Introduction

After 1 year since our inception, we’ve brought forth a plethora of content to the VGC Competitive Community, and I’d like to do a comparative introspective towards our initial goals from our first long-form article, “Why DevonCorp?”

Hello, my name is Ryan B Hebert, founder and editor of DevonCorp. Alongside an incredibly talented, ever-growing staff, I have the pleasure to bring you the next iteration of written VGC Competitive Community content. 

With DevonCorp in our initial sights, I set forth looking back on what came before as a way to create a future road map to progress DevonCorp to a site that would give off a presence of legitimacy and familiarity to readers new and old. Right below this, I go into great detail reminiscing about Nugget Bridge and Trainer Tower, two former behemoths in the community well-known by all that took part in their success. These amazing resources were not instantly popular, but rather, had time to mature themselves to a status that many players would strive to be a part of. I’ll talk a bit later about the standards that these sites would hold for themselves, and how that relates to who can and cannot publish pieces for the community. On our side of things, we stuck to our word on creating a place for anyone to share their VGC voice, stories, and ideas. This led to quite a bit of extra editing time on my part, as well as Marcoangelo’s, one of our lead editors at DevonCorp. We hope that if you were to ask anyone who wrote with us, they would say we worked with them until everyone felt their piece was at a high enough bar to come off as a professional and well-written piece to be extremely proud of and to show off. We will continue to support anyone who desires to write, even if we have to create 10+ different drafts to get to the final product, my team and I are passionate enough to see your piece through to the grand result.

Past iterations of this type of community include the likes of TrainerTower and Nugget Bridge. These communities gained passionate followings of players young and old, learning, devising, sharing, and creating spaces for the evolution of what we know VGC to be today. If not for these early communities bringing some of the brightest talents together before their heyday, who knows what our competitive scene today would be like? Founding a new place for folks to share teams, evaluate metagames, interview players, discover new gaming philosophies, and more is what I felt is missing from the current resources available to players new and experienced.  

I feel as though some of you may have some questions about the project. 

Let’s talk about them!

I’m happy to say we have founded a new place for folks to share teams, talk about metagames, interview players, talk about different player mentalities, regional/war story reports, team breakdowns, grassroots event information, and more. We’ve not only recreated what folks have done in the past, but I think we’ve been on a path to revolutionizing different aspects of these creative pieces as well. For example, keeping an open mind and critiquing different aspects of a regional report has led us to think that maybe a few stand-out Swiss rounds are more exciting reading material for our audience rather than breaking down 13-14 Swiss rounds total. Writers have the freedom to tailor their reports to their liking, we also provide templates for folks looking to get a step up beyond an empty Word document staring them down on their desktop or phone. The looming nature of “starting” a report can be daunting for some, and our templates proved extremely helpful for many players and writers alike. Feel free to reach out to me on X or Discord (RyanPbHebert) to have access to those templates!

Why the name “DevonCorp”?

Our original name for this project has still stuck, so far! We noticed a couple of months after our inception that a PVP-focused Pokemon Go league had started using DevonCorporation as their new name after the decline of one of the former community PoGo PVP organizations. They use .gg in their URL and X account. While they initially grew in size, we saw their growth plateau around 650~ followers on X. In time, I am confident of our continued rise to become the top result under this name. Otherwise, we’ll be looking to rebrand ourselves if needed. For now, we’ll be sticking with DevonCorpPress for the foreseeable future.

The name comes from the Devon Corporation in Rustboro City! Known for making many things in the region as well as reviving fossils. What better way to bring back an amazing part of the VGC community than with the return of written VGC content?

Why create DevonCorp?

We’ve seen a resurgence of written VGC competitive content geared towards newer and experienced players from content creators and players in the community. Individuals may have their own blogs and in the case of VGC Corner, Brady Smith, their wealth of expertise and knowledge shared on X brings a bit of a following, clout, as well as new paid opportunities for the knowledge shared such as branded “How To…Guides” and training programs to help players on their competitive journeys! Other writers like Aaron Traylor have their own blogs on Medium, or some prefer to simply use a Google document that is shared via a link.

DevonCorp has been a big part in pushing this resurgence, alongside other community resources putting out a piece here and there from time to time. We have also extended open invites to any writers who have posted elsewhere to archive their work on DevonCorp. If you’re looking for that boost in followers on X, or maybe you want to initially promote your own blog, we’ll be here when you’re ready to share with us and expand your viewership even more with our readers. Speaking of viewership and numbers, I think it would be helpful to remind folks to be wary of X’s use of “Impressions” versus readers truly taking in the content. While a post on X may have been seen 20,000+ times or more, it doesn’t always mean folks necessarily took the time to click on the article and read it. The analytical capabilities of DevonCorp’s website allow us to not only see who views our content, but we can see from where, for how long, and if that article led to further exploration of DevonCorp as a whole. My favorite statistic is the average time spent on a page. You can truly see if readers are taking their time on your piece as the average times on long-form pieces soar to 8+ minutes and more!

