Sorry if you're the author, OP, but they seem to be in a strange headspace that is warping the nature of the game to fit a predisposed narrative. They seem to think the devs are creating this as...
Sorry if you're the author, OP, but they seem to be in a strange headspace that is warping the nature of the game to fit a predisposed narrative. They seem to think the devs are creating this as some tongue-in-cheek joke? I don't understand that stance at all. It's not supposed to be "funny" - where are they getting that idea?
Also, they consider putting pals to work "cruel" but apparently like Monster Hunter? A game where you literally chase down monsters and sever their limbs as they slowly die so you can harvest them to make better gear? Is it cruel because they're cute? Or is it because in MH they're pests and so deserve to die because they threaten humans?
Speaking of cruel, don't you think it's cruel to pit pokemon against each other until they faint? Why is "use this attack!" less inflammatory than "use this crafting bench!" ?
Personally, I don't see any of that as "cruel" - it's a facet of the game that the author of this article admits gives an interesting vector to consider when capturing more pals out in the wild. Just like I don't think it's cruel to smash 50 cows on top of each other to make a cow farm in minecraft, or beating down dinosaurs to drug them and "tame" them in Ark (which is basically what palworld is... it's Ark with pokemon instead of dinosaurs).
I don't know, the whole article just seems predisposed, someone correct me though.
Mainstream video game journalism continues to be a massive disappointment, but I guess you can't expect much more from a system that's devolved into outrage bait for clicks.
Mainstream video game journalism continues to be a massive disappointment, but I guess you can't expect much more from a system that's devolved into outrage bait for clicks.
Caveat: I haven't played the game or followed its marketing. The article and a quick search for marketing about the game make it seem like the game is engaging in satire - its wearing its...
Caveat: I haven't played the game or followed its marketing.
The article and a quick search for marketing about the game make it seem like the game is engaging in satire - its wearing its influences very obviously while adding in an absurdist/dystopian slant to it. "Pokemon but with guns" is a funny concept - juxtaposing cute and violence is the basis for plenty of humor and really feels like a satiric critique of the genre.
The theme of something like cruelty in a piece of media can be examined through how the content itself treats the topic or by how the content fits into some broader reflection of our society. MH, pokemon, minecraft, etc do not really examine the theme of cruelty in themselves. Immersed in those games and the fiction they've set up, cruelty is not a thematic consideration, the power fantasy, power of friendship, or exploration are. Palworld seems (see caveat) like it actually does want to actively engage with cruelty as a theme. It's not asking a player to have suspension of disbelief about the rules of the world like pokemon where creatures just love helping humans, it's asking players to engage directly with overworking cute creatures for personal gain. For most people, the themes presented while engaging with a piece of content are felt more strongly than ones brought up in relation to the real world and outside the fiction. So Palworld's examination of cruelty is going to feel different and more viscerally relevant. I don't see an issue with a reviewer saying that that theme was uncomfortable or not handled well. We can talk about whether other games should get a pass on thorny topics because they construct useful fictions to sidestep the topic, but it seems entirely reasonable to me to critique the portrayal of those issues in a game that is addressing them directly/as satire.
Having defended the article's ability to make those critiques, I will say that the article could have done a better job at conveying them.
It is cruel, but the important point is that it's also a video game. Unless your game is explicitly promoting "slavery's great! animal cruelty is awesome! you should get a pet monkey and give it a...
It is cruel, but the important point is that it's also a video game. Unless your game is explicitly promoting "slavery's great! animal cruelty is awesome! you should get a pet monkey and give it a Winchester!" as a message for the world to hear, there's nothing wrong with Palworld having cruel acts as part of its gameplay loop. There's no real-life consequences and these elements make for an interesting experience, with a touch of clearly satirical humor.
I do think Palworld is supposed to be "funny", though. At least, it definitely built its marketing around the juxtaposition of cute Pokémon-like creatures with violence and cruelty (which, when you think about it, is more or less the same thing the American Internet was doing in the 2010s). The thing is that in practice, it hardly seems to play into it at all.
My problem with it, that's keeping me from playing it at the moment, is that the game looks shady as hell. Comically mismatched art styles despite high production value, technical jank, dev that's put out 3 or 4 early access games without ever finishing them, founder involved with crypto business...
I also can't exactly word this without sounding like a snobbish asshole, but because it's oddly close to a cheap asset flip and because it has such a batshit concept yet only plays on it through its gameplay and not its theming, I feel like the entire thing is made to cheaply and quickly turn an easily marketable concept into money, with no 'artistic' intent behind it. That bugs me a lot.
I feel the same way. The game feels cheap and I'm almost disappointed in the gaming community at large for making this game popular. Obviously it must be fun for a lot of people to sell this well...
I feel the same way. The game feels cheap and I'm almost disappointed in the gaming community at large for making this game popular. Obviously it must be fun for a lot of people to sell this well and have the player count it does, but I can't say that I'm thrilled about steam's most played game being a shady, plagaristic game made by a dev team that will never likely finish the game.
I feel a bit snobby saying it, too, but this game seems like an embodiment of many issues in the gaming industry.
I also personally am extremely uncomfortable with the slavery and slaughter of the pals. I'm not normally a prude and I personally enjoy games like Boltgun and Doom, but there's a difference between killing demons and killing and enslaving what are, for all intents and purposes, Pokemon.
It feels the exact opposite to me. This game is showing the gaming industry that all you need to do is make a decent game and the rest doesn't matter. If anything this is counterculture rearing...
Exemplary
I feel a bit snobby saying it, too, but this game seems like an embodiment of many issues in the gaming industry.
It feels the exact opposite to me.
This game is showing the gaming industry that all you need to do is make a decent game and the rest doesn't matter. If anything this is counterculture rearing its head. The gaming industry at large needs to stop price gouging people, stop constantly treating people with silk gloves, stop sanitizing every game until it's milquetoast, and for the love of god just calm down with the microtransactions.
When all you see is new games walking on eggshells not to offend (in any way, shape, or form), it's sort of a breath of fresh air this game just doesn't really take into account the people clamoring about animal cruelty. To me, the pals are just like Doom demons.
All said and done, I do think it's fine to be uncomfortable with the mechanics, but on the other hand it should also be fine to enjoy this for what it is: Just a game.
I should clarify on what I was meaning. Obviously Palworld isn't some microtransaction fest. What I see is an early access game from a dev that has other games that have been in early access for...
This game is showing the gaming industry that all you need to do is make a decent game and the rest doesn't matter.
I should clarify on what I was meaning. Obviously Palworld isn't some microtransaction fest.
What I see is an early access game from a dev that has other games that have been in early access for years, it's yet another survival crafting game, has almost no original ideas, the art direction looks like a cheap mobile game, it is clearly ripping off other franchises, etc. It just seems lazy and shallow and yet a bunch of gamers are saying it's fresh and I'm just confused by it. I may just be turning into a gaming boomer, but the issues I think it embodies aren't necessarily the issues some AAA games have, but the issues we often see with early access games, games designed with shock factor so they can be marketed towards twitch streamers, etc. Instead of innovating or coming up with something original, it's just taking the work others did, reskinning it, and then giving you shock factor tools (like the ability to enslave and murder cute animals). I also don't believe for a second that the devs intend to finish the game, given they have older games that are still in early access after years. It very much seems like a blatant short term cash grab.
To be clear, this isn't the only game doing this, a TON of games do this, but they hardly ever get publicity on the level of Palworld. I also highly doubt this game would be getting any publicity if they just used original designs and didn't market it as "pokemon with guns". If people are having fun with it, great! But it's just bizarre to me to see people saying it's fresh when it seems like the exact opposite to me.
I have to entirely disagree on the "new games walking on eggshells not to offend". There are still plenty of games that are being exactly what they should be. Baldur's Gate has violence, sex, etc. The game lets you basically do whatever you want, including murdering everyone, ripping wings off birds, and other cruel things. There are still plenty of games with blood and guts like Doom and Boltgun. I don't think new games are "walking on eggshells" in the slightest, and we've gotten a TON of new, original games in the last few years that were creative and wonderful, including many that are crass (Disco Elysium is definitely an example of a game that doesn't "walk on eggshells" and is still original and almost universally loved). I can't at all relate to feeling that new games are sanitized or milquetoast, I've actually thought the last 5 years have been some of the best in gaming history and have produced a ton of original games and ideas.
I do want to add that I do appreciate your point of view, as well, even if I just can't relate to it. I'm hoping I come off as portraying my own opinion and not trying to tell you you're wrong or something. People can enjoy the games they like and I have no problem with that, I just have a lot of problems with this particular game, not the people playing it.
I think that's really underselling the game. It's been at >1 million concurrent players (>2 in Asian hours) for over a week. It's not a cheap joke people buy for a laugh and then drop - people are...
I think that's really underselling the game. It's been at >1 million concurrent players (>2 in Asian hours) for over a week. It's not a cheap joke people buy for a laugh and then drop - people are playing it and enjoying it, which is really the end metric that matters for a developer. I haven't played it as much as some other people I know, but it is genuinely enjoyable to play.
None of the mechanics are particularly unique, but the combination of mechanics is unique, and that's just as much something you can innovate. They also interplay in surprisingly cool ways. For instance, the Ark survival part, the factorio part, and the pokemon part all mesh with each other. The ark and factorio part gives meaning to catching pokemon - in pokemon, you have your A team and then a bunch of pokemon you never see again in your box.
In Palworld, they have a job, they make things for you. And each pokemon has something it's good at doing. So I'd never bother catching the random normal type lamb pokemon in pokemon after the first one, but I do in palworld because they can mine near the base.
The factorio part makes the ark part much less grindy. The ark part gives meaning and a goal to the pokemon part. I have no idea if they intended this, but it does work.
I would also say that the "slave and kill pokemon" part is extremely exaggerated. There is nothing here really that is more unethical than what the average Minecraft player does, the kid game. Yeah, you can kill pokemon and they die in an cartoonish way and some of them drop meat. You also kill the cute sheep and pigs and cows in Minecraft and eat them.
