I've been taking part in the Nerdpocast for over a year now, where NerdOverNews and GuteLauneTyp are involved, among others ! In the current free feed we discussed Palworld for over an hour. So if you need more after watching the video, you'll find it there! In the premium feed you will find my two Podcats formats “Wie Geil” and “Wie Geil”, which appear monthly and we have already recorded a few episodes. If I don't talk about a topic in video form, it's because I've already chewed through it there. You can test the premium feed for 30 days free of charge, so if you like podcasts, you should take a look at nerdpocast.de. And now, on to the video! A new year, a new hype game. And since it has something to do with Pokemon, of course I have to give my two cents. When I say these lines here, it means that I have completely rewrote the script for the third time and am now finally satisfied. Over the last few weeks, new important information has come out every day, and my previous two 5-page texts quickly became outdated or incomplete. You know that I'm not a fan of exploiting a topic multiple times in order to collect a lot of views and YouTube revenue. That's why I always insist on Patreon so that I can allow myself to deliver the best possible video that saves you 15 exhausting clickbait articles and is still valuable in 4 years. That's why I would like to thank my patrons and channel members right here, without you I couldn't take the time and quantity would take precedence over quality. Seriously, thanks to everyone who makes this possible for me! Having said that, today we're talking about Palworld, the current hype game that has a lot in common with Pokemon. And I'm not talking about the fact that the designs and sometimes even models are clearly blatantly stolen, Palworld has more in common with Pokemon than you might first think. But so that we're all on the same page, let's start with a quick review of the game. Part 01: Review Palworld is essentially a run-of-the-mill survival game, as most of you have probably already played it hundreds of times. Knock a few trees, knock a few stones, use the mined resources to build things to better knock trees and stones and then unlock more things so you can make new resources to build more things with them. It's a typical “numbers go up” game, like Ark, The Forest and countless other games have done 1:1. Funnily enough, the developer of the game has already made a game like this, called Craftopia, but we'll get to that in a moment. At some point you'll be able to build houses with this one slot system that only works really well in Fortnite and is somehow super fiddly in every other game. But it serves its purpose, even if it's never pretty. Variety comes in when the other part of the game comes into play: Pokemon. So.. Pals.. monsters that you can catch to fight with or for them to complete jobs in the camp. Each monster can do certain things and that's pretty much the only feature I find really interesting. Where in other games you have to pack coal into a furnace, here you use fire monsters to fire the furnace. This idea is simple in itself, but exactly what Pokemon needed. Everywhere in the series or in the games you see Pokemon doing jobs and taking on tasks, but you only have that in certain places in the game. It shows quite well how much potential there is still in these capsule monster games and that Gamefreak has simply been resisting trying new things for decades. And now comes the point that I don't understand again, but somehow doesn't bother others. To which I will say that I couldn't play the game for more than 8 hours because I just died of boredom. Because the game does n't have much to offer other than building a base. There's a gigantic world and it's just a complete kitbashing disaster. If you haven't seen my Elden Ring technique video then you should catch up, where I go into what kitbashing means and how Elden Ring works used it excellently. In short, it means sticking generic models like rock formations together to create landscapes. This can work well if you have enough original models and really good level designers. For the most part , this was not the case here . Instead, you notice that the size of the map was chosen first and then they tried to somehow fill this location. The world is deadly boring. Super spacious. Eggs, treasure chests and these green upgrade figures have been placed everywhere so that there is a reason to explore them. So next to the monsters. But they are almost never placed in logical places, but just... somewhere. Seriously, I've wished so many times to play Tears of the Kingdom, where everything has a clear reason and every collectible is placed in places where it makes sense. And the world in Zelda is expansive, but also always filled with interesting and unique things. There's a house here, there's a strange rock formation, there's a strange- looking cave entrance. In Palworld, for example, you keep finding this one stone tower model all over the map that always has an item on it and you just climb up it mindlessly, without a challenge or anything. You just have to wrestle with this stone every now and then so that the stamina recharges. This is pure fun! I think brainless fits quite well since you seriously need zero brain power for Palworld and that drives me crazy. It's as if my life is slipping between my fingers and I'm just waiting for more numbers to go up while I walk around in autopilot mode , bashing monsters with a baseball bat. And that's another tiring thing: there is no combat system. You spawn your monster, it starts attacking another monster continuously and you either hit it with it or hope that you throw your pal sphere at the right moment to catch the monster before your own monster kills it, because it happens to be one uses too strong an attack. The AI is non-existent. Regardless