Palworld Is BREAKING The Gaming Industry

Josh Brown po world still a thing when did this arrive Scott it arrived on Friday it dominated its way across the weekend we did a little video on it yesterday but I want to talk about the ramifications of what po World means to The Wider gaming industry um as we go forward cuz I feel like every day every hour of every day there's a different permutation to this conversation the whole AI thing is its own thing on the side I don't necessarily think or agree with the people that say the game was entirely AI generated or anything there's not no evidence for that whatsoever I think the thing that's really interesting here is the reality of how the game was made and where pal World sits in the ongoing conversation of how much production quality how much production value do we want out of our games um and the amount of money that is thrown into something like a Spider-Man 2 where its budget was like $360 million or whatever and then it has to try and break even by selling 7 million units and then you've got pal World which um you start deling into the game's development seems like it was made for about $20,000 when it's converted with a tiny team of about 20 people apparently had its peak it was closer to about 40 50 people but that's still a fraction of the um a team size that would make something in the AAA space like a god of war a Last of Us or a Spider-Man and po worlds outsold them considerably this thing has now sold over 5 million units um at25 a pop and it's made the tiny little team uh overnight millionaires I want to talk about every aspect of that there's some quotes from the CEO of pocket who made the game but just wasn't mean Josh they're going to make a movie about this AR they they're going to make a a dumb money esque movie about how this overnight sensation with 5 to 40 employees for $20,000 worth of investment made 5 million copies worth of sales overnight this is crazy man and to be honest I'm still getting to grips with it myself you know I came in on Monday and you were like you want to do news on pal world and I was like what's power world um why is everyone talking about power world what is this thing and then you described it as Pokemon with guns and then you get into the old AI accusations like you mentioned but what does this mean for the industry and to be honest I don't know if it's going to have much impact in what I mean mean by that is we always have viral Sensations the day before for instance was the most wishlisted game on Steam and that sold millions and millions of copies initially before getting refunded it sounds like people are having a lot more fun with pow than they did that game yes but we've had these kind of mad viral Sensations pop up now and again and they are in my opinion definitely anomalies rather than um indicative of necessarily what players want not saying that you know they don't want stuff like this but in terms of this being an Arbiter for things to come I think it's more of a oneoff than it is you know the rule going forward I think it's it's a the thing that fascinates me is like what's the industry going to learn from this maybe they don't learn anything at all however I feel like there's a bit of a ruction going on in regards to like I said production quality the amount of money that's put into games and this idea of gameplay first the idea being that you don't necessarily um you know be wowed by uh cinematics alone or Graphics alone skin pores and irises and that level of detail that we get in the Naughty Dog the Rockstar space and I feel like power world is the latest line in a series of games like lethal company that blew up last year various smaller titles Among Us blew up across the pandemic like every now and then you see something that is just a really cool gameplay idea and then it flies and most of those other games are original gameplay ideas um which is why it's interesting listening to um CEO takaro mobe talk about the way that PO world came together where he's literally just citing um very open about just saying look I just wanted to make something that people would like I didn't care about orality apparently he was at one point involved in a Nintendo program um to work potentially over there and and he said that Nintendo value originality and new ideas and he was like I don't want to do that stuff I want to do something that's trendy and and I think it's really interesting talking about the sort of vend diagram crossover of creativity and bankability and the different scales of production that we have in gaming because you look at a lot of the um the upper tier stuff the AAA stuff the suicide squads or whatever it is and or the Avengers and you can see what they're pulling from like suicide squad looks like a series of bankable ideas stitched together and for whatever reason we don't necessarily go at it with the the overall ey that power worlds had there is a lot of negativity on suicide squad but it's almost accepted in that Echelon of production whereas if you're a smaller team it's like well all you guys did was all you did was bring a bunch of elements together and you stitch them together and they're so nakedly obvious like I've played a lot i' played a couple hours of power world now and I'm going to play a little bit more of it it's entirely mechanically zarif fying like it's a very nice little game like it has a weird soul to it or a lack of one um but still you can see the elements they're bringing in like breath of the Wild's music death strandings item completion animation and fortnite's act swinging like you can see exactly what they pulled from and it's just interesting going like is this what people want where it's like a series of bankable ideas and trendy mechanics stitched together and then you make millions in two days is the industry just going to do this from now on you made a lot of good points there Scott I've got to admit and you know within those I want to talk about the one that you mentioned right at the end about you know bankable ideas and pulling from things very obviously because honestly I I'm surprised that there I know there's been a backlash but like you said there's a lot of people been enjoying the game and that is quite rare I think in even the Indie realm you know you talked about suicide squad getting a lot of flak for pulling from you know Trends and trying to capitalize on things that are currently popular but we've seen a lot of Indie Games die for that very same reason like I mentioned the day before you know that had a lot of problems and probably would have been killed even without the eventual release of the game just because of people's the expectations and the in the trailers that were put off which were not representative of the game but people were still interested in that despite it you know looking a lot like the division and being a survival dystopian game that we've kind of had versions of before and you even mentioned some titles there that are successes like Among Us you know yeah Among Us is is