Yeah, some people built weird sweatshop dungeons in Palworld. People also build chicken farms, or villager traps that would make the architects of the Matrix proud in Minecraft. There's pig farms people make that would make the industrial farming complex scared of them.
The "default" is that you are presented as being companions with the fakemons, who help you build in a "villagers help build the village" way.
God knows if the game will ever be "finished", but there's certainly financial incentive for the developers to keep developing the game. It has >$30 of value for most people as is. There's no grandiose promises - their roadmap is quite humble. People are buying it for what it is.
That's where I think Pokémon finally generated a worthwhile loop with Legends Arceus - the catch gameplay itself was fun and had some risk with Pokémon getting angry, the Pokedex was really the...
in pokemon, you have your A team and then a bunch of pokemon you never see again in your box.
That's where I think Pokémon finally generated a worthwhile loop with Legends Arceus - the catch gameplay itself was fun and had some risk with Pokémon getting angry, the Pokedex was really the core rather than getting to a particular battle, and it had the alpha mons / bosses as anchors around that gameplay. Granted I'm sure that game still mechanically pales in comparison to what Palworld provides, but also:
Yeah, you can kill pokemon and they die in an cartoonish way and some of them drop meat. You also kill the cute sheep and pigs and cows in Minecraft and eat them
The difference here is that you're supposed to treat Pokémon very differently because the series is pretty heavy on implying the species are all way more sentient than a typical cow or pig. And that's where I think the criticism about cynicism comes in, maybe rightfully - Pokémon is an extremely optimistic series; it's often to a fault, but Palworld's edginess doesn't feel like a good answer to it if you're making the direct comparison. It just comes across as nihilistic. Pokémon is occasionally self-aware enough to work the problems with it into a great story - people liked the PETA take in B/W because it whiffed punches at itself, and PLA dealt with a society pretty rightfully fearful of Pokémon and each other coming to an understanding as a narrative. I don't personally want the optimism completely lost, and it's why I don't really think Palworld is going to scratch that itch for me.
You made the gameplay sound more appealing than I've seen so far, though... Totally get why that works, and it does convince me to maybe give it a try on sale some day.
Yup. I get I'm on the internet, but I love Pokemon precisely because its a comfy series where I can raise and foster my pets. Pets that can understand me and clearly have their own quirks and...
I don't personally want the optimism completely lost, and it's why I don't really think Palworld is going to scratch that itch for me.
Yup. I get I'm on the internet, but I love Pokemon precisely because its a comfy series where I can raise and foster my pets. Pets that can understand me and clearly have their own quirks and mannerisms. Battles are fun but in a more sportsman way (which is how the pokemon league is portrayed), not in a "haha dogfighting gamble" way. There's a reason pokemon "faint" after all. I don't mind when the games or other media deal into some of the more grim realities of nature, but that charm and co-existing being the overarching theme is an important one for me.
It's also as simple as a genre mismatch for me. People complain about turned based battles but JRPGs are my favorite genre. So you may as well be trying to tell me as a fish that water feels weird; I'll never truly empathize. Palworld as a survival crafting third person shooter MMO hybrid? Yeah, I won't deny that I may have fun with it, but it's never going to be a game I personally go out o my way to get for me. Maybe if a friend really wants me to join in.
Thank you for the reply. I'm glad to hear that at least some of the gameplay is fun! You're right that it's probably a minority of players (who are making up the majority of social media around...
Thank you for the reply. I'm glad to hear that at least some of the gameplay is fun! You're right that it's probably a minority of players (who are making up the majority of social media around the game) building sweatshops on purpose and that the majority of people are probably just going through a normal crafting routine.
I mean, it's NOT a GaaS (at least, I haven't heard about any DLC/skins). So the end metric doesn't necessarily care about player retention. For an Early Access game it's a good metric to justify...
It's not a cheap joke people buy for a laugh and then drop - people are playing it and enjoying it, which is really the end metric that matters for a developer.
I mean, it's NOT a GaaS (at least, I haven't heard about any DLC/skins). So the end metric doesn't necessarily care about player retention. For an Early Access game it's a good metric to justify finishing development, but the game could fall off a cliff over the next month and still prove itself.
I would also say that the "slave and kill pokemon" part is extremely exaggerated...The "default" is that you are presented as being companions with the fakemons, who help you build in a "villagers help build the village" way.
I mean, the game enables these mechanics to happen and they do very little to limit your resources on how you work your Pals. i.e. the game isn't necessary encouraging slavery, but it allows you setup a sweatshop and rewards you for it. So you can argue that it does condone it by not punishing you (much) for overworking your pal.
in pokemon, you have your A team and then a bunch of pokemon you never see again in your box.
if you choose to go about it that way. I try to use multiple teams and if you do competitive battling you're always scanning around for the right mix of stats, moves, and abilities. But no, the game has nearly no skill floor so it allows you to overlevel and mow through an entire game with one Pokemon.
I think that's another juxtaposition of Pokemon that comes down to demographic. They don't want to have kids get stuck and be unable to progress because they didn't master teambuilding or type advantadges. You can brute for through almost anything in the main campaign.
You say ripping off other franchises, I say remixing other ideas into something wholy new. Back in the early 90s there was no such thing as first person shooters. There were first person games...
You say ripping off other franchises, I say remixing other ideas into something wholy new.
Back in the early 90s there was no such thing as first person shooters.
There were first person games like battlezone but the idea of being a person with a gun that you look down the sights of just didn’t really exist, until wolfenstein 3d. It was a popular game, but it took doom coming out to really cement the idea of being something innovative fresh and new. It was a cultural behemoth in the relatively small by todays standards arena of PC gaming.
For years afterwards, other first person shooters came out, but they weren’t called that for a while.
They were called Doom Clones, with a good deal of derision in most cases. Peoples preconception is that these games did no work of their own, they just ripped off of an original idea from id and slapped their own assets on it.
If that had become the prevailing narrative, then an entire gaming genre would have never existed.
If you expand that out, no genres would have ever existed. There’s be no RPGs, just dungeons. There’s be no RTSs, just Herzog Zwei, and there’s be no roguelikes, just… rogue.
So yes, Palword very clearly cribs a lot from Pokémon, breath of the wild, and ARK.
But then, Pokémon cribs a lot from earthbound, breath of the wild takes a lot from monster Hunter and far cry, and ARK takes a lot from day-Z and other survival games.
If we held every game to the standard that every idea must be wholly original we wouldn’t even still be sitting around playing pong, because it was a direct rip off of table tennis games coded at Berkeley in the 60s
The game definitely has familiar elements, but there’s also never been a game quite like it. But most importantly, it’s fun to play, which for me is the absolute defining feature of a video game that trumps virtually anything else about it.
Of course games draw inspiration from others, and of course no game can be 100% original, but there's a bit of a difference when palworld is making some of their pals look near identical to...
Of course games draw inspiration from others, and of course no game can be 100% original, but there's a bit of a difference when palworld is making some of their pals look near identical to specific pokemon. That's not inspired, that's not building, it's cheap immitation. I wouldn't have that problem with the game if their pals reminded people of Pokemon, but they are straight copies in some cases.
Edit: anyways, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds with arguing over what is clearly a divisive game when we probably won't change each other's minds about anything. Have a good night!
Similarly I suppose I should divulge, because I agree with you on all of these points. I wasn't necessary commenting on the state of this publisher and their penchant for never releasing early...
Similarly I suppose I should divulge, because I agree with you on all of these points.
I wasn't necessary commenting on the state of this publisher and their penchant for never releasing early access games. That behaviour by itself is a blight on early access, which is a type of monetisation that immensely helps certain independent developers which I generally don't think is a bad thing. Companies like these abuse the willingness of the consumer to help develop and publish a game they think is worth it.
Nor do I think the game is fresh in all of its mechanics. What it does do with the gameplay loop of survival, base building, automation, and exploration, is that it manages to make it feel appropriately balanced without nickle and diming their customer. If I take the charitable approach, I assume that's what people mean with "fresh". There's plethora of survival games that just make it a slog. Notable exception being Valheim, that was praised for their lack of penalties when not playing the continuous survival loop but rather giving you benefits for doing so, allowing the player to play at their own pace (example, lack of food not killing you and giving you massive bonuses for taking the time to cook something).
And lastly, I was mainly aiming at triple A games with that statement. Games like Starfield are just so incredibly bland and safe, but these publishers do have a lot of sway. Bethesda seems to dismiss any complaints about the state of their rather lackluster game, while at the same time trying to appease the twitter crowd as well as trying to reach as large a market share as possible by making things super casual. Many of the large studios play it safe, with remasters, samey sequels, just bland IPs, and egregious monetization. Sega is now gating New Game + behind a $15 paywall. On the other hand, you have Hogwarts Legacy smashing sales records because people by and large do not care about the inner goings on and just want a good game.
Baldur's Gate 3 is an exceptional game and caught a ton of flak from these same big studios saying that this is a one off, and that gamers shouldn't expect such a level of quality in the future. Those statements are baffling to me. While I'd consider Larian a Triple A studio since BG3, they weren't before, yet seeing Swen Vincke's state of mind I feel they will not break bad any time soon.
Regardless, I've been trying to find the words to explain myself properly what I mean when I say "walking on eggshells" but I can't seem to find the right words this evening. I certainly don't mean it as a "muh freeze peach" kind of thing. I think it boils down to a growing distaste of the current state of gaming when you look at AAA.
100% agree with you on that paragraph. Many studios do play it overly safe with games and I agree that can be a problem. I see what you mean by the "walking on eggshells" thing. A lot of times...
And lastly, I was mainly aiming at triple A games with that statement. Games like Starfield...
100% agree with you on that paragraph. Many studios do play it overly safe with games and I agree that can be a problem. I see what you mean by the "walking on eggshells" thing. A lot of times when that phrase is used, it's around social issues, so I think I assumed you were going off how I said I was uncomfortable with the slavery and murder and stuff in Palworld, rather than what you seemed to actually mean in terms of game design.
Well.. While I didn't mean social issues specifically and didn't go off on you being uncomfortable (not that I wanted to, since that's totally fine and your right), I did point out Hogwarts Legacy...