of whether it is a level 1 monster or a high level endgame boss monster, they all use the same AI routine. Run in a circle around the target, jump backwards, launch a ranged attack or run towards the target for a melee attack. ALL monsters do this. There are no cool Dark Souls Like bosses that do something with the environment or have special attacks, no huge monsters that you have to fight together in Monster Hunter style with tactics, although the very simple combat system would be perfect for this. Even Gamefreak in Legends Arceus managed to make it more interesting and that's a sentence that hurts me a little to say... There are hardly any NPCs and the ones that are there babble irrelevant nonsense. There is no story. There are 4 towers in which there are specific NPCs that you have to defeat, all of which have zero dialogue. It is. Completely. Blunt. And with the best will in the world, this makes it difficult to compare it with a classic Pokemon. Palworld is not the Pokemon that Gamefreak should have made, as some say. They have definitely never played Pokemon. After 8 hours I have absolutely no desire to start this game again, otherwise I would be bored out of my mind. Watching streams of what comes “at the end of the game” showed me: Absolutely nothing comes. So I won't waste my life on this. The whole time, for the last few minutes, I've been hearing this kind of tremor. There are some who try to defend the whole thing.. What is being said... Ah.. Something like: What are you idiot babbling about? The game isn't finished yet, it's in Part 02: Early Access. As a developer, I would defend the concept of Early Access to the death. It has helped so many developers not only finance the production of a game but also make good games even better thanks to user feedback. But as with Kickstarter, for example, there are always these negative examples that ultimately make a good system bad. It's kind of a human thing... All the best must be destroyed because of greedy people. Whenever I talk to someone about how palworld is empty, has a stupid AI and there's just nothing to do, the answer is "it's still early access, maybe that'll come!" and that “maybe” is always what makes me incredibly suspicious. Why do you believe that? Why do you trust the developer? I understand that with a game series like Zelda you know that you're not going to get any good at the end. Skyward Sword is about the worst you can get and even though I never want to play it again, I understand that it has qualities. But why exactly do you trust a company that is guaranteed to be completely unknown to over 99% of Palworld players? Shouldn't one be rather suspicious as to why such a strange Pokemon copy even exists? What kind of developer must he be who just blatantly copies games like Zelda, Pokemon, Genshin Impact and even Smash? I wouldn't just blindly trust a shop like that. Maybe it's because I've been fooled too many times and flown with blind faith, but everything about it just screams that something is wrong. And there's actually a chance that Palworld will never come out of Early Access. Because this isn't Pocket Pair's first Rodeo with Early Access. Quite the opposite. Their other game, Overdungeon, was in early access for a long time and players liked it for an unfinished game. All that was missing was the finishing touches. He never came. Pocket Pair suddenly released Overdungeon as a finished game and it was no longer developed.. Although everyone expected something different. And then we have Craftopia. It's impressive how Craftopia and Palworld are almost identical next to each other. Both survival games with catching monsters. Only Craftopia is a visually poorly optimized Unity game that uses the absolute basic graphical possibilities of back then and Palworld is a visually poorly optimized Unreal game that uses the absolute basic graphical possibilities of today. It would be impossible for me to make a technology video about palworld because there is absolutely nothing that can't simply be explained with “yes, it's completely standard unreal engine stuff”. And not even the cool Unreal stuff but the really... average stuff. The “we place objects in the world and use the normal shader provided, even for the monsters, which means they don’t fit into the world visually” stuff. Craftopia was in early access and Craftopia IS in early access. For over three years now. One can imagine that Craftopia players are anything but happy as Pocket Pair is now releasing another Early Access game while they never finished an Early Access game. And they're already working on another game... which is simply a Hollow Knight clone. Pocket Pair is using the millions they 've currently made to commission their own internal team to develop it, but they strangely continue to stick to their philosophy of "mediocre stolen is better than poorly homemade" philosophy . There's something strange here and we should take a closer look at the CEO of the company Part 03: Takuro Mizobe I have the feeling that most people who are hearing this for the first time won't be surprised at all. Takuro Mizobe is the boss of the company. Mizobe is not really good when it comes to development. That's what I took away from it all after reading through some of the interviews. He is also an AI and Crypto Bro, which in the end surprised me even less. On the Pocket Pair website he brags about his CV and at the top is “DS development at Nintendo Game Seminar”. This was a 10 month seminar where students developed games together and then, in Japan, these games were transferred to the DS via the Wii for everyone to play. The other stuff is crypto stuff, among other things. In 2022, Mizobe did an interview with Japanese Wired magazine and an interesting thing came to light. He said: “I originally loved Nintendo games and that hasn't changed to this day. I also have