Interview with Pwnemon

Interview and flavor by Laurel. Art by Andrew and Bummer.

Hey, Pwnemon! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview today. First and foremost, how long have you been involved with the Doubles community on Smogon?

January 2013. I think around the 7th or 8th of the month.

I raise my eyebrows at his specifics, and think something is fishy.

Really, you almost remember the specific date?

Well for some reason it sticks in my mind that we got our ladder on the 11th and I only joined a few days before that happened so yeah. I could be wrong though lol.

Is that when Doubles first became an official tier, or was a ladder just created so it could be played?

The latter. When I joined, you had to challenge people to Doubles Custom Battles through IRC. I remember that everyone was super nervous when we decided to ask Zarel for a ladder to be implemented, and then super excited when we got one. It was in the #doubles topic on IRC in all caps and everything.

I nod my head, and look back down at my clipboard to remember some of my questions.

Hmm that's really cool. Do you mind telling me about how Doubles became an official tier?

Pwnemon takes a deep breath and starts to explain the history of Doubles

I'd be lying if I said I knew all the details, because I'm not senior staff and I didn't have a badge until October. But as far as I know, we have Rootinabox to thank. Apparently there'd been discussions among senior staff about what to do with XY and they decided that it might become a tier come XY. But there weren't any promises or anything. Joim had been a fan of Doubles since, like, February, and once he got his admins he started to seriously agitate for us to get our own subforum and C&C process. It finally happened in August. I remember him talking about it on IRC and I basically spent the next hour refreshing Smogon's home page and waiting for the subforum to appear. And, of course, Joim only got his admins because he was there to help Chaos when Smogon went down in late June, so had it not been for Rootinabox, who knows where Doubles would be? Thx bby <3

Wow, who would've thought they person that hacked Smogon would help Doubles become an official tier!

I take a big sip of water and look back to my guest, thrilled to see that he hasn't left yet.

So, just recently it was decided that Doubles would be included in the 3rd version of the Smogon Grand Slam, making its second official tournament appearance. How did the process of getting Doubles added to the Grand Slam go about?

A lot less painfully than getting Doubles added to SPL. For months leading up to Slam the question had been on our minds, and we asked various people "in the know" and got responses ranging from "rofl no" to "probably," so honestly we had no clue what was going to happen. When Slam rules were announced and Doubles wasn't included, we were all pretty disappointed. Most of us were tempted to just be cynical and gripe among ourselves, but fortunately the ever-optimistic Pocket still thought we had a shot at changing it. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to disclose but basically we set up a forum PM between Doubles mods and TDs to try and make our case. Most of the TDs were in favor of some sort of Doubles tournament circuit representation, but just couldn't find a way to make it work. If we put a sixth metagame in Slam, it would be demanding a ridiculous amount from the players. But if Doubles got its own tournament, then that would be slighting the other non-OU metagames.

Right, that makes sense. That eventually lead up to the following conclusion that you can join five of the six Grand Slams, and two Slams would run at a time?

The TDs came up with that solution on their own; Doubles players had nothing to do with it. Whoever came up with that solution is brilliant—it really did make everyone happy while keeping the integrity of the tournament circuit.

Thats great! Finally, do you know who's hosting the Doubles tour yet, and any other closing words?

I'm hosting, of course! Closing words—skip some other tier's Open.

Feeling relieved, I wave good bye to Pwnemon then remember that I have to write this up.