Well.. While I didn't mean social issues specifically and didn't go off on you being uncomfortable (not that I wanted to, since that's totally fine and your right), I did point out Hogwarts Legacy for a reason as an example that the market as a whole doesn't seem particularly interested in social issues or identity politics within their games. You see that people just want games that are good regardless of the politics, and conversely when it's made into a point the sanitisation is often just cheap pandering. It also feels you're being pandered to. When a game feels like it's made specifically to make you a mark, instead of something that's actually good, people are rightfully pissed off. Like Coca-Cola being a super pollutant, but at least they have rainbows on their marketing? It's cheap and insincere. Palworld in a sense doesn't do that. It's refreshing in its freedom.
If you want to create a game where the cleavage is a little too visible, and the men's speedo's are a little too tight then in my opinion the devs should go right ahead. People that do not want sexualisation, will not buy sexualisation. I think the market is self-correcting in that sense. AAA games tend to err on the side of caution and over-correct because of a small group of people disliking certain choices. In this case, Palworld is not your game because it makes you uncomfortable. Should it then not be made because it makes people uncomfortable? (I'm not saying you are saying this! Don't worry! I'm trying to make a general point here)
Now as a note to this, I'm not saying that we should just have no holds barred games where the purpose of the game is to stomp on social issues as a way to further political activism. I'm not arguing in favour of the aforementioned "Freeze peach" movement, but I do think we see AAA games overly cautious when it comes to online-twitter-activism. People can separate fact and fiction really well, and butchering my Pal doesn't mean I'm now holding a knife and looking funny at my cat. It's fine sometimes to "cross a line" with games, as long as it doesn't try to convince you that it's the right way of doing things in the real world. While Palworld seems to revel in edgy jokes about work slaves, it doesn't seem to tell you that slavery is a political point you should vote for. And that's fine with me.
Edit to add: I just watched this video and he pretty much sums up my feelings to a tee. Here's how I feel about it too. He puts it more succinctly than I can in a text post.
you might be looking for the word "sanitation". Many AAA games are made to be squeaky clean and polished to a fault. They leave no room for awkward experiments or potential controversy. They don't...
Regardless, I've been trying to find the words to explain myself properly what I mean when I say "walking on eggshells"
you might be looking for the word "sanitation". Many AAA games are made to be squeaky clean and polished to a fault. They leave no room for awkward experiments or potential controversy. They don't want the player to be asking hard questions about the game nor the makers behind it. It's formulaic in a way that feels like its focused on delivering a "game" first and an "experience" a distant 3rd or 4th place.
but of course that sort of experience will be different from the one here where you boot up a server with a few friends, give 3 of your pets a gun and go ham (and then probably eat a 4th pet for dinner). AAA games give you a guided tour around their amusement park while many of these "counter culture" games are more like a playground. Not necessarily a full on sandbox, but you're given a few tools (slides, swings, maybe even a basketball court) and the kids find their fun. Often in unintended ways.
(BTW, sanitation is not bad by itself. Disco Elysium is extremely polished and not necessarily letting you go off the script. But it's of course going a very different direction and challenging the player's own beliefs. That's a different topic altogether)
I sure wish these platitudes extended to 99.9% of other games in the "gamer discourse". or at least 99.9% of actual indies. It becomes hard to buy into this sentiment when around this time last...
This game is showing the gaming industry that all you need to do is make a decent game and the rest doesn't matter.
I sure wish these platitudes extended to 99.9% of other games in the "gamer discourse". or at least 99.9% of actual indies. It becomes hard to buy into this sentiment when around this time last month a borderline-scam of a game still sold 500k copies before shutting down its studio in 4 days just because it had pretty trailers. And in this same year the sequel to one of the highest rated games of all time was being "A DLC packaged as a $70 game" (this game and is prequel had no micro-transactions by the way. BOTW had one DLC expansion and TOTK as of now has none).
People clearly cling to the high production values and want to be apart of those hype cycles. Otherwise they'd put more effort to find games like this (which was mainly discovered via a comedic trailer. Since it was not going to stand out in graphics).
Yeah, "cheap" is the word I've been dancing around my head on why I'm down on it. Like, take the Payday comparison @Trobador made - I agree with them that there's no way the game or creators seem...
Yeah, "cheap" is the word I've been dancing around my head on why I'm down on it. Like, take the Payday comparison @Trobador made - I agree with them that there's no way the game or creators seem actively malicious, but like... Payday also could've slapped the ability to sell hostages for extra money? And didn't? It's not the content matter that annoys me, it's that it sounds like it serves much purpose than to generate some influencer thumbnails going ":O you can do WHAAAT" while they flail their arms around and rip their face off for clicks or whatever. And that's zero judgment about why people want to play it, I get that the survival open-world loop is popular and addicting regardless of whether the humor or Pokémon egging pulls you in. But based on what I hear about it playing like Ark it sounds shallow and gives me little reason to try it.
I don't know if anyone else gets as viscerally irritated, but it frustrates me extra when there's some piece of the market that should appeal to me and they miss the mark, I guess - Wargroove not quite getting the Advance Wars feel down, Fire Emblem Awakening shifting to the grand JRPG audience, or uh, all the excuses The Pokémon Company makes to ship kinda lazy products... I see Palworld and I hate that it takes up my mental real estate with no actual appeal. (Probably an entirely personal problem! Still annoying!)
But I'm also not seeing any base to actual straight-up plagiarism - it looks like the model copy things turned out to be completely fabricated. Assuming there aren't any actually-plagiarized pieces in the game, I'm also hoping that this doesn't prompt some lawsuit from TPC/Nintendo. You can't steal a conceptual gameplay loop... Maybe Game Freak can respond with a better game?
To me, they don't have to be using the same literal assets that Game Freak uses for it to be plagarism, just like how in writing, it can still be plagarism if you take someone else's sentence and...
To me, they don't have to be using the same literal assets that Game Freak uses for it to be plagarism, just like how in writing, it can still be plagarism if you take someone else's sentence and substitute some words in or out. In the case of Palworld, some of the pal designs can be directly linked to some pokemon and it's pretty clear the palworld devs just lifted designs from Pokemon instead of using their own ideas (I agree that it appears they didn't actually steal assets, however). The same is clear about their upcoming game that looks just like Hollow Knight.
I'm not saying they are or aren't violating any copywrite and I honestly don't care if they get in legal trouble or not, I'm just pointing out how unoriginal I think the entire game is.
I believe that Palword fails to be funny precisely because it makes an effort to do so. In games like Pokemon or Minecraft, set in a PG-rated world, it is the juxtaposition between childlike...
I believe that Palword fails to be funny precisely because it makes an effort to do so. In games like Pokemon or Minecraft, set in a PG-rated world, it is the juxtaposition between childlike elements and brutal scenarios that creates humor when drawing comparisons to dark themes like slavery and industrialism. For instance, when you capture a group of villagers, construct a fortress around them, and coerce them to breed, it's the absurdity of the entire situation – the fact that a game allows such actions and even rewards you for them (though not explicitly acknowledging it as a planned concept) – that makes it shocking, thus laughable.
This stands in stark contrast to dark themes being intended as both a conceptual level and gameplay mechanics. The latter, at best, offers a very edgy portrayal and, at worst, feels tacky, uninspired, and generic – precisely the sentiment I get when looking at this game.
There exists a significant distinction between capturing a Zigzagoon, loading it with HMs to carry it throughout the entire game, and naming it "HM slave," and a game actually acknowledging HM slavery as a mechanic, making players interact with it. The former is tongue-in-cheek organic self humor, while the latter falls into the category of "edgy dark humor" aimed at teenagers (which might be the target audience for this game after all).
The game really isn’t that edgy, though. I think the clips have made it seem like that, but that’s more on gamers for being edgy. Unless you try to make sweatshops, it doesn't really feel like...
The game really isn’t that edgy, though. I think the clips have made it seem like that, but that’s more on gamers for being edgy.
Unless you try to make sweatshops, it doesn't really feel like you’re enslaving anyway. The vibe is more “the village works together to make things”. People are intentionally making dungeons to have funny screenshots. Unless you go out of the way, it’s not really like that.
It’s true that it doesn’t have some of the intentional omissions Pokémon has (people eat meat in Pokémon, for instance, but it’s just not said where it comes from. In palworld the Pokémon drop meat when they die), but I wouldn’t call that all that edgy - just how logical dictates something would work.
It’s like ToTK - twitter was just full of people crucifying koroks. But it’s not like totk was a game about making brutal korok torture devices, it was just something you could do.
The official marketing is plenty edgy, look at the Steam page: "To survive, you must tread carefully and make difficult choices...even if that means eating your own Pals when the time comes."...
The official marketing is plenty edgy, look at the Steam page:
"To survive, you must tread carefully and make difficult choices...even if that means eating your own Pals when the time comes."
"Want to build a pyramid? Put an army of Pals on the job. Don't worry; there are no labor laws for Pals."
"Letting Pals do the work is the key to automation. Build a factory, place a Pal in it, and they'll keep working as long as they're fed—until they're dead, that is."
"With Pals on your side you can tackle even the most dangerous areas. When the time comes, you might have to sacrifice one to save your skin. They'll protect your life—even if it costs their own."
"Endangered Pals live in wildlife sanctuaries. Sneak in and capture rare Pals to get rich quick! It's not a crime if you don't get caught, after all."
Doesn't Pokemon explicitly acknowledge Magicarp as being tasty? I seem to remember something like that. Pokémon has a weird relationship with that sort of content tbh and I feel like a smarter...
Doesn't Pokemon explicitly acknowledge Magicarp as being tasty? I seem to remember something like that.
Pokémon has a weird relationship with that sort of content tbh and I feel like a smarter game could do an interesting job critiquing and/or satirizing that. But my impression is that Palworld doesn't really dig deeply enough into these themes to be truly interesting about it.
Not the author, no worries. I think this article starts a conversation I'd like to have, but it does lack some depth. I think this is the part of the discourse surrounding this game that I...
Not the author, no worries. I think this article starts a conversation I'd like to have, but it does lack some depth.
