The Case Against Palworld

[Music] oh my God I can't believe this yo I can't believe this yo I cannot believe this it's just I just oh [Music] my it's got a cute name is it is it a cute is it a cute one b b over oh my God Wiggly p the first Pokémon game came out when I was about 2 years old and it's been ruining my life ever since I think it's the fact that they keep having like different versions of the same game with like minute differences it really doesn't need to be a thing ever since they had like Wi-Fi global trading I hate the fact that they'll introduce really cool Concepts like in X and Y they introduce customizing your trainer and then in the next game they just get rid of it for what reason I don't know they literally had the code there it's the same why does it have frame rate issues like this why does it look like an N64 game people have been frustrated with Nintendo for a while now I think among the like hardcore fans it would be a combination of you know not liking their General Corporate practices the fact that they're very litigious the fact that they're very hard on copyright based issues especially if you're in the emulation Community I can understand you're feeling quite alienated from Nintendo over the last few years or if you're just someone who was a fan of franchises like Pokémon you might just feel a little bit burnt out on them releasing very similar games often with very similar issues taking a long time to implement changes that people have been asking for for quite a while in some ways it's a natural consequence of the fact that they've clearly been fairly committed to maintaining the demographic that they always had making games for kids that are like 6 7 8 years old maybe where other franchises have kind of grown With Their audience Pokémon has been fairly stagnant in a lot of ways like I say I was a little kid when I first started playing these games and I kind of gave up when I was around I don't know 15 or 16 for the most part the last Pokémon game I really got into was I think black and white because I just felt like at a certain point these games were no longer being created for an audience that included me there's also on a broader level Maybe a little bit of an animosity towards Big corporations especially in the game industry recently um for many reasons some of which have been discussed previously on this channel with all this said and done I think it's time for us to rant in the woods today about power [Music] world so the game that some have referred to as Pokémon with guns has been a frankly absurd success and with that has come a lot of responses and to be honest I've been a little bit frustrated with all of them for some this has been kind of a hit against the the corporate entities that be a strike against the big guys in the name of these smaller independent developers that are more interested in giving players the things that they have been wanting for quite a while and for some response is saying that pal World while being some kind of hit against Nintendo is also in some ways a bit of a a trashy ripoff not just of Pokémon but of other popular game franchises of the present day but in the case of Pokémon specifically potentially just taking direct models and then tracing over them for their own art in the game which is generally considered a bit of a an Aris Phar there is also an AI element to this which to be clear I'm not as interested in talking about just because there has been very little nailed down as far as the potential use of it the developers have been known to talk fairly freely and openly about how they could be using AI as part of their creative process which is potentially suspect and obviously the developer has their own history of making quite derivative products which again makes it somewhat Justified to have a certain degree of skepticism and on the other hand there's just you know the grillas out there who just want to play a fun game where they can put Pikachu in an Amazon warehouse I think everyone's got some good takes on the subject and I feel like maybe this is a good time as any to kind of sort through them a little bit as someone who has been personally passionate about these games for some time and is also married to someone who has been very frustrated by Pokemon for quite a while like it needs to be I think sword and shield was like the last straw for me and I just was not happy and it isn't even like dexit that's the problem although that is a problem what's the main phrase It's like got to catch them all yeah yeah so it's like everybody every game was all about like getting every single Pokemon and then in the new ones they released new Pokemon and stuff yeah so there's one entry in the series to be the Poke what was the Pokemon Master Pokemon Master but there's one entry in the series right where they didn't include all the Pokemon in it so people were like Furious about it so you couldn't catch them all in the game all right for me this all started as it often does with a tweet I do not like that pal World success encourages a culture of incredibly derivative borderline artistic theft but I do find the idea of what if you could shoot Bulbasaur of an AK-47 being an instant massive hit very funny realistically Nintendo already steals the labor of artists by undervaluing staff and generally acts like huge corporate bullies so them but really this is more of a win for spy than art and I feel like this tweet maybe came off as a little bit more dismissive than maybe I had intended um I think I maybe looking over a lot of more complex conversations when it comes to a subject like this um which is not to say at the same time that people aren't making fairly Justified criticisms of power world directly copied models company with a history of some fairly Shady practices one of the things that I felt was the most egregious was looking into this and seeing that even fan artists were in this case most likely getting their designs ripped for this game stuff like that is is very egregious to me and I think that's why I had the kind of knee-jerk reaction that I did have to it maybe not just to that but also to people that were being very dismissive to any criticism of this new game why you defending the billion doll Corporation why are you defending the billion dollar Corporation of course you would defend the billion doll billion doll Corporation why are you defend billion doll coration why you defending the billion dollar Corporation the Pokémon company recently announced that they will be actively investigating possible copyright infringement by the powerwell developers if the large corporation wins again they may need to enlist the help of a financial management app like