A note on monetization: DevonCorp added Google Adsense to our site around April/May of 2024. This was not done as a means to profit off of work but to merely help support the future of the site itself. The site runs about ~$35 monthly, not including paying for the domain name as well. I will continue to cover these costs as we continue to grow, and I hope that one day, our ad revenue will support the site and the writers on it. As stated in the past, when we reach a point of sharing ad revenue with authors, we’re going to be more than happy to do so, but that will require even greater growth beyond what we’ve seen in our first year.

Hopping back to this section’s topic, we wanted to create a community resource for anyone who was passionate enough to put in the effort to write up a piece for DevonCorp. I’m proud to say, as mentioned previously, that we have stuck by this commitment. Where others in the past may have said no, or lacked the courage to do so, we at DevonCorp believe in our mission to provide everyone with a voice who wants to speak their VGC experience into existence, a platform to do so. We believe in going the extra mile to work with newer writers to make sure their thoughts and voices are heard.

If you’re reading this and feel like DevonCorp isn’t a place where you think your work wouldn’t be accepted, DM me on X or Discord, and let’s make your dreams of writing with us come true. It was shocking to me to hear this year in our early stages that some players had thought their work would not be “good enough” for our site, and I want to assure everyone that that is not the case. When you have the passion to create, we leap at the chance to help bring forth the best version of your work for the entire community to read.

With the first VGC season of Scarlet and Violet almost complete, I feel a lack of written competitive content geared toward players new and old. I had previously wanted to be a part of the writing staff of TrainerTower back in 2019. I spent countless hours researching, writing, editing, and revising my work on specific Pokemon, Regional previews, and more. Initially, I was told that I was welcome to begin working on writing with them. Days, weeks, and months later of passionate writing, I would be met with ghosting and eventually denial from the main editors claiming that I was not qualified enough to be given a place to share my voice. I felt that if someone had taken the time and put in the work to create a masterful article or blog, why not give them a chance to have their voice heard? Surely, the editors could work with anyone to be sure their article was up to the quality needed for the site? In fact, editors would frequently give me notes, I’d go back to revise, and 3-5 times later, I’d hear nothing after crafting what I felt was content up to par with their expectations. I don’t know why they decided to toy around with me and didn’t simply tell me no from the very beginning. 

I’ve created DevonCorp as a place for anyone, of any skill level, to share their voice. From a team breakdown to the latest grassroots tour to an interview with the newest VGC World Champion, I hope to see you share your VGC passion on DevonCorp.

Why present written work?

A Podcast? Short-form content? YouTube videos? Will DevonCorp expand into other areas of multi-media content? A tough question with an even harder answer. I feel that DevonCorp still has so much more to do in written content consistency that we’re not ready to expand into other mediums beyond written work. However, it does go without saying that if we framed our work in such a way for short-form content, who knows how many new readers and fans we may amass if we successfully spread the word of our efforts to a larger audience. TrainerTower and NuggetBridge probably WISH they had the power of Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts to bring in new and exciting readers. We’ll keep this in mind for the 2025 season as Wolfey and other creators continue to popularize VGC to the masses. As of today, we’ll be creating new social media pages for DevonCorp to continue to grow our community beyond our site.

Written content can be taken in and digested in almost any place at any time. Nugget Bridge and TrainerTower provided a daily haven for VGC players to flock to for the latest article/blog to drop. Written work is exciting, easy to access, and flavorful in its consumption. I hope for readers to come back again and again yearning for more work to be presented and published,  creating a daily routine for the casual and dedicated VGC player. 

Why add another VGC Calculator?

The DevonCorpPress “Up-To-Date Resources Article” has been our longest-running article on the site. In my initial writing, I say, “ We asked ourselves how we could provide more resources to the community in one place” as a means to promote a tool on DevonCorp. I’d be upset if our platform is not also used to uplift the MANY tools community members have created for competitive players, so we created the “Up-To-Date Resources Article” to provide all of the resources we could find, to the community, in one place.

Now moving on….The DevonCalc. We’re not the first, and we’re not the last community resource to maintain its own VGC calc. I’m proud to say that our DevonCalc, managed by Tom, thank you, Tom, has stood the test of time against some other calcs out there. Where some calcs would require time and the addition of new Pokemon, Tom made sure players had access to a plethora of Pokemon vs Pokemon combinations. While we currently lack automated complete sets for some of the top Pokemon, we continue to see some use for our tool. We may look into this piece of our site this season and ask ourselves if we can improve. In the meantime, much of our focus is on continued writing and supporting Grassroots tournaments. If you have suggestions or concerns regarding the DevonCalc, do not hesitate to let Tom or I know! We’ll be sure to take in any critique or ideas that folks may have.