Personally, I don't see any of that as "cruel" - it's a facet of the game that the author of this article admits gives an interesting vector to consider when capturing more pals out in the wild. Just like I don't think it's cruel to smash 50 cows on top of each other to make a cow farm in minecraft, or beating down dinosaurs to drug them and "tame" them in Ark (which is basically what palworld is... it's Ark with pokemon instead of dinosaurs).
I think this is the part of the discourse surrounding this game that I personally find most interesting. Palworld isn't that different from other games in terms of the cruelty angle, which means that it's weird to make an exception for it. But maybe Minecraft is messed up, or Pokémon actually sorta is whitewashed cockfighting. Just because these things are justified diegetically doesn't mean they stop existing in the context of the real world.
I don't think the article really gets into that idea, though. It's short and rather inflammatory. But I don't get the sense that Palworld is all too concerned with making that point either. It's a satire of Pokémon, sure, but it's too busy putting half-baked features from as many popular genres as it can to do more than be fun and silly. Being bad art doesn't make it a bad game. Granted, that's subjective, so your read on it may differ.
On the contrary, from other quotes in this discussion thread, Palworld’s own marketing leans heavily into it, with a number of references like “it’s not illegal if you’re not caught” and “they’ll...
Palworld isn't that different from other games in terms of the cruelty angle, which means that it's weird to make an exception for it.
On the contrary, from other quotes in this discussion thread, Palworld’s own marketing leans heavily into it, with a number of references like “it’s not illegal if you’re not caught” and “they’ll keep working for you … until they’re dead”
I feel like the whole thing is written from the perspective that Palworld is just "grimdark Pokemon" and draws conclusions from that singular viewpoint.
I feel like the whole thing is written from the perspective that Palworld is just "grimdark Pokemon" and draws conclusions from that singular viewpoint.
For what it's worth, this is why I've never been able to get into MH. I don't enjoy the fantasy of looking for a threatened dragon or something, slowly killing it, and using its parts for armour.
For what it's worth, this is why I've never been able to get into MH. I don't enjoy the fantasy of looking for a threatened dragon or something, slowly killing it, and using its parts for armour.
PETA seem to think so. In all seriousness though, where we draw our lines between harmless and poor taste doesn't always make logical sense. Plenty of games allow you to murder people on a massive...
Speaking of cruel, don't you think it's cruel to pit pokemon against each other until they faint?
In all seriousness though, where we draw our lines between harmless and poor taste doesn't always make logical sense. Plenty of games allow you to murder people on a massive scale and most people wouldn't bat an eye, however killing children or explicitly racially motivated murder would be far more controversial. Mortal Kombat can have characters pulling each other's spines out and get a reception that it's trite while Cyberpunk allowing you pick your genitals is meme-worthy. So yes, it makes sense that putting "cute" creatures on an assembly line until they work themselves to death registers as more cruel than skinning an ugly creature you hunted, even if it shouldn't.
Also, being cruel and being "a facet of the game" are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of games strive for cruelty. Sometimes it's to spur intellectual discourse; sometimes it's for crass enjoyment. Cruelty doesn't have to be melodramatic or empassioned either; it can also be callous and banal. From the sounds of it, Palworld is the latter.
Whether that's worth writing an entire article about is another matter though.
I'm currently playing it right now, so far it's very heavily Ark inspired lol. As in, my friend pointed out that the UI is literally lifted straight from Ark. It's also kinda janky, ngl, almost...
I'm currently playing it right now, so far it's very heavily Ark inspired lol. As in, my friend pointed out that the UI is literally lifted straight from Ark. It's also kinda janky, ngl, almost feels like a bunch of store assets slapped together. I haven't gone far yet though.
It also completely lifts all of Breath of the Wild's music cues. I haven't played Ark, so I can't comment if it's an ark ripoff, but it's definitely a minecraft/BoTW/Pokemon/Fortnite ripoff, to...
It also completely lifts all of Breath of the Wild's music cues.
I haven't played Ark, so I can't comment if it's an ark ripoff, but it's definitely a minecraft/BoTW/Pokemon/Fortnite ripoff, to the extent that it seems like there should be copyright issues of some kind.
That said, two hours in all those elements seem to go great together, so I guess great artists steal.
Well, it depends on jurisdiction (which is somewhat surprising that the devs are japanese), but gameplay elements aren't copyrightable in the US, so you can ripoff the mechanics of another game as...
Well, it depends on jurisdiction (which is somewhat surprising that the devs are japanese), but gameplay elements aren't copyrightable in the US, so you can ripoff the mechanics of another game as blatantly as you want.
In terms of the design, it's pretty obvious that many of the pals are... uh... pretty close analogs to specific pokemon, but I'd think it'd be hard to win a copyright case. They are different, still. There isn't a direct copying of anything but the "vibe", which isn't really copyrightable.
I'm really tired of seeing this take. This and the following paragraph tells me less that the Pals are ripoffs of pokemon, and more that it's impossible to make a cartoonish looking fake animal...
In a lot of cases, Palworld isn't mimicking Pokémon's creature design aesthetic as much as it is building from the reassembled pieces of existing Pokémon, adding a color swap and a couple tweaked details to hide the Frankenstein stitching.
I'm really tired of seeing this take. This and the following paragraph tells me less that the Pals are ripoffs of pokemon, and more that it's impossible to make a cartoonish looking fake animal without it looking like one or more of the 3,000+ existing pokemon designs. There are similarities between Vixy and Eevee for sure, but tweak it a little bit and it looks too much like Vulpix or Fenneken or Nickit or Zorua. Pokemon doesn't own the copyright to "a cute lil fox creature." The same goes for every other example. Yes, Dinossom looks exactly like Dragonite mixed with Meganium. If it looked any different at all, it would look like some other combination of pokemon. I mean, the only thing the elephants have in common is that they're cartoon elephants. Call palballs knockoffs of pokeballs, sure. Call the paldeck a knockoff pokedex, alright. But let's stop saying that every cute cartoon animal is a pokemon ripoff.
Cremis looks much more like Eevee than Vixy, to the point that it goes far beyond "cute cartoon fox". It's true that The Pokémon Company doesn't own a copyright on every cute animal, however...
Cremis looks much more like Eevee than Vixy, to the point that it goes far beyond "cute cartoon fox". It's true that The Pokémon Company doesn't own a copyright on every cute animal, however context matters in copyright law. You can argue that it's a coincidence for one cartoon animal to bear a resemblance to another, especially given there's over a thousand Pokémon at this point, but that argument rings hollow in the face of all the other similarities.
That doesn't mean Palworld is a bad game or shouldn't exist or that people shouldn't play and enjoy it. Just be honest about what it is and don't be surprised when they get a cease and desist letter. Artists have lost copyright cases on far, far less than this.
I just don't see it. The only things they have in common are that they're fluffy foxes with the same shaped mouth. I can't see anything besides the mouth that looks like it was lifted directly off...
I just don't see it. The only things they have in common are that they're fluffy foxes with the same shaped mouth. I can't see anything besides the mouth that looks like it was lifted directly off of Eevee's design. It's sort of like Ice Ice Baby/Under Pressure, if the only things the baselines had in common was the first two notes and the tempo.
It's also worth keeping two things in mind. Both companies are located in Japan, where most people on English speaking social media have woefully little idea how the copyright system works, and Nintendo is about as litigious as Billy Mitchell. If they felt like anything in Palworld was infringing on their copyright, they would have done something the day it came out, if not even earlier.
Does Cremis really look that similar to Eevee? Cremis is completely covered in wool like a sheep. His legs appear stubby, and his ears are fatter. He has an extra tuft of hair/fluff between his...
Does Cremis really look that similar to Eevee? Cremis is completely covered in wool like a sheep. His legs appear stubby, and his ears are fatter. He has an extra tuft of hair/fluff between his ears. His eyes are wider, differently colored, and have a teardrop. His tail is much shorter than Eevee's long, bushy tail.
I think it's natural to draw comparisons, but when placed side-by-side it seems easy to spot the differences.
And Ice Ice Baby is a completely different song from Under Pressure. The baseline even has a whole extra ding! Didn't save Vanilla Ice from having to pay out a settlement to Queen though. Hell,...
Didn't save Vanilla Ice from having to pay out a settlement to Queen though.
Hell, George Harrison lost a lawsuit on the grounds of subconscious plagerism, and I doubt even a Beatlemaniac could tell which of Harrison's songs supposedly ripped off He's So Fine without knowing ahead of time.
Legally, the two works don't need to be exactly the same or even have exactly similar elements. The question is whether they share substantial similarity. One of the tests (though not the only one) is whether an ordinary observer subjectively finds substantial similarity in the total concept and feel between the two works. The fact that Palworld is memed as Pokémon with guns and a discussion about inspiration v plagerism is happening throughout the gaming community on this doesn't bode well for them.
Look, the broad strokes of the game are fine and combine enough elements into a novel-enough package that I think it could stand on its own, but having so many assets be so similar really pushes the boundaries. The game is still in early access so hopefully they'll give it a more original visual design, because it's explosive popularity has undoubtedly drawn the eye of Nintendo, Epic, etc.
Perhaps unsurprisingly to some, Palworld has also done very well, selling 1 million copies in its first 8 hours (https://twitter.com/Palworld_EN/status/1748376473256579177). It's a survival...
Perhaps unsurprisingly to some, Palworld has also done very well, selling 1 million copies in its first 8 hours (https://twitter.com/Palworld_EN/status/1748376473256579177). It's a survival crafting game, which are as popular as ever, it's a "funny" premise, and I think there's been a lot of demand for an actual competitor to Pokémon. For some people maybe this is it, and I've already seen a few comments about Palworld just saying the quiet part out loud with regard to capturing Pokémon being animal cruelty/slave labor. Personally, though, I don't know that that's a good thing. Regardless, it remains to be seen how this game does over the next weeks and months, because release day opinions are always the strongest ones.
From Crossplay: Kids are playing the "Pokemon with guns" game, here are their opinions. General consensus among the kids is that if you're not put off by shooting the cute things with guns, it's...
General consensus among the kids is that if you're not put off by shooting the cute things with guns, it's not really that violent compared to Fortnite, and power dynamics don't really come into play, it's interesting that they help you build and you help them battle.