today's sponsor rocket money it's easy to get Reckless with spending in a world where seemingly everything is tied to some kind of Subscription Service something I have a lot of experience with as someone who tries to keep up with media for my job rocket money is the personal finance app that helps you cancel subscriptions lower bills and manage your money better I didn't need to buy this peg board you can organize budgets to help keep track of your spending and get notifications when you've exceeded your limits you can set up smart savings to manage how much and how often money goes into the right accounts it's an easy to use low commitment service and if you want to join the over 5 million members using rocket money today you can go to Rocket money.com slacking Saints or click the link in the description to get started for free once to get use that link down in the description and become a better money person this one has like a lot of like Star Raptor see cuz like an actual Starling doesn't have like that specific color scheme on the other hand star Raptor does have those specific feet and that specific like design so it's like Manti's body but man means like fins Pikachu's ears would you say that's like a a Meganium face yeah a little bit whis cash also the has the exact fin of yeah the eyes are definitely a big part of it where you specifically look at them and you're like this feels like they grafted on an eye from a Pokémon like even if the actual model looks original you get this weird uncanny effect cuz you feel like you've seen the specific eyes before okay copy of uh meum lillan and Goodra oh that the one wait a second yeah yeah that's very similar to Cinder hor um it kind of does have like Salle's body salaz I don't want to think about I don't want to think about this palette I had to move because there were some people with horses uh I just found a chair in the middle of the woods so just going to make use of this chair it's obviously worth bearing in mind that power world is clearly not just Pokémon or even its Pokemon designs even if it's sort of disappointing to see them not be willing to put in the effort or the investment in artists enough to come up with their own more original design world something that to be clear pretty much every other monster taming game has been more than capable of that's that's a particular area of defense of the game that I have always found pretty ridiculous the equivocation of like any similarities with like oh what are you going to do how you going to be able to make a game like this and not have everything look exactly identical it's very possible auman has a a sort of similarity to Charmander it clearly looks completely different you've just made your own Point these are things that have like somewhat similarities in terms of what they are and they're clearly different designs but again power world is not just these designs and in fact Pokémon wasn't even necessarily the primary influence of power world it's [Music] also it's [Music] also it's also this is obviously again a kind of reductive way that people have described the the game and I think by diving into that conversation we can get a little bit more into the kind of complicated things when it comes to talking about this subject specifically when we're criticizing a game like power world for being derivative I think it's worth thinking about stuff like fortnite after all if you've been gaming since the ancient times uh like I have you'll of course remember playing player unknowns Battleground when we're talking about power world and Pokémon is also a very interesting relationship to kind of talk about player unknowns Battlegrounds had a huge chunk of its audience essentially consumed by fortnite with much the same justifications that people now use to talk about why they're playing power world over something like Pokémon while fortnite was delivering these little quality of life updates various things that players had been asking for pubg fans were were still getting hyped up about you know vaulting mechanics being added if we're going to talk about art and in particular video games we obviously always have to keep in mind that there's going to be a lot of iteration taking place obviously everyone has been very fired up about the concept of plagiarism recently something that I have also covered in fairly recent videos but I think while there are certainly things to talk about when it comes to Pat Hive Sherlock I think it's important for us to think about the limitations of these kinds of plagiaristic accusations and the potential harm that can actually come when we decide to go too far with these kinds of criticisms let me tell you all about a little game by name of Arkham Asylum I've been playing through the Arkham games recently and I was thinking about that combat system that it uses and the way that following its release tons of games use that exact kind of free flow the exact setup of that game was then used for a lot of different game combat systems and I think a lot of games did benefit from it it's a very nice fluid combat system that can be used in a variety of places should these other games that use this Batman combat system be sort of punished for that be called just ripoffs of that game I don't know what was Batman a ripoff of shenmo or you know that Matrix Game or prince ofosa games that predate the Arkham games and clearly also have similar systems at play now one of those games was Shadow of Mordor and if you remember the only interesting thing about Shadow of Mordor was the Nemesis system the Nemesis system in which when certain like small time enemies defeated you they could actually sort of rank up and then eventually you would be sort of creating your own bosses through enemies that you happen to be defeated by it was a very cool idea somehow Shadow of Mordor actually managed to win multiple Game of the Year Awards pretty much entirely because of this mechanic in fact we didn't get to see many if any games iterate on this concept uh because the concept was copyrighted in the end we just had this one mid game that was the only way we could see this system being used I know now it's being used by other things produced by the same publisher but I think that kind of sucks it sucks for creativity within the industry it's something at least worth bearing in mind if you want to make criticisms of something like power world that go beyond just specifically talking about character designs and models and things like that I try to be very careful when I'm talking about art if I want to talk about things like IP breaches and copyright it's very natural within the industry that you're going to have games that develop on each other