visuals is they unique they're definitely um they they allow the game to stand out but that's based on a you know classic game of like like werewolves within you know I mean it's based on a formula and you know people still like love that but yeah I think it just kind of depends on what you're pulling from and what your sort of log line is I think it does prove that all you need is a is an an interesting premise rather than like $200 million worth of resources to make your ear cartilage see through in the Sun and to get people's attention but I think it's really hard to capture lightning in a bottle in that way and I can't believe that PO world is the one to do it yeah I would never in a million years have expected this to be the game that is the bestselling game of 2024 so far the game that's outsold the likes of Spider-Man 2 and has become the sixth best selling game on Steam so far we haven't even talking about the console sales yet and it is in Early Access it is on Game Pass um but because of how much power world's blowing up you do have interviews with um CEO takar roob um talking about what they were pulling influence from he says that they don't really want to be compared to Pokémon necessarily it has more in common with Arc survival evolved or something like that um which is true like if you play power world as much as obviously there are a monster taming mechanic and a a creature capturing mechanic in there and the majority of what you're doing is Base building and base defending um and like assigning your creatures to go and do automated uh tasks for you and he cites that kind of stuff in the is an interview over on automaton media and talking about just how much they've blown up um and it is interesting him saying that he literally says here that he doesn't have a Creative Vision he doesn't have a creative message he just wanted to play something and make something that people would enjoy playing um it is with saying that in regards to I'll get back to the overall point but it is worth saying that in regards to what you do in pal world and he does note that over time you choose how you want to treat your creatures and you can't just work them to the Bone you can literally make sweat shop style factories where all the creatures do is just make make firearms for you what the hell is this game that's the that's the end game of this game it was in the trailers and stuff I just shown very cute characters um slaving away making um Firearms looking very sad like if you want to play it that way and be a complete dystopian leader you can be so he is pulling from um you know thematics and messaging and you know comments on capitalism and everything else um so there are things in there like you can argue like I said before I joked about it not having much of a soul because of how easily stitched together it is there is something in here that gives you the agency and how you want to treat a work force and how that goes forward the game doesn't necessarily give you a story resolution or anything um but there are visual representations of whether you're treating people well giving them nice little houses and places to live or you could just work them to death and then kill them and eat them and get more genuinely wide eyed I can't believe the the the the the faces that I'm making at this game I I come into the news video you telling me Josh there's this game that's Pokemon with guns you know it's a viral sensation so we and it's quirky and now we're getting into conversations about workers rights and authoritarian governments by the sounds of things like what the hell is going on here hangman pagee going to come in that'll be a reference for five people in the the back there know what that means workers right um but still in these interviews with mobia like I said he's saying look we didn't have a Creative Vision we just wanted to put something together um and the the reality of the team size that did put it together he said that when they started development there were only barely three to four people and and they had had the idea of making this sort of 3D game with various a automation based mechanics um and they literally said that they put guns in there because people like to shoot guns and the American audience likes guns it was as simple as that to him because it's a popular idea and it's just thrown together and I think there's something about how honest he's being about the kind he's very much vocalizing a level of this is what people want to will make it that most um tiers of production save for boardrooms or save for design meetings that you know the industry so buttoned up as it is you don't really get um such a nakedly honest conversation about like well we just we take Pokemon and we'll put the fortnite axe in it and then you'll get to shoot people and it'll be um you know uh foraging and survival mechanics in a 3D space that's literally what it is and it's sold very well I don't know whether people are responding to that Honesty in general most people won't know you know the quotes themselves but there's something about p world that is just so nakedly honest in a way that I think most of the industry isn't and I wonder if that's the thing H or one of the things that is kind of breaking the industry as it is right now and why it's blowing up so much this is why I think it's an an anomaly again man because normally when people do this um things get like rejected how many um franchises and beloved Indie Games pivoted to say a battle royale and then were initially immediately rejected because you know they're just clearly chasing Trends they're clearly trying to give um the audience what's popular at the time so the fact that this has worked where so many other things have been you know battered away and criticized to death but this has been you know embraced and has sold 5 million copies and it just makes me question my entire life but I think I'm mostly interested in the longevity of this game you know it's easy to say now that it's sold 5 million copies I'm interested to see how many refunds there may have been or may not have been by the end of the week I'm interested to see how the response to the game in its Early Access form develops people just jumping in because it is this weird curio and then they're immediately jumping out or is it going to find a player base that sustains it in the long run and it becomes even more financially successful because I think if that happens that's when it will influence the gam and feere but say people jump off it right now or the you know allegations of the AI stuff become more pronounced and maybe a lawsuit does come I know there was one referenced about Nintendo or something like that then you know it it there's a lot of variables is what I'm trying to say yeah and it's like the whole thing with the AI stuff I feel like the idea of AI generated stuff mobia does comment on that in the automaton uh media interview where he says we make our games very seriously we have absolutely no intent