I think there's something to this game, mechanics are solid, base builder survival plus cute minion manager is a neat take, to the point chucking guns into it makes it kind of a lesser product, but I guess that sells well.
My game designer partner made almost exactly the same comment. After playing a couple dozen hours myself, as a former Ark addict who really enjoys the combo of survival creature collection, I have...
In my dozen hours with Palworld, it felt like it was struggling to fulfill a shock humor quota that its marketing set, and ended up weighing down the pieces that could otherwise be built into a better game.
My game designer partner made almost exactly the same comment.
After playing a couple dozen hours myself, as a former Ark addict who really enjoys the combo of survival creature collection, I have to say I totally disagree with the latter portion of the review. With the settings as default when you make a personal or co-op world, I had no need to engage with the more ridiculous features to progress satisfyingly.
Getting one of the early, speedier mounts (Direwolf in my case) and riding it around the countryside while catching and collecting new things, then heading back to base with your haul, reorganizing Pals, building and upgrading is a really solid loop for me in Palworld, and way less punishing than Ark at default settings.
But I do agree that it could get even better if they punched up the satire element or made a clear alternative to the "cruelty" mechanics.
I think this game highlights how stagnant the Pokemon franchise is. A lot commentary is focusing on the "adult" nature of this game; killing "pals," forcing them to work, etc. I think the whole...
I think this game highlights how stagnant the Pokemon franchise is. A lot commentary is focusing on the "adult" nature of this game; killing "pals," forcing them to work, etc. I think the whole "pokemon with guns" label is catching attention, but I think the underlying desire is an advancement of pokemon games into modern mechanics.
Ignoring explicit content, how great would "Baldur's Gate with Pokemon" be? Or "Cyberpunk with Pokemon"? The whole Pokemon franchise hasn't moved beyond adolescents embark on adventure in a hyper sanguine world. I think people want a fully fledged game with character arcs, mechanics beyond "fire beats leaf beats water beats fire." I know that competitive pokemon gets more advanced, but you won't encounter that just playing the game.
I think Palworld is getting talked about partly because of the edgy content, but I think most people are excited about Pokemon in a different genre.
Gonna stump for just a moment and say I had a great time with Cassette Beasts. For $20 it's a very solid competitor in this genre. The story, while still quite silly and "quirky" at times, hit...
I think people want a fully fledged game with character arcs, mechanics beyond "fire beats leaf beats water beats fire."
Gonna stump for just a moment and say I had a great time with Cassette Beasts. For $20 it's a very solid competitor in this genre. The story, while still quite silly and "quirky" at times, hit some serious tones too which surprised me, and the overworld is genuinely a delight to explore. The mechanics are also absolutely batshit bonkers, like this goes way beyond STAB and into genuinely interesting strategic territory. And basically every fight being a duo (2v2) means lots of ability to synchronize abilities for maximum effect.
My personal favorite change? Reusable TMs. That scratched such an itch that I audibly sighed out loud in happiness when I realized. It's so much less stressful to be able to experiment with new movesets without needing to involve hours of grinding/breeding.
This review is on the shorter side. I recommend reading it, even if you have no real intention of playing Palworld. Here's a quote if you need convincing:
This review is on the shorter side. I recommend reading it, even if you have no real intention of playing Palworld. Here's a quote if you need convincing:
"Let me put it this way. Watching that first Palworld trailer from 2021 was like seeing a picture of Bugs Bunny smoking weed and half-ironically thinking it's sick. Actually playing Palworld is like having to hang out for hours with somebody who's made Bugs Bunny smoking weed their whole deal."
Oh ....... Yeah I've lost all interest in the game entirely. I don't even like it when my dorfs work too hard, and they LOVE working hard. Not interested in a game where I exploit the local...
Oh ....... Yeah I've lost all interest in the game entirely.
I don't even like it when my dorfs work too hard, and they LOVE working hard.
Not interested in a game where I exploit the local adorable wild life. I'm (regrettably) doing that in real life already
From Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man:
She reached down quickly and picked one up.
It regarded Bill Door with bright, stupid eyes.
"Do you know how to pluck a chicken?" said Miss Flitworth.
Sorry if you're the author, OP, but they seem to be in a strange headspace that is warping the nature of the game to fit a predisposed narrative. They seem to think the devs are creating this as some tongue-in-cheek joke? I don't understand that stance at all. It's not supposed to be "funny" - where are they getting that idea?
Also, they consider putting pals to work "cruel" but apparently like Monster Hunter? A game where you literally chase down monsters and sever their limbs as they slowly die so you can harvest them to make better gear? Is it cruel because they're cute? Or is it because in MH they're pests and so deserve to die because they threaten humans?
Speaking of cruel, don't you think it's cruel to pit pokemon against each other until they faint? Why is "use this attack!" less inflammatory than "use this crafting bench!" ?
Personally, I don't see any of that as "cruel" - it's a facet of the game that the author of this article admits gives an interesting vector to consider when capturing more pals out in the wild. Just like I don't think it's cruel to smash 50 cows on top of each other to make a cow farm in minecraft, or beating down dinosaurs to drug them and "tame" them in Ark (which is basically what palworld is... it's Ark with pokemon instead of dinosaurs).
I don't know, the whole article just seems predisposed, someone correct me though.
Mainstream video game journalism continues to be a massive disappointment, but I guess you can't expect much more from a system that's devolved into outrage bait for clicks.
Caveat: I haven't played the game or followed its marketing.
The article and a quick search for marketing about the game make it seem like the game is engaging in satire - its wearing its influences very obviously while adding in an absurdist/dystopian slant to it. "Pokemon but with guns" is a funny concept - juxtaposing cute and violence is the basis for plenty of humor and really feels like a satiric critique of the genre.
The theme of something like cruelty in a piece of media can be examined through how the content itself treats the topic or by how the content fits into some broader reflection of our society. MH, pokemon, minecraft, etc do not really examine the theme of cruelty in themselves. Immersed in those games and the fiction they've set up, cruelty is not a thematic consideration, the power fantasy, power of friendship, or exploration are. Palworld seems (see caveat) like it actually does want to actively engage with cruelty as a theme. It's not asking a player to have suspension of disbelief about the rules of the world like pokemon where creatures just love helping humans, it's asking players to engage directly with overworking cute creatures for personal gain. For most people, the themes presented while engaging with a piece of content are felt more strongly than ones brought up in relation to the real world and outside the fiction. So Palworld's examination of cruelty is going to feel different and more viscerally relevant. I don't see an issue with a reviewer saying that that theme was uncomfortable or not handled well. We can talk about whether other games should get a pass on thorny topics because they construct useful fictions to sidestep the topic, but it seems entirely reasonable to me to critique the portrayal of those issues in a game that is addressing them directly/as satire.
Having defended the article's ability to make those critiques, I will say that the article could have done a better job at conveying them.
It is cruel, but the important point is that it's also a video game. Unless your game is explicitly promoting "slavery's great! animal cruelty is awesome! you should get a pet monkey and give it a Winchester!" as a message for the world to hear, there's nothing wrong with Palworld having cruel acts as part of its gameplay loop. There's no real-life consequences and these elements make for an interesting experience, with a touch of clearly satirical humor.
I do think Palworld is supposed to be "funny", though. At least, it definitely built its marketing around the juxtaposition of cute Pokémon-like creatures with violence and cruelty (which, when you think about it, is more or less the same thing the American Internet was doing in the 2010s). The thing is that in practice, it hardly seems to play into it at all.
My problem with it, that's keeping me from playing it at the moment, is that the game looks shady as hell. Comically mismatched art styles despite high production value, technical jank, dev that's put out 3 or 4 early access games without ever finishing them, founder involved with crypto business...
I also can't exactly word this without sounding like a snobbish asshole, but because it's oddly close to a cheap asset flip and because it has such a batshit concept yet only plays on it through its gameplay and not its theming, I feel like the entire thing is made to cheaply and quickly turn an easily marketable concept into money, with no 'artistic' intent behind it. That bugs me a lot.
Even earlier -- Happy Tree Friends debuted in 1999.
Imagine if Newgrounds didn't have any "Kill Pokemon" flash games until 2010.
oh god I completely forgot about Newgrounds
I feel the same way. The game feels cheap and I'm almost disappointed in the gaming community at large for making this game popular. Obviously it must be fun for a lot of people to sell this well and have the player count it does, but I can't say that I'm thrilled about steam's most played game being a shady, plagaristic game made by a dev team that will never likely finish the game.
I feel a bit snobby saying it, too, but this game seems like an embodiment of many issues in the gaming industry.
I also personally am extremely uncomfortable with the slavery and slaughter of the pals. I'm not normally a prude and I personally enjoy games like Boltgun and Doom, but there's a difference between killing demons and killing and enslaving what are, for all intents and purposes, Pokemon.
It feels the exact opposite to me.
This game is showing the gaming industry that all you need to do is make a decent game and the rest doesn't matter. If anything this is counterculture rearing its head. The gaming industry at large needs to stop price gouging people, stop constantly treating people with silk gloves, stop sanitizing every game until it's milquetoast, and for the love of god just calm down with the microtransactions.
When all you see is new games walking on eggshells not to offend (in any way, shape, or form), it's sort of a breath of fresh air this game just doesn't really take into account the people clamoring about animal cruelty. To me, the pals are just like Doom demons.
All said and done, I do think it's fine to be uncomfortable with the mechanics, but on the other hand it should also be fine to enjoy this for what it is: Just a game.
I should clarify on what I was meaning. Obviously Palworld isn't some microtransaction fest.
What I see is an early access game from a dev that has other games that have been in early access for years, it's yet another survival crafting game, has almost no original ideas, the art direction looks like a cheap mobile game, it is clearly ripping off other franchises, etc. It just seems lazy and shallow and yet a bunch of gamers are saying it's fresh and I'm just confused by it. I may just be turning into a gaming boomer, but the issues I think it embodies aren't necessarily the issues some AAA games have, but the issues we often see with early access games, games designed with shock factor so they can be marketed towards twitch streamers, etc. Instead of innovating or coming up with something original, it's just taking the work others did, reskinning it, and then giving you shock factor tools (like the ability to enslave and murder cute animals). I also don't believe for a second that the devs intend to finish the game, given they have older games that are still in early access after years. It very much seems like a blatant short term cash grab.