iterate on each other when we are talking about art there's always going to be this kind of blurred line where we're talking about tributes or Inspirations versus ripoffs this often becomes somewhat subjective and it's why I want to be careful about coaching the extent to which I want to make these kinds of accusations against power world on the other hand objectively those designs are pretty similar all you have to do is look at the picture and tell me which of these two creatures or Pokémon which one's the [Music] Pokémon that one the one on the left the left the left the left okay right the right one on the right is a Pokemon yeah right okay these guys oh the one on the right okay now this one now this one oh the one on I mean I would say the right you think the right one's the Pokemon oh the one the right is the Pokémon I think the right one is the Pokémon it's a bit more detailed is it tell me what you think the one on the the one on the right on the the one on the purple or no purple purple the purple one's the purple one okay you have garan meow's face pasted on per ugly's body and then it has Del cat's ears another one of these things where people would go like well is it's obviously a chesir cat that face cuz yeah I've seen that comparison too and it's like when you look at chesher cat depictions they don't have Garian mouths face one way I have recently seen people try to dismiss this criticism of power world is by claiming that the evidence against the game has been fabricated the claim being that people have scaled up the models of power world for the sake of making it look like they're closer to Pokémon than they actually are now I agree scaling the models to to fit together just a totally dishonest way to try to criticize the game on a completely unrelated note I hope you will enjoy my completely original work mini Lisa you notice if you look at these two models very closely you could tell that mine's very big and the farfetch is very small so there's no way they could be the same my mixed feelings on this particular subject led me to an interesting question if power world rather than making these very similar models to Pokémon were to literally be a Pokemon fan game were to actually lift the exact designs of Pokemon would I care and I think the answer would probably be no because I'm not a let's look at something like a hat in time great Indie 3D platformer a love letter to many games of the late '90s and early 2000s a genre of game that I really wish there was more of if a had in time rather than just having its own little original character was just a Mario fan game if it was literally just a little Mario Sprite as the main character uh would I care about that no I think it's massively creatively limiting that we're in this position where people don't get to use characters or settings that they have some kind of investment with uh to tell their own stories to make their own things I think anyone should be able to tell a Batman story or have a Mario game or put Pikachu in something and not be legally punished for doing so that to me is obscene but then there's another part of me that thinks okay going back to a hat in time what if instead of it being Mario it was like a pallet swap blue Mario would I then have a problem with that and I think then I actually sort of would and let me explain my thinking on this again I think anyone should be able to take characters or settings that they have an investment in and do whatever they want with them characters function as symbols and especially when we're talking about these big pop culture characters I think it's very natural that there's going to be this kind of increased meaning that's built between these symbols and their audiences uh that makes it so there is a kind of deeper meaning to using these properties anyone who's like a fanfiction writer probably understands what I'm talking about here now on the other hand on a creative level while I might want anyone to be able to make like a Batman story I also don't want all of the superhero stories to be about Batman or someone who's clearly just this obvious like derivative take on Batman I wouldn't want all Platformers to just kind of be Mario I also wouldn't want all monster taming games to basically just be Pokémon and I think that's what to me leads into what I'm actually frustrated about with power world almost all other monster taming games have not had this issue with creating their own more original work when we're talking about artistic creativity when we're talking about derivative work and when we're talking about copyright I don't just think that these things are in the same ballpark I think they're completely different sports I truly do not care at all about the legal aspect of taking Nintendo properties what I think I do care about is the idea of creatively being so derivative as to rip directly from the thing that you're taking inspiration from there's obviously a blurred line here is obviously somewhat subjective and again power world is not just a Pokemon take as I understand it the Pokémon side of things was even a fairly late edition in the development process the game actually took more from stuff like Rim world which basically guarantees that at some point I I will play it I've I've truly put a mentally ill number of hours into this is where I think I have felt frustrated when I've seen people very dismissively say like oh you're defending the big Corporation when they make any kind of criticism against power world I think we should be critical I think we should have a desire to see Innovation within an industry I think we should reward originality and I definely understand why on some level it's frustrating especially for people who are creative within the game industry to see a company essentially be rewarded for doing very derivative things you can absolutely be critical of Corporations and IP law and also have a desire to see creative novelty they're just different questions Arkham game combat can be cool and it can also be kind of annoying that like most AAA games now kind of feel exactly the same there been a lot of criticism of supposedly bitter game devs that are apparently just mad at power world because it has succeeded where they have failed but I think to be honest that it makes perfect sense that these bitter game devs would be kind of unhappy at trying to contribute something to their medium trying to contribute something to their industry and seeing this company that has very much engaged in these very derivative practices being rewarded for exactly that on the other hand it's completely expected that that would be rewarded because what they've basically delivered is a big giant laundry list of all the