McDonald’s McNuggets are the reason why we have PC-level events in VGC

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McDonald’s McNuggets are the reason why we have PC level events in VGC by TokenFemaleVGC

If you ask any Pokemon player who plays either the TCG or VGC who they think The Pokemon Company loves more, ten out of ten times people will tell you big daddy Pikachu loves their TCG children more than their VGC children. But what if I told you there was a time when TPCi thought about us even less a decade ago than they do today?

Pre-2014, Pokemon VGC had roughly only ten to twenty sanctioned events a year. Not just in North America, we are talking worldwide. Most of these events were held on day two at regionals, oftentimes added as an afterthought to actual VGC players, mostly with the idea it would give TCG players something to do after they whiffed out of their events on day one…  It was a reason to come back on Sunday.

You might wonder why this was the case. To put this simply, TPCi did not think people would show up for VGC events without large prizing (such as a game system, Pokemon TCG booster packs, etc.). The higher-ups thought that since all their modern Pokemon online games were enabled for battles, the video game players would be content with just grinding the ladder or just playing with their friends over wifi. It never really crossed their minds that VGC players wanted smaller, more local, sanctioned events comparable to their TCG counterparts.

But the VGC players craved to play more games, they craved it so much that they would show up for grassroots events to play for Chicken McNuggets. 

Wait, what?

Let me explain how that all started. 

The city of Norwalk, which is pretty much right smack in the middle of Los Angeles County, hosted two large and thriving Play! Pokemon leagues every Monday night. Both of these Monday leagues were hosted by Leo Ortiz and Eddy Gutierrez. The first Play! Pokemon League was at a local Norwalk card shop, and the other one was held at the McDonalds down the street from the store for all the players who wanted to keep playing after the card shop closed for the day. During the 2013 season, TCG players had grown tired of and annoyed by whichever Black and White era decks they were playing (like RayEel, Darkrai or whatever deck allowed players to jam in 4 of Hypnotoxic lasers, Pokemon Catchers before it required a coin flip, Crushing and Enhanced Hammers). This annoyance with a stale meta, lead these late-night TCG warriors to whip out their Nintendo DS and challenge each other in games where the loser would have to buy food from the hosting McDonalds as the prize. This novelty actually got more people to bring their DS to their TCG league and that turned into what players called the Nugget Cup.

The first Nugget Cup, named after both the food and the Nugget Bridge in the Kanto region, was held on November 10th, 2013, with 12 players showing up.  It had a grand prize of…10 McNuggets which was awarded to the champion Sean Poestkoke.

The second Nugget Cup, held on November 26th, 2013 (a rare Tuesday league event), met with 17 players.  The grand prize, double in size from Nugget Cup 1, was 20 McNuggets. Sean Poestkoke was able to protect his crown as the reigning champion of the Nugget Cup.

The third Nugget Cup took it up a notch compared to the first two events. First of all, we had an“official” flier.

With 22 players showing up for the processed chicken goodness, it was the largest one yet. Sean Poestkoke took first place YET again, with a nugget count of 60 to his name, this man had a hunger that could not be stopped.

So pretty much every single week in November and December of 2013 and January of 2014, Nugget Cups were being held, with more people coming each week to get in on the VGC and nugget-winning fun.  The VGC players were hyped to play anything they could get their hands on.

January of 2014 was Long Beach 2014 Regionals, the largest VGC event ever held before, with approximately 600~ players across all age groups.  As luck would have it, Leo Ortiz was working that event as staff and was able to tell the tales of the Nugget Cups to one of the head judges, Kim Cary, and event organizer Karl Batdorff (who was also the head organizer of West coast regionals and state level events), and other TPCi people.

Leo’s stories of McNuggets drawing in all these VGC players blew these staff members' minds. TPCi never would have thought that people would show up to video game events without legit prizing.  After hearing the Nugget Cup stories, TPCi decided to encourage a small selection of higher-level TO to run larger VGC side events at Pokemon States. Kim Cary who was not just a head judge, but a prominent tournament organizer for the Southern California area, ran the largest one of these trial VGC side events at 2014 California States at Thunder Studios, which got over 50 players! Other TOs also got very favorable turn outs at their States events between the trial period of late January thru March of 2014.

Due to the hard work of the TOs during the State level trial period, this allowed TPCi to allow a much larger group of 60 selected TOs to enter the pilot program to run the very first SANCTIONED PREMIER CHALLENGES during April-June 2014. These were not point-awarding events, just officially sanctioned events, something we never had before.

Because of all the TO’s hard work and the consistent strong player presence during the spring 2014 VGC pilot program, we finally got points awarded at sanctioned events below the Regional level starting in the fall of 2014. To make things even better, the first CP awarding Premier Challenge in California was of course held in that same Norwalk’s McDonalds where it all started.

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