To be clear, this isn't the only game doing this, a TON of games do this, but they hardly ever get publicity on the level of Palworld. I also highly doubt this game would be getting any publicity if they just used original designs and didn't market it as "pokemon with guns". If people are having fun with it, great! But it's just bizarre to me to see people saying it's fresh when it seems like the exact opposite to me.
I have to entirely disagree on the "new games walking on eggshells not to offend". There are still plenty of games that are being exactly what they should be. Baldur's Gate has violence, sex, etc. The game lets you basically do whatever you want, including murdering everyone, ripping wings off birds, and other cruel things. There are still plenty of games with blood and guts like Doom and Boltgun. I don't think new games are "walking on eggshells" in the slightest, and we've gotten a TON of new, original games in the last few years that were creative and wonderful, including many that are crass (Disco Elysium is definitely an example of a game that doesn't "walk on eggshells" and is still original and almost universally loved). I can't at all relate to feeling that new games are sanitized or milquetoast, I've actually thought the last 5 years have been some of the best in gaming history and have produced a ton of original games and ideas.
I do want to add that I do appreciate your point of view, as well, even if I just can't relate to it. I'm hoping I come off as portraying my own opinion and not trying to tell you you're wrong or something. People can enjoy the games they like and I have no problem with that, I just have a lot of problems with this particular game, not the people playing it.
I think that's really underselling the game. It's been at >1 million concurrent players (>2 in Asian hours) for over a week. It's not a cheap joke people buy for a laugh and then drop - people are playing it and enjoying it, which is really the end metric that matters for a developer. I haven't played it as much as some other people I know, but it is genuinely enjoyable to play.
None of the mechanics are particularly unique, but the combination of mechanics is unique, and that's just as much something you can innovate. They also interplay in surprisingly cool ways. For instance, the Ark survival part, the factorio part, and the pokemon part all mesh with each other. The ark and factorio part gives meaning to catching pokemon - in pokemon, you have your A team and then a bunch of pokemon you never see again in your box.
In Palworld, they have a job, they make things for you. And each pokemon has something it's good at doing. So I'd never bother catching the random normal type lamb pokemon in pokemon after the first one, but I do in palworld because they can mine near the base.
The factorio part makes the ark part much less grindy. The ark part gives meaning and a goal to the pokemon part. I have no idea if they intended this, but it does work.
I would also say that the "slave and kill pokemon" part is extremely exaggerated. There is nothing here really that is more unethical than what the average Minecraft player does, the kid game. Yeah, you can kill pokemon and they die in an cartoonish way and some of them drop meat. You also kill the cute sheep and pigs and cows in Minecraft and eat them.
Yeah, some people built weird sweatshop dungeons in Palworld. People also build chicken farms, or villager traps that would make the architects of the Matrix proud in Minecraft. There's pig farms people make that would make the industrial farming complex scared of them.
The "default" is that you are presented as being companions with the fakemons, who help you build in a "villagers help build the village" way.
God knows if the game will ever be "finished", but there's certainly financial incentive for the developers to keep developing the game. It has >$30 of value for most people as is. There's no grandiose promises - their roadmap is quite humble. People are buying it for what it is.
That's where I think Pokémon finally generated a worthwhile loop with Legends Arceus - the catch gameplay itself was fun and had some risk with Pokémon getting angry, the Pokedex was really the core rather than getting to a particular battle, and it had the alpha mons / bosses as anchors around that gameplay. Granted I'm sure that game still mechanically pales in comparison to what Palworld provides, but also:
The difference here is that you're supposed to treat Pokémon very differently because the series is pretty heavy on implying the species are all way more sentient than a typical cow or pig. And that's where I think the criticism about cynicism comes in, maybe rightfully - Pokémon is an extremely optimistic series; it's often to a fault, but Palworld's edginess doesn't feel like a good answer to it if you're making the direct comparison. It just comes across as nihilistic. Pokémon is occasionally self-aware enough to work the problems with it into a great story - people liked the PETA take in B/W because it whiffed punches at itself, and PLA dealt with a society pretty rightfully fearful of Pokémon and each other coming to an understanding as a narrative. I don't personally want the optimism completely lost, and it's why I don't really think Palworld is going to scratch that itch for me.
You made the gameplay sound more appealing than I've seen so far, though... Totally get why that works, and it does convince me to maybe give it a try on sale some day.
Yup. I get I'm on the internet, but I love Pokemon precisely because its a comfy series where I can raise and foster my pets. Pets that can understand me and clearly have their own quirks and mannerisms. Battles are fun but in a more sportsman way (which is how the pokemon league is portrayed), not in a "haha dogfighting gamble" way. There's a reason pokemon "faint" after all. I don't mind when the games or other media deal into some of the more grim realities of nature, but that charm and co-existing being the overarching theme is an important one for me.
It's also as simple as a genre mismatch for me. People complain about turned based battles but JRPGs are my favorite genre. So you may as well be trying to tell me as a fish that water feels weird; I'll never truly empathize. Palworld as a survival crafting third person shooter MMO hybrid? Yeah, I won't deny that I may have fun with it, but it's never going to be a game I personally go out o my way to get for me. Maybe if a friend really wants me to join in.
Thank you for the reply. I'm glad to hear that at least some of the gameplay is fun! You're right that it's probably a minority of players (who are making up the majority of social media around the game) building sweatshops on purpose and that the majority of people are probably just going through a normal crafting routine.
I mean, it's NOT a GaaS (at least, I haven't heard about any DLC/skins). So the end metric doesn't necessarily care about player retention. For an Early Access game it's a good metric to justify finishing development, but the game could fall off a cliff over the next month and still prove itself.
I mean, the game enables these mechanics to happen and they do very little to limit your resources on how you work your Pals. i.e. the game isn't necessary encouraging slavery, but it allows you setup a sweatshop and rewards you for it. So you can argue that it does condone it by not punishing you (much) for overworking your pal.
if you choose to go about it that way. I try to use multiple teams and if you do competitive battling you're always scanning around for the right mix of stats, moves, and abilities. But no, the game has nearly no skill floor so it allows you to overlevel and mow through an entire game with one Pokemon.
I think that's another juxtaposition of Pokemon that comes down to demographic. They don't want to have kids get stuck and be unable to progress because they didn't master teambuilding or type advantadges. You can brute for through almost anything in the main campaign.
You say ripping off other franchises, I say remixing other ideas into something wholy new.
Back in the early 90s there was no such thing as first person shooters.
There were first person games like battlezone but the idea of being a person with a gun that you look down the sights of just didn’t really exist, until wolfenstein 3d. It was a popular game, but it took doom coming out to really cement the idea of being something innovative fresh and new. It was a cultural behemoth in the relatively small by todays standards arena of PC gaming.
For years afterwards, other first person shooters came out, but they weren’t called that for a while.
They were called Doom Clones, with a good deal of derision in most cases. Peoples preconception is that these games did no work of their own, they just ripped off of an original idea from id and slapped their own assets on it.
If that had become the prevailing narrative, then an entire gaming genre would have never existed.
If you expand that out, no genres would have ever existed. There’s be no RPGs, just dungeons. There’s be no RTSs, just Herzog Zwei, and there’s be no roguelikes, just… rogue.
So yes, Palword very clearly cribs a lot from Pokémon, breath of the wild, and ARK.
But then, Pokémon cribs a lot from earthbound, breath of the wild takes a lot from monster Hunter and far cry, and ARK takes a lot from day-Z and other survival games.
If we held every game to the standard that every idea must be wholly original we wouldn’t even still be sitting around playing pong, because it was a direct rip off of table tennis games coded at Berkeley in the 60s
The game definitely has familiar elements, but there’s also never been a game quite like it. But most importantly, it’s fun to play, which for me is the absolute defining feature of a video game that trumps virtually anything else about it.
Of course games draw inspiration from others, and of course no game can be 100% original, but there's a bit of a difference when palworld is making some of their pals look near identical to specific pokemon. That's not inspired, that's not building, it's cheap immitation. I wouldn't have that problem with the game if their pals reminded people of Pokemon, but they are straight copies in some cases.
Edit: anyways, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds with arguing over what is clearly a divisive game when we probably won't change each other's minds about anything. Have a good night!
Similarly I suppose I should divulge, because I agree with you on all of these points.
I wasn't necessary commenting on the state of this publisher and their penchant for never releasing early access games. That behaviour by itself is a blight on early access, which is a type of monetisation that immensely helps certain independent developers which I generally don't think is a bad thing. Companies like these abuse the willingness of the consumer to help develop and publish a game they think is worth it.
Nor do I think the game is fresh in all of its mechanics. What it does do with the gameplay loop of survival, base building, automation, and exploration, is that it manages to make it feel appropriately balanced without nickle and diming their customer. If I take the charitable approach, I assume that's what people mean with "fresh". There's plethora of survival games that just make it a slog. Notable exception being Valheim, that was praised for their lack of penalties when not playing the continuous survival loop but rather giving you benefits for doing so, allowing the player to play at their own pace (example, lack of food not killing you and giving you massive bonuses for taking the time to cook something).
And lastly, I was mainly aiming at triple A games with that statement. Games like Starfield are just so incredibly bland and safe, but these publishers do have a lot of sway. Bethesda seems to dismiss any complaints about the state of their rather lackluster game, while at the same time trying to appease the twitter crowd as well as trying to reach as large a market share as possible by making things super casual. Many of the large studios play it safe, with remasters, samey sequels, just bland IPs, and egregious monetization. Sega is now gating New Game + behind a $15 paywall. On the other hand, you have Hogwarts Legacy smashing sales records because people by and large do not care about the inner goings on and just want a good game.
Baldur's Gate 3 is an exceptional game and caught a ton of flak from these same big studios saying that this is a one off, and that gamers shouldn't expect such a level of quality in the future. Those statements are baffling to me. While I'd consider Larian a Triple A studio since BG3, they weren't before, yet seeing Swen Vincke's state of mind I feel they will not break bad any time soon.
