The Pokémon Company Is Looking For A Pokémon Historian, Could It Be You?
Are you a Pokémon fan who knows every bit of trivia about every single creature? The Pokémon Company is looking for you! They recently posted a job listing for an archivist to help them create a real-life Pokémon archive and museum (via Vice). As someone who only joined the Pokémon train with "Pokémon Go," I definitely don't qualify, but maybe you do.
You would get to work with the company's Game Data Librarian, write policy, do large-scale inventories, catalog and preserve items, and help "develop the company's first internal archive from the ground up." It might sound a little dry from the description, but as Vice points out, this is an actual job in some of the games. Plus, you get to work with Pikachu! (That part is 100% not in the description, but in my head, this is a real perk.)
It's crazy to think that there is no Pokémon archive in existence yet when you consider the size of the franchise. The game's history stretches back to 1994 and encompasses trading card games, video games, mobile games, books, comics, the live-action film "Detective Pikachu," and more. There are two new games coming out this year, "Scarlet" and "Violet," bringing the grand total of Pokémon in the expanded universe up to nearly 1000, with more likely to come. You'd be doing important work here, folks!
Gotta know 'em all
It won't all be fun and games, however. In fact, it sounds like a lot of work. You'll be dealing with the teams who are putting together the "internal physical repository," helping to digitize assets for the archive, acquiring new things for the collection, preserving historical Pokémon-related items, and maintaining security. I mean, what if the Pokémon try to escape? (Again, that last part is my headcanon — it's probably not part of the real job.)
If this sounds like you, get your Pokémon-catching hat and Poké Balls, and check out the requirements, because there are quite a few. They include three to four years of experience, a Bachelor's degree in library science, archives management, information management, or something related, familiarity with database integration, and a passion for and understanding of the games and the IP. The job pays between $77,000 and $118,000 a year.
Think about this for a moment. You could be the one who acquires rare trading cards. You could help list every version of Magikarp. You could literally catch 'em all!