deep respect for the company. When it comes to approaching game development , Nintendo has a strong philosophy: creating new works with a unique identity and high quality. This was also emphasized at the Nintendo Game Seminar . On the other hand, I want many people to enjoy my works, and this motivation is close to my heart. So I embrace good ideas that exist in the world and I don't necessarily think I have to limit myself strictly to originality. I would like to be more relaxed and creative. It’s also okay to embrace trends and not obsessively strive for originality, right?” You know... that's what I expect from a crypto and AI bro... It's not about art, it's not about the work, it's about how you reach the most people. How you make the most money. This is his goal. This is what drives him. And even though it pains me and I don't agree with his philosophy 100%, I have to admit one thing. His approach is legitimate and completely correct for his case. Because in the end it's absolutely brilliant in one respect . From the perspective of marketing. Part 04: Marketing through provocation Guys. I'm not the youngest anymore, I've seen a lot. A lot that made me angry, as someone who tries to be as original and creative as possible and has had many videos canceled because someone from America with 800 subscribers made a video that I wanted to make too. Because I don't want to end up just doing what someone else has already done. Even if it's nonsense, because when a topic is filtered through someone's thoughts, it is usually already something that can broaden one's own horizons. But one thing that continues to piss me off to no end is that bad but provocative things always succeed much more easily than well-considered and creative things. The rights to Pooh the Bear have expired and now everyone can use this character. Within a very short time, a terrible horror film is made with Pooh. Websites are picking up on this because they make money with clicks and promoting it stupidly, because is n't it totally crazy that a HORROR MOVIE with Pooh the Bear is being released? Hey, how crazy is that?? Mickey Mouse, the ones on the right have actually expired. A quickly cobbled together Mickey Mouse horror game is announced. Websites eat the news and spread it like crazy. Because isn't it crazy that a HORROR GAME with Mickey Mouse is coming out? Hey, how crazy is that?? Europol has noted that by 2025, approximately 90% of content on the Internet will be produced using AI. Be prepared for these absolutely stupid clickbait headlines like “Disney Won’t Like This” with such absolutely useless articles to soon take over your entire timeline. It already seems like many German magazines are just pumping out articles completely driven by algorithms and I'm really starting to question whether there's still a lot of human work behind it. Here. I take this article from Kotaku, tell chatGPT to rewrite it so that it can no longer be identified with the original article, have it translated into German, directly from chatGPT and BOOM! Create an article within 60 seconds that you can now publish. These steps can be completely automated via API so that no one has to do anything anymore . And if an article comes out with “A Pokemon game with a creak? “Huh, how crazy is that?” is clicked more often than an article that contains the latest love letter from an indie developer to a certain style of game. Then this excellent indie game is never mentioned again but only the Pokemon with a creak game. Because provocation gets more clicks. And that always comes before quality. It's much easier as an indie developer these days to intentionally do something bold and/or bad in order to get attention. instead of making an effort. Make a bad Cuphead clone and websites like YouTubers will literally run their mouths about it, which in the end is just free advertising. Games like RoboCo, for example, where you build robots very easily, have to solve a lot of really funny scenarios and a lot of really cool things just happen, get zero attention. I only found the game completely by chance, but I loved it over and over again. If I've learned anything, it's that you don't even have to make your dream game if you don't have a really strong marketing plan. That is the bitter reality. Are you making a cool game? Excellent! How can you promote it later? You do not know that? Then forget it. And sure, there are the exceptions, we see them every now and then, but you have to keep in mind how many games are coming out. Over 13 thousand games appeared on Steam alone last year, and this number increases every year . Of the 10 indie hits that you really notice, there are guaranteed to be hundreds more that also deserve attention, but marketing is incredibly difficult. A skill that most developers rarely really have. Therefore, it is often better to simply choose Easy Mode and be provocative. If you succeed, you can still make your dream game. If, on the other hand, you are broke, the issue is gone forever. Part 05: To Scam or Not to Scam? But just because something is legitimate and working marketing doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. Because you now know that Pocket Pair is known for not finishing games. And here comes my Pokemon comparison that I would like to make at Palworld. It's not about the monsters, the mechanics or even the game. It's about the team behind it. According to my analysis, Pocket Pair is a pretty incompetent developer. Believe me, I'm not just saying this. I watched all sorts of interviews and scoured Steam forums to read player opinions. What came out of this is that Pocket Pair apparently develops their games very cheaply and, you have to give it to Mizobe, steals exactly the elements from other games that create a certain addictive factor. Craftopia is a game that pretty much only consists of purchased assets. It's