DevonCorp is to be more than just a place for written content. We asked ourselves how we could provide more resources to the community in one place and instantly thought of the VGC calculator. The inception of this calculator comes in the early days of Smogon Forums and Pokemon Showdown. The VGC Calculator is one of the best tools ever created for VGC. We agreed to have one of our own on DevonCorp, and to push the limits of innovation for the tool that so many of us consider to be standard in our team preparation. We plan on having various updates to our VGC calculator including our very first one available for all players now.

The Copy/Paste Button at the top of the VGC Calculator is our first step in innovating this powerful tool. Players have always been able to Copy/Paste the result of the calculator to share with others. Players have not been able to Copy/Paste the “expression” of a VGC equation to share with others. Our Copy/Paste button will allow any variable and stipulation that has been input into the calculator to be shared via a link. This link will then replicate the exact state of the VGC Calculator as it appears on your own screen, so that it can be shared with others. You can now Copy/Paste your VGC calculator page with anyone to show them what you put into the calculator to achieve a specific result. 

We will have more updates on innovating our VGC Calculator in the coming months! 

What standards will DevonCorp abide by to provide insightful and helpful articles and blogs?

DevonCorpPress has a set standard for any pieces published on the site. Before anything is published, the editing team takes their time in providing comments and suggestions to our authors, if needed, to raise the level of the piece to an acceptable, professional standard. I like to think that many of our pieces in their first drafts, evolve into something bigger and better by the time we publish on DevonCorp.

One of my biggest lessons in our first year came from allowing writers their artistic freedom, versus asking authors to put their regional experience inside of our framework within the formulaic templates we had created near the beginning of the creation of DevonCorp. I’ve yet to decide what standard of writing will continue forward when it comes to many of our pieces. The writing templates we provide were created with the idea of players not knowing where to start when initially writing up a team breakdown or a VGC regional war story. The templates had incredible success with many folks asking for their use to guide their first steps.

It wasn’t until one of our writers sent in an 80-page written VGC war story (with pictures) that I started to consider if I truly wanted future reports to follow a specific format, or if we should continue to let players tell their experience, the way they want to convey it. I think the winning take for now is a balance of 50/50. Between the templates that provide a guide for inexperienced writers, to the freedom given to authors to create a new VGC masterpiece in the making, we’ll continue to tread in both directions for longer-form content.

Short-form content writing may be tightened a bit with the re-introduction of Pokemon Spotlight’s, shorter pieces featuring a specific Pokemon that include sample sets and team choices provided by the author. These pieces may struggle with longevity due to the changing of rulesets. We applaud Smogon Forums for mastering this issue by creating format/year tabs under each Pokemon in their strategy dex to provide a page full of format writeups from different generations. However, keeping up with a massive strategy dex may lead to a lack of updates with some Pokemon falling through the cracks in different metagames and changing tierlists.

To reiterate from below, “some of our upcoming pieces written by guest writers may not fit into a guide and we welcome the creativity and excitement coming along with the unknown of their content and particular written voice.”

Many of our articles and blogs will follow a formulaic and template style structure to ensure anyone writing has the proper guidance and information needed to create compelling articles for our readers. We want our content to feel familiar, consistent, and insightful. For example, when our short form series on specific Pokemon release periodically, readers who have been keeping up will know what to expect and may be reading for specific sections of these articles that pique their interest the most. Our long form articles and blogs that follow our written guides will also have a similar familiarity to them. Although, some of our upcoming pieces written by guest writers may not fit into a guide and we welcome the creativity and excitement coming along with the unknown of their content and particular written voice. 

How can I submit an article?

I’ve mentioned it a few times already, but if it wasn’t clear enough, we want anyone and everyone to come write with us! Check out our contact information below to get started!

We have an established set of guided templates allowing most creators, players, writers, and more to reach out and share their VGC stories, lore, teams, and experiences. Simply reach out via email at thedevoncorp@gmail.com or via Twitter https://twitter.com/DevonCorpPress to receive copies of our guided templates to get started on writing with us today!

For those curious, here are our stats for our first year!

DevonCorp Site Stats:

AUG 1st 2023-AUG 13th 2024

Readers from 94 Countries

24,000+ Pageviews for the site

11,000+ Unique visitors

62% Mobile Users, 38% Desktop, 0.000001% Tablet LOL

The most popular pages are

1. The Release of PASRS 5.0 (4k+ pageviews)

2. Homepage (3k+ pageviews)

3. Paintspam: The Best Trick Room Team of Regulation F (2k+ pageviews)

4. Opal League (1k+ pageviews)

5. DevonCalc (900+ pageviews)

Thank you for supporting us in our first year of success, we hope for many more!