk about.
“I could go on about Pokemon for ages,” says Kesore. “One of the biggest struggles with streaming, for me personally, is ‘What am I gonna say?’ – with a Nuzlocke, because I do randomisers, every encounter is a random Pokemon and I guarantee you I’ll have something to say about it.”
As well as die-hard fans who know the difference between EVs and IVs, and what natures affect which stats, you have viewers who just live for the drama of a Nuzlocke. “You have a stronger, almost emotional bond with the Pokemon you’re capturing,” says Cookeeh. “It definitely makes people feel more involved, there’s much more engagement with it. People get really hyped up about this turn-based game that’s fairly slow. And the difficulty is more than enough to keep you entertained as well, so you don’t feel like everyone else is entertained but you’re not. I wanted to maintain having a difficult game to challenge me while revisiting a childhood favourite.”
What’s most incredible about the Nuzlocke challenge is how it’s managed to stray so far from its origins without losing the essence of what makes it fun: the rules. All three streamers here play by the default rules, and even though other creators play by varied guidelines, everyone knows the primary three. “It’s wild that somehow the rules stayed intact but no one knows the origin story that created the ruleset,” says Cookeeh.
While the origins of the Nuzlocke aren’t worth celebrating, the current state of Nuzlocking is. It’s a challenge that is given meaning by the community who choose to take part in it. We watch and play Nuzlockes because we love Pokemon, and we love a challenge – that’s why we all need to do our bit to make the Nuzlocke community a more inclusive and less toxic space. It’s high time we forgot Nuzlocke past and did our best to make Nuzlocke present and future as good as possible by trying to get through our next run without needing viewers to pay for a load of revives. That’s what matters, after all: the community aspect of this illustrious Pokemon ruleset. Even with its murky origins, we can all work together to honour how special it’s become.
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