buggy, it's unoptimized, it's ugly as night... It 's a pretty incompetently made video game. Palworld was apparently originally built on Craftopia. At least that's how it seems. But because the game was too laggy in Unity , they switched to Unreal. Here comes the strange romanticization of actually negative things again. So when players read stories like that and think “wow how brilliant” instead of “holy shit how incompetent”. In a Japanese TV program it was said that none of the developers really had any idea. The 3D models came from a student the developers knew because he worked in a market they often went to. Mizobe didn't know what a rig was, he had absolutely no idea where a rig was. Nobody knew how Unreal worked, except for a senior member of the team who had to teach everyone everything. They didn't use version control, which is guaranteed to cause problems now. Believe me, this is complete madness. They had no idea how version control worked, so they simply loaded every progress onto memory cards and bought new ones every week to back everything up. Mizobe also reiterated that he would not be suitable for Nintendo because Nintendo wants to do creative and new things. He just wants to follow trends that people like. That the AI of the monsters sucks, that the world seems empty and dull, that there is no story, that Palworld sometimes runs really badly on Xbox Series Palworld is a foreign word, that's exactly where it comes from. This team is incompetent. It has no idea how to make games. Especially not games of this size. And my only thought while playing was: Could it be that the core of the game has already been developed so poorly that some things can no longer be saved? Anyone who has started a few projects can tell you that every new project is cleaner, better and more modular. My current project is the first project where I have worked so cleanly that I invest over 4 thousand euros per month in development. Because I know that I 've finally achieved the quality I want to make a big game and it 's so modular that I can add new features super quickly. So I see when systems like AI somehow have inherent flaws that might mean you have to rewrite the whole system because there's something wrong at the core and it 's going to be hard to build on. I don't see that the current Pocket Pair team is competent enough to deliver a decent game in the end. And in the end it could also be stuck in early access forever because it's not worth developing further on the basis. Or you can say it's finished and leave the errors as they are. BUT they have made several million from the game and there is a chance that they will now invest the money to hire competent developers. They will certainly be banging holes in the walls with their heads for many days , but this would make it possible to solve many core problems by rewriting a lot . Given the history of the company, I personally tend to call the whole thing a scam. I don't see this game actually being "finished", but rather various bugs being fixed and then people saying "that's enough". In the end it's like Gamefreak again. The whole thing has potential, but it was never exploited because the developers just couldn't do it. But at the same time I am also aware that a lot of people are having fun with the current version. For many it may even be their first or second survival game, so everything is still fresh and exciting. But you seriously shouldn't expect that this game will really develop further and suddenly NPCs, cities, locations, a story, etc. will be patched in. That's not on the roadmap either. Instead something like PVP mode... Because I also need something like PVP in this game... Two monsters that attack each other with random attacks and two players that shoot at each other with bazookas. Crazy. Part 06: Everything just stolen? Another thing that quickly emerged is the strikingly similar designs of the monsters in terms of Pokemon. We're at a point where Pokemon feels like it's already made every kind of monster. But that's really just a feeling. Because Pokemon has no problem constantly inventing new and unique Pokemon. That 's pretty much the only good thing about the brand these days... the designs of the monsters and characters. Palworld's monsters are sometimes very similar to Pokemon. Too similar. It's already been shown that the proportions of body parts are sometimes super strangely identical between the models of Pals and Pokemon. The blatant thing is that there are already strange people who have to defend this to the death. Alas, how else are you supposed to make dogs?? That's just how they are! It's logical that 3D models are similar without understanding that it is COMPLETELY... so seriously COMPLETELY impossible that the models of the Pals are identical in places with a few Pokemon. Some then tried to spread misinformation because in the showcase videos that easily went viral, the creator of the videos said that he scaled the models so that they were the same size. Self-proclaimed 3D artists then wanted to spread the word that this would change something. I always don't know what's stupider... people who spew such nonsense into the world or those who then believe it. How models are scaled is always completely different from engine to 3D program . Of course they have to be scaled to the same size. That doesn't change the allegations. This is purely a distraction method. I can tell you that 100% Pokemon models were stolen in places. Mizobe says they take their work seriously and no copyright or anything like that has been broken. And I think I know what he means by that means. Because SHOULD it go to court, you still have a trump card. The topology. If they had simply taken Pokemon and, for example, just remade the head or replaced certain parts, then the polygons would still be completely the same. But you can clearly