Regardless, I've been trying to find the words to explain myself properly what I mean when I say "walking on eggshells" but I can't seem to find the right words this evening. I certainly don't mean it as a "muh freeze peach" kind of thing. I think it boils down to a growing distaste of the current state of gaming when you look at AAA.
And yeah, Disco Elysium was fantastic.
100% agree with you on that paragraph. Many studios do play it overly safe with games and I agree that can be a problem. I see what you mean by the "walking on eggshells" thing. A lot of times when that phrase is used, it's around social issues, so I think I assumed you were going off how I said I was uncomfortable with the slavery and murder and stuff in Palworld, rather than what you seemed to actually mean in terms of game design.
Well.. While I didn't mean social issues specifically and didn't go off on you being uncomfortable (not that I wanted to, since that's totally fine and your right), I did point out Hogwarts Legacy for a reason as an example that the market as a whole doesn't seem particularly interested in social issues or identity politics within their games. You see that people just want games that are good regardless of the politics, and conversely when it's made into a point the sanitisation is often just cheap pandering. It also feels you're being pandered to. When a game feels like it's made specifically to make you a mark, instead of something that's actually good, people are rightfully pissed off. Like Coca-Cola being a super pollutant, but at least they have rainbows on their marketing? It's cheap and insincere. Palworld in a sense doesn't do that. It's refreshing in its freedom.
If you want to create a game where the cleavage is a little too visible, and the men's speedo's are a little too tight then in my opinion the devs should go right ahead. People that do not want sexualisation, will not buy sexualisation. I think the market is self-correcting in that sense. AAA games tend to err on the side of caution and over-correct because of a small group of people disliking certain choices. In this case, Palworld is not your game because it makes you uncomfortable. Should it then not be made because it makes people uncomfortable? (I'm not saying you are saying this! Don't worry! I'm trying to make a general point here)
Now as a note to this, I'm not saying that we should just have no holds barred games where the purpose of the game is to stomp on social issues as a way to further political activism. I'm not arguing in favour of the aforementioned "Freeze peach" movement, but I do think we see AAA games overly cautious when it comes to online-twitter-activism. People can separate fact and fiction really well, and butchering my Pal doesn't mean I'm now holding a knife and looking funny at my cat. It's fine sometimes to "cross a line" with games, as long as it doesn't try to convince you that it's the right way of doing things in the real world. While Palworld seems to revel in edgy jokes about work slaves, it doesn't seem to tell you that slavery is a political point you should vote for. And that's fine with me.
Edit to add: I just watched this video and he pretty much sums up my feelings to a tee. Here's how I feel about it too. He puts it more succinctly than I can in a text post.
you might be looking for the word "sanitation". Many AAA games are made to be squeaky clean and polished to a fault. They leave no room for awkward experiments or potential controversy. They don't want the player to be asking hard questions about the game nor the makers behind it. It's formulaic in a way that feels like its focused on delivering a "game" first and an "experience" a distant 3rd or 4th place.
but of course that sort of experience will be different from the one here where you boot up a server with a few friends, give 3 of your pets a gun and go ham (and then probably eat a 4th pet for dinner). AAA games give you a guided tour around their amusement park while many of these "counter culture" games are more like a playground. Not necessarily a full on sandbox, but you're given a few tools (slides, swings, maybe even a basketball court) and the kids find their fun. Often in unintended ways.
(BTW, sanitation is not bad by itself. Disco Elysium is extremely polished and not necessarily letting you go off the script. But it's of course going a very different direction and challenging the player's own beliefs. That's a different topic altogether)
I sure wish these platitudes extended to 99.9% of other games in the "gamer discourse". or at least 99.9% of actual indies. It becomes hard to buy into this sentiment when around this time last month a borderline-scam of a game still sold 500k copies before shutting down its studio in 4 days just because it had pretty trailers. And in this same year the sequel to one of the highest rated games of all time was being "A DLC packaged as a $70 game" (this game and is prequel had no micro-transactions by the way. BOTW had one DLC expansion and TOTK as of now has none).
People clearly cling to the high production values and want to be apart of those hype cycles. Otherwise they'd put more effort to find games like this (which was mainly discovered via a comedic trailer. Since it was not going to stand out in graphics).
Yeah, "cheap" is the word I've been dancing around my head on why I'm down on it. Like, take the Payday comparison @Trobador made - I agree with them that there's no way the game or creators seem actively malicious, but like... Payday also could've slapped the ability to sell hostages for extra money? And didn't? It's not the content matter that annoys me, it's that it sounds like it serves much purpose than to generate some influencer thumbnails going ":O you can do WHAAAT" while they flail their arms around and rip their face off for clicks or whatever. And that's zero judgment about why people want to play it, I get that the survival open-world loop is popular and addicting regardless of whether the humor or Pokémon egging pulls you in. But based on what I hear about it playing like Ark it sounds shallow and gives me little reason to try it.
I don't know if anyone else gets as viscerally irritated, but it frustrates me extra when there's some piece of the market that should appeal to me and they miss the mark, I guess - Wargroove not quite getting the Advance Wars feel down, Fire Emblem Awakening shifting to the grand JRPG audience, or uh, all the excuses The Pokémon Company makes to ship kinda lazy products... I see Palworld and I hate that it takes up my mental real estate with no actual appeal. (Probably an entirely personal problem! Still annoying!)
But I'm also not seeing any base to actual straight-up plagiarism - it looks like the model copy things turned out to be completely fabricated. Assuming there aren't any actually-plagiarized pieces in the game, I'm also hoping that this doesn't prompt some lawsuit from TPC/Nintendo. You can't steal a conceptual gameplay loop... Maybe Game Freak can respond with a better game?
To me, they don't have to be using the same literal assets that Game Freak uses for it to be plagarism, just like how in writing, it can still be plagarism if you take someone else's sentence and substitute some words in or out. In the case of Palworld, some of the pal designs can be directly linked to some pokemon and it's pretty clear the palworld devs just lifted designs from Pokemon instead of using their own ideas (I agree that it appears they didn't actually steal assets, however). The same is clear about their upcoming game that looks just like Hollow Knight.
I'm not saying they are or aren't violating any copywrite and I honestly don't care if they get in legal trouble or not, I'm just pointing out how unoriginal I think the entire game is.
I believe that Palword fails to be funny precisely because it makes an effort to do so. In games like Pokemon or Minecraft, set in a PG-rated world, it is the juxtaposition between childlike elements and brutal scenarios that creates humor when drawing comparisons to dark themes like slavery and industrialism. For instance, when you capture a group of villagers, construct a fortress around them, and coerce them to breed, it's the absurdity of the entire situation – the fact that a game allows such actions and even rewards you for them (though not explicitly acknowledging it as a planned concept) – that makes it shocking, thus laughable.
This stands in stark contrast to dark themes being intended as both a conceptual level and gameplay mechanics. The latter, at best, offers a very edgy portrayal and, at worst, feels tacky, uninspired, and generic – precisely the sentiment I get when looking at this game.
There exists a significant distinction between capturing a Zigzagoon, loading it with HMs to carry it throughout the entire game, and naming it "HM slave," and a game actually acknowledging HM slavery as a mechanic, making players interact with it. The former is tongue-in-cheek organic self humor, while the latter falls into the category of "edgy dark humor" aimed at teenagers (which might be the target audience for this game after all).
The game really isn’t that edgy, though. I think the clips have made it seem like that, but that’s more on gamers for being edgy.
Unless you try to make sweatshops, it doesn't really feel like you’re enslaving anyway. The vibe is more “the village works together to make things”. People are intentionally making dungeons to have funny screenshots. Unless you go out of the way, it’s not really like that.
It’s true that it doesn’t have some of the intentional omissions Pokémon has (people eat meat in Pokémon, for instance, but it’s just not said where it comes from. In palworld the Pokémon drop meat when they die), but I wouldn’t call that all that edgy - just how logical dictates something would work.
It’s like ToTK - twitter was just full of people crucifying koroks. But it’s not like totk was a game about making brutal korok torture devices, it was just something you could do.
The official marketing is plenty edgy, look at the Steam page:
"To survive, you must tread carefully and make difficult choices...even if that means eating your own Pals when the time comes."
"Want to build a pyramid? Put an army of Pals on the job. Don't worry; there are no labor laws for Pals."
"Letting Pals do the work is the key to automation. Build a factory, place a Pal in it, and they'll keep working as long as they're fed—until they're dead, that is."
"With Pals on your side you can tackle even the most dangerous areas. When the time comes, you might have to sacrifice one to save your skin. They'll protect your life—even if it costs their own."
"Endangered Pals live in wildlife sanctuaries. Sneak in and capture rare Pals to get rich quick! It's not a crime if you don't get caught, after all."
Doesn't Pokemon explicitly acknowledge Magicarp as being tasty? I seem to remember something like that.
Pokémon has a weird relationship with that sort of content tbh and I feel like a smarter game could do an interesting job critiquing and/or satirizing that. But my impression is that Palworld doesn't really dig deeply enough into these themes to be truly interesting about it.
Like how you can capture and sell humans..?
Having that as a mechanic isn't the same as promoting it. Does PAYDAY stand to promote robbing banks?
If anything, Payday dissuades you because the police can see through walls and get alerted even though you're fully stealth.
Yeah I agree, this author's own damn bio says he "gushes about Monster Hunter". I also find their style of writing absolutely insufferable.
Not the author, no worries. I think this article starts a conversation I'd like to have, but it does lack some depth.
I think this is the part of the discourse surrounding this game that I personally find most interesting. Palworld isn't that different from other games in terms of the cruelty angle, which means that it's weird to make an exception for it. But maybe Minecraft is messed up, or Pokémon actually sorta is whitewashed cockfighting. Just because these things are justified diegetically doesn't mean they stop existing in the context of the real world.
I don't think the article really gets into that idea, though. It's short and rather inflammatory. But I don't get the sense that Palworld is all too concerned with making that point either. It's a satire of Pokémon, sure, but it's too busy putting half-baked features from as many popular genres as it can to do more than be fun and silly. Being bad art doesn't make it a bad game. Granted, that's subjective, so your read on it may differ.