of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies we have undergone legal reviews and at this moment there have been no specific actions taken by other companies I know there have been all kinds of rumors floating around on the internet but please rest assured and give our game a chance I feel like the AI thing is increasingly put to bed I think the um the conversation is moving towards the idea of direct asset lifting um because there are comparison videos online taking specific models in Pokemon and the wireframe mesh models when they're not textured and then the wireframe mesh models of power worlds and then overlapping them and saying this is identical and then uh over on I think it's on VGC they had an interview with a couple of lawyers um who knew about game design um saying look it's almost impossible for the exact wireframe mesh to be identical and that's the weird thing right now and I feel like Nintendo are kind of hanging back at the minute because if they are going to be doing some sort of you know copyright style um you know lawsuit will'll be prepping a lot before they go forward I just think it's it's an interesting State of Affairs I think the AI Serv it's very easy to look at Power world and be like oh they must have hit the AI button and generated a game that button doesn't exist so it's if you're going to use AI in game development it wouldn't translate over to you know generating the entire thing the way that it plays the feel of the game things like that people worked on this game that is true that's the the weird state in that side of the argument that's a whole thing that needs to be picked apart even more like you said though if it is sort of an asset flip that again boggles my mind because um by and large so many games have died because of that very thing as well again not to keep going about the day before there have been so many other examples especially on Steam of you know asset flips and taking assets from other games and not really doing much to reinvent them or whatever like that is a notorious problem and one that usually gets a massive amount of backlash and you know it's not being confirmed necessarily that this game has done that but it seems like you said with the wi meshes and stuff it has been reported there are allegations of it so the fact that this hasn't come under well I suppose it has come under the same scrutiny but it hasn't deferred 5 million sales to me again it is it it feels like an anomaly baffles me it was always the thing with the day before as well like that game managed to cash in before the reality of what that project was really came to light and then you had um steam stepping in offering people refunds and trying to make it right power is a drastically better made game than the day before like this there's a whole version of this that is just a nice little indie game that has blown up like it's just that it has all these other conversations around it in regards to how reason the create the creator has been in the past about using Ai and then the reality of just saying I wanted to put a bunch of trendy mechanics together and make something for a global audience which is very much worked I think that brings it all the way back to the conversation on the industry level that is like is that just what people want do they want more gameplay first games do they not necessarily care about huge budgets when it's just fun to play a lot of the defense of power world is just people saying well I'm having fun so cool They Don't Really necessarily care about the potential copyright infringement or The Wider discourse on was this person massively inspired to have a message in their game they just want to shoot some creatures or give them a minigun or defend their base or whatever and that's fun enough especially in the multiplayer space and is that enough for the art form oh see that question there is it enough for the art form to me yeah if that is the takeway we're going to get from this game I'm going to hand hand in my hat right now and maybe give up my gaming reporting days because for me these games can of course exist you know not every game needs to be a a proper you know dive into grief something like that not every game needs to have a to be last of to have a $200 million budget and like push forward Graphics push forward cinematics but like I I it needs to be more the art form the industry needs to be more than a cobble together um bunch of trendy ideas I think it's fine to have something like this that just does kind of you know work on that lizard brain level God forbid I've Loved a bunch of games like that I played 100 hours of Assassin's Creed Valhalla for that very reason but you know I think it needs to be more however going back to what you mentioned about like does everything need to be this big budgeted thing or can game play first idea succeed absolutely like I'd say more that's more reflected by the other games that you mentioned like a lethal company like an Among Us or like whatever um that kind of shows that off like a little bit more because those games not saying that Pal doesn't have not played it but those games you know clearly have they they spark something original even if they're not taken from directly original ideas and yeah again the potential of you know the the worthwhile thematic the worthwhile messaging here would come from the comment on workers rights that is unintentionally apparently in here um in regards to how you treat your creatures and everything but I do think that the Crux of this and the thing that people will talk about down in the comments in um in general is like what do you want out of your games in 2024 and has the industry gotten too big in regards to the bets that they're making like we know from everything that's happening with Insomniac that they're just going to be the Marvel Studio going forward and that's like the safest way that they can be and even Insomniac suffered layoffs last year alongside many many other Studios um because it's very hard to place those bets and they are multiple year long if not decade long bets at this point it's just I feel like we're hitting or we have hit a glass ceiling on certain aspects of the industry and certain production levels in the industry and something like this comes along and just kind of shakes the whole thing and says you don't need to be spending all this money on on these ridiculous Visions or these really over the top and glamorous opulent Visions for games we kind of just want to play a video game and I think that's an interesting reality uh regardless of the intentions of the creative that went into it um because it's such like I said it's such a nakedly honest reminder of here's some gameplay mechanics and nothing else

Channel: WhatCulture Gaming

Views: 88,764

Keywords: Gaming, Games, Video Games, PS4, Xbox One, Next Gen, E3, ps5, playstation, xbox, sony, microsoft, nintendo, switch, series s, series x, summer game fest, future games show

Id: T6bY0YwQ9_8

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2024