see that some of them are super similar, but never the same. What happened here is a simple retopology. Normally something like this is done to break down a highpoly model into a lowpoly model. It's similar to tracing and tracing lines in drawings, only in 3D, where the vertices are placed like magnets on the high poly model to create a low poly version. But it's also good if you want to make a new topology to hide the original origin. And that could really be the way out in court. Because this meant that extra steps were taken that are difficult to understand, especially in a court of law, because you have to be familiar with the subject matter. I'm very sure they stole models. But at the same time, all the animations in the game have been remade and they are, for example, of very high quality.. At least in most cases. It is therefore possible that only the graphic designer is really to blame because he stole Pokemon models and no one else knew about it. The Pokemon Company had announced that they were receiving a lot of emails regarding a game that was released in January 2024 and would be investigating the copyright issue. I have often read online that Palworld is not being sued because if it were, Nintendo would have done so long ago. Which is so absolutely absurd. Even some big YouTubers say this. Nintendo has almost always only done something as soon as something was published. The Metroid 2 remake was only taken down by Nintendo when it was released. The Palworld Pokemon Mod was taken offline by Nintendo when it was released. Nintendo is very aware that they can't trade until something is released unless you clearly use their name and sell it. Nintendo also has to analyze the game first and compare models, graphics, sounds, etc. to check whether everything is cool. Nintendo would never just sue a company like that , they never have. It is clear that the palworld were watching closely. I'm sure that the Pokemon Company was already working on the game before these emails. However, I received so many emails per day that I had to make a statement in order to finally have some peace and quiet again. How does that turn out? We'll see. But I can tell you that it will lead to a lot of clickbait news articles. Because so much has already been interpreted into this short statement for a clickbait news article that I have sometimes lost interest in even talking about it. But here they are! Part 07: Conclusion This was a long trip and I'm sure I lost a few along the way. There was a lot, a lot, that you might never want to hear yourself, especially if you were looking for palworld and can't stand it when you have a different opinion, but I'm glad you made it this far! So we come to a conclusion: Pocket Pair is a developer that puts absolutely no heart into their games and values success more than anything else. I would advise everyone not to trust such companies, it is the epitome of everything that is bad about the big developers, just as an indie company. I'm very worried about Pocket Pair getting away with it and the Pokemon Company not being able to do anything. It would be an example that indie developers should do it more often. That you can steal and it 's completely okay because neither the courts nor the players really care about that in the end. This would give us countless brazen clones in the future, since it apparently works. We would have more games that are just a job, tickle the “numbers go up” nerve and a new Pokemon Like per month. The advantage is that maybe at least one game will be really good! But this could soon spread to other brands. I'm a huge fan of original things that can also be inspired by something. Mixing Pokemon with survival is also a great idea. But I would like to see the concept of a really good team that builds a world with love that you enjoy exploring and doesn't go mountain after mountain to get the same 5 items find. Just like the attention that stupid horror movies and game parodies get, this is another punch in the gut for everyone doing their best. It is certainly something that many people cannot understand. I'm very sure we have a few of these in the comments talking about how 6 million sales clearly show that everything was done right. And I don't want to question that. The sign that this sets just makes me think. Because other trends like Battle Royal have already shown that we will be spammed with the same concepts for several years and that this will ultimately drag down all games. I hope that I was able to convey my thoughts to a few people with this video! The only good thing I see with Palworld is that it's the first time a game has somehow rivaled Pokemon. And if this isn't a wake-up call for game freaks, then you should wrap up warm! Because now the players know that there can be fresher alternative ideas and that the gameplay of the Game Boy games is now slowly becoming outdated. Part 08 BB-Bonus: And now that I've just finished there's another message. Microsoft wants to help Pocket Pair to optimize their game and strengthen their server infrastructure. Microsoft is very aware that it would be perfect for their Xbox platform to have their own “Pokemon” and of course they are now investing a lot of time and money into the project. It would be interesting if Pocket Pair got away with it and Microsoft simply bought the store, including the Palworld brand. Simply because they can then produce palworld games with other studios. But how big this “help” really is in the end remains to be seen. I wouldn't read too much into the matter, as the Game Pass version lags behind the Steam version and instead of supporting 32 players with dedicated server hosting, it only supports 4 players without servers. I think it's all about solving the + performance problems on the Xbox. But yeah.. It looks like the daily news about this game won't stop any time soon.