On the contrary, from other quotes in this discussion thread, Palworld’s own marketing leans heavily into it, with a number of references like “it’s not illegal if you’re not caught” and “they’ll keep working for you … until they’re dead”
I feel like the whole thing is written from the perspective that Palworld is just "grimdark Pokemon" and draws conclusions from that singular viewpoint.
For what it's worth, this is why I've never been able to get into MH. I don't enjoy the fantasy of looking for a threatened dragon or something, slowly killing it, and using its parts for armour.
PETA seem to think so.
In all seriousness though, where we draw our lines between harmless and poor taste doesn't always make logical sense. Plenty of games allow you to murder people on a massive scale and most people wouldn't bat an eye, however killing children or explicitly racially motivated murder would be far more controversial. Mortal Kombat can have characters pulling each other's spines out and get a reception that it's trite while Cyberpunk allowing you pick your genitals is meme-worthy. So yes, it makes sense that putting "cute" creatures on an assembly line until they work themselves to death registers as more cruel than skinning an ugly creature you hunted, even if it shouldn't.
Also, being cruel and being "a facet of the game" are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of games strive for cruelty. Sometimes it's to spur intellectual discourse; sometimes it's for crass enjoyment. Cruelty doesn't have to be melodramatic or empassioned either; it can also be callous and banal. From the sounds of it, Palworld is the latter.
Whether that's worth writing an entire article about is another matter though.
I'm currently playing it right now, so far it's very heavily Ark inspired lol. As in, my friend pointed out that the UI is literally lifted straight from Ark. It's also kinda janky, ngl, almost feels like a bunch of store assets slapped together. I haven't gone far yet though.
(It's on gamepass btw)
Well that's not too surprising since their previous project was a Breath of The Wild rip-off.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/01/random-the-pokemon-with-guns-game-on-steam-is-yet-more-homework-copying
It also has a Breath of the Wild climbing system and it looks like there's a parachute too lol
It also completely lifts all of Breath of the Wild's music cues.
I haven't played Ark, so I can't comment if it's an ark ripoff, but it's definitely a minecraft/BoTW/Pokemon/Fortnite ripoff, to the extent that it seems like there should be copyright issues of some kind.
That said, two hours in all those elements seem to go great together, so I guess great artists steal.
Well, it depends on jurisdiction (which is somewhat surprising that the devs are japanese), but gameplay elements aren't copyrightable in the US, so you can ripoff the mechanics of another game as blatantly as you want.
In terms of the design, it's pretty obvious that many of the pals are... uh... pretty close analogs to specific pokemon, but I'd think it'd be hard to win a copyright case. They are different, still. There isn't a direct copying of anything but the "vibe", which isn't really copyrightable.
if it's ripping off so many things, that compounds my doubt that any of it constitutes copyright infringement.
I'm really tired of seeing this take. This and the following paragraph tells me less that the Pals are ripoffs of pokemon, and more that it's impossible to make a cartoonish looking fake animal without it looking like one or more of the 3,000+ existing pokemon designs. There are similarities between Vixy and Eevee for sure, but tweak it a little bit and it looks too much like Vulpix or Fenneken or Nickit or Zorua. Pokemon doesn't own the copyright to "a cute lil fox creature." The same goes for every other example. Yes, Dinossom looks exactly like Dragonite mixed with Meganium. If it looked any different at all, it would look like some other combination of pokemon. I mean, the only thing the elephants have in common is that they're cartoon elephants. Call palballs knockoffs of pokeballs, sure. Call the paldeck a knockoff pokedex, alright. But let's stop saying that every cute cartoon animal is a pokemon ripoff.
I mean, Ice Cream and Pile of Trash are two Pokemon. Does real life rip off Pokemon every garbage day?
Cremis looks much more like Eevee than Vixy, to the point that it goes far beyond "cute cartoon fox". It's true that The Pokémon Company doesn't own a copyright on every cute animal, however context matters in copyright law. You can argue that it's a coincidence for one cartoon animal to bear a resemblance to another, especially given there's over a thousand Pokémon at this point, but that argument rings hollow in the face of all the other similarities.
That doesn't mean Palworld is a bad game or shouldn't exist or that people shouldn't play and enjoy it. Just be honest about what it is and don't be surprised when they get a cease and desist letter. Artists have lost copyright cases on far, far less than this.
I just don't see it. The only things they have in common are that they're fluffy foxes with the same shaped mouth. I can't see anything besides the mouth that looks like it was lifted directly off of Eevee's design. It's sort of like Ice Ice Baby/Under Pressure, if the only things the baselines had in common was the first two notes and the tempo.
It's also worth keeping two things in mind. Both companies are located in Japan, where most people on English speaking social media have woefully little idea how the copyright system works, and Nintendo is about as litigious as Billy Mitchell. If they felt like anything in Palworld was infringing on their copyright, they would have done something the day it came out, if not even earlier.
Does Cremis really look that similar to Eevee? Cremis is completely covered in wool like a sheep. His legs appear stubby, and his ears are fatter. He has an extra tuft of hair/fluff between his ears. His eyes are wider, differently colored, and have a teardrop. His tail is much shorter than Eevee's long, bushy tail.
I think it's natural to draw comparisons, but when placed side-by-side it seems easy to spot the differences.
And Ice Ice Baby is a completely different song from Under Pressure. The baseline even has a whole extra ding!
Didn't save Vanilla Ice from having to pay out a settlement to Queen though.
Hell, George Harrison lost a lawsuit on the grounds of subconscious plagerism, and I doubt even a Beatlemaniac could tell which of Harrison's songs supposedly ripped off He's So Fine without knowing ahead of time.
Legally, the two works don't need to be exactly the same or even have exactly similar elements. The question is whether they share substantial similarity. One of the tests (though not the only one) is whether an ordinary observer subjectively finds substantial similarity in the total concept and feel between the two works. The fact that Palworld is memed as Pokémon with guns and a discussion about inspiration v plagerism is happening throughout the gaming community on this doesn't bode well for them.
Look, the broad strokes of the game are fine and combine enough elements into a novel-enough package that I think it could stand on its own, but having so many assets be so similar really pushes the boundaries. The game is still in early access so hopefully they'll give it a more original visual design, because it's explosive popularity has undoubtedly drawn the eye of Nintendo, Epic, etc.
Perhaps unsurprisingly to some, Palworld has also done very well, selling 1 million copies in its first 8 hours (https://twitter.com/Palworld_EN/status/1748376473256579177). It's a survival crafting game, which are as popular as ever, it's a "funny" premise, and I think there's been a lot of demand for an actual competitor to Pokémon. For some people maybe this is it, and I've already seen a few comments about Palworld just saying the quiet part out loud with regard to capturing Pokémon being animal cruelty/slave labor. Personally, though, I don't know that that's a good thing. Regardless, it remains to be seen how this game does over the next weeks and months, because release day opinions are always the strongest ones.
From Crossplay: Kids are playing the "Pokemon with guns" game, here are their opinions.
General consensus among the kids is that if you're not put off by shooting the cute things with guns, it's not really that violent compared to Fortnite, and power dynamics don't really come into play, it's interesting that they help you build and you help them battle.
I think there's something to this game, mechanics are solid, base builder survival plus cute minion manager is a neat take, to the point chucking guns into it makes it kind of a lesser product, but I guess that sells well.
My game designer partner made almost exactly the same comment.
After playing a couple dozen hours myself, as a former Ark addict who really enjoys the combo of survival creature collection, I have to say I totally disagree with the latter portion of the review. With the settings as default when you make a personal or co-op world, I had no need to engage with the more ridiculous features to progress satisfyingly.
Getting one of the early, speedier mounts (Direwolf in my case) and riding it around the countryside while catching and collecting new things, then heading back to base with your haul, reorganizing Pals, building and upgrading is a really solid loop for me in Palworld, and way less punishing than Ark at default settings.
But I do agree that it could get even better if they punched up the satire element or made a clear alternative to the "cruelty" mechanics.
I think this game highlights how stagnant the Pokemon franchise is. A lot commentary is focusing on the "adult" nature of this game; killing "pals," forcing them to work, etc. I think the whole "pokemon with guns" label is catching attention, but I think the underlying desire is an advancement of pokemon games into modern mechanics.
Ignoring explicit content, how great would "Baldur's Gate with Pokemon" be? Or "Cyberpunk with Pokemon"? The whole Pokemon franchise hasn't moved beyond adolescents embark on adventure in a hyper sanguine world. I think people want a fully fledged game with character arcs, mechanics beyond "fire beats leaf beats water beats fire." I know that competitive pokemon gets more advanced, but you won't encounter that just playing the game.
I think Palworld is getting talked about partly because of the edgy content, but I think most people are excited about Pokemon in a different genre.
Gonna stump for just a moment and say I had a great time with Cassette Beasts. For $20 it's a very solid competitor in this genre. The story, while still quite silly and "quirky" at times, hit some serious tones too which surprised me, and the overworld is genuinely a delight to explore. The mechanics are also absolutely batshit bonkers, like this goes way beyond STAB and into genuinely interesting strategic territory. And basically every fight being a duo (2v2) means lots of ability to synchronize abilities for maximum effect.
My personal favorite change? Reusable TMs. That scratched such an itch that I audibly sighed out loud in happiness when I realized. It's so much less stressful to be able to experiment with new movesets without needing to involve hours of grinding/breeding.
This review is on the shorter side. I recommend reading it, even if you have no real intention of playing Palworld. Here's a quote if you need convincing:
Oh ....... Yeah I've lost all interest in the game entirely.
I don't even like it when my dorfs work too hard, and they LOVE working hard.
Not interested in a game where I exploit the local adorable wild life. I'm (regrettably) doing that in real life already
From Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man:
She reached down quickly and picked one up.
It regarded Bill Door with bright, stupid eyes.
"Do you know how to pluck a chicken?" said Miss Flitworth.
Bill looked from her to the hen.
BUT WE FEED THEM, he said helplessly.