things that fans of these popular franchises have been asking for for a while now this is part of the rub that I think was highlighted by a fairly controversial Fred by the streamer asmin gold and when he argued that from a consumer standpoint the value of the product to the consumer is the only really important metric there have been a number of people who have been furious at the fact that power world is successful and the funny thing about that is that very clearly and so obviously none of them matter now in the case of power world clearly that's true this game is doing absurd numbers but if anything I think that only highlights the importance of looking at this from something other than just a consumer standpoint something I've ranted about many times on this channel capitalism often rewards harmful behaviors exploitative behaviors and in the case of art it rewards derivative content and I think that is basically the level of nuance I wish we could carry when we're talking about this game specifically not to say everyone's defending the big Corporation because they have reservations about something that might be going as far as to rip fan designs to to to question the creative Spirit of a company that is openly talked about how much they love air to have parts of your product be so derivative that people are openly questioning if it is a or not but on the other hand for us to not actually defend the big Corporation to go so far in our criticisms of the media that we end up basically restating the kind of Ip law copyright arguments that have led to a lot of oppressive behaviors against this industry practices that have in the past harmed the innovations that can be made within this medium and practices that do end up effectively rewarding the biggest and most powerful corporations at the end of the day if we're going to be making arguments that power world has been exploiting the labor of artists we should bear in mind that Nintendo has been doing the same thing for decades now wait what's [Music] that what the hell is [Music] [Music] that this video arrives almost 3 weeks after the initial release and Buzz around power world which by internet commentary standards is basically ancient history the reason for that is that in the process of me making this video Nintendo actually came out and said directly that they'd be investigating power world's team over this situation I then thought it'd be worth waiting to see if anything else had developed before I put this out so far nothing new has emerged and if a new thing happens before or soon after I do bring this video out it will be very funny and you can all Spam nerd Emoji at me in the comments while I was waiting I thought it would be appropriate for me to play power world for a bit myself and give some closing thoughts that's why you're seeing footage of me playing the game in the background right now which I really can't apologize enough for I do think it's important to point out that even though I did spend a fair chunk of this video talking more generally about derivative work in games including not just designs and Aesthetics but also things like mechanics people have been fairly specific on what they're criticizing when they talk about power world I don't honestly think most people are upset just because this popular game happens to share a lot of design elements with other popular games again what I really think a lot of the heated arguments come down to is people mixing up two separate conversations of Ip law versus just general artistic sensibilities I've actually been quite enjoying playing power world again horrifically addicted to rim world so not the biggest surprise but it got me thinking more about the controversy around the game and really cemented my feeling that it's just a shame the developers couldn't have gone that bit further to set their work apart just because of how much it gives the whole thing this cheap cashing vibe that I don't think is honestly Fair as I play the game when I look at these designs in isolation or look at the architecture in game that barely fits the aesthetic and sure does look a lot like breath of the wild I imagine a fake game made for a mobile ad I think about that one movie Studio that basically just made films so that people's grandmothers would get confused at the supermarket and buy the wrong thing with a lot of this it just feels like I'm more being tricked into thinking I'm looking at a different game and not just at some obvious parody as many have defended the game by suggesting and it's really frustrating because it's like sometimes they nail it relaxa orus is incredible and if you told me it was a parody of a Pokémon I'd be thinking yes sweeper my beloved to Toco probably better than most Pokémon designs then for every one of those there's about five that just feel like a trace I would say like this is an a good example of parody cuz this is like clearly not natu and zatu but with the color scheme and like other elements of the design it looks like it's a take on that this is like a good example of how to do that where it's clearly its own original thing it looks like it's own thing it's its own little guy it feels weird that this exists in the the same game that has that other one that is clearly just Meganium plus Goodra plus Lan the models that are a little suspect are the ones made by less experienced modelers there's something that just I think feels better when you can look at design like this and be like oh this is reminiscent of a Pokemon but not be like oh wait this is just a Dragonite with a new face grafted on the frustrating thing about it is is like there's evidence that they're more than competent to do it it's just some of them I'm like what are you doing if all the pals looked like this there would be like no contest it would just be like yeah it's like clearly doing like the whole like sort of a homage to Pokemon but they are like distinct enough that they're their own thing there's a clear indication that they know how to make models not look like Pokemon not even not look like Pokémon I feel like there's clearly designs here that are reminiscent of Pokemon to the point where it seems like oh this is clearly taking inspiration this is clearly taking influence or paying homage or working as like a parody and yet I don't feel like I'm looking at this and this is just an uncanny I think regardless of any accusations people have made about direct art theft it's totally in the realm of possibility for them to produce a whole range of models that clearly take influence from Pokémon but are not just uncanny resemblances to Pokémon yeah even here I am trying to limit how far I'm going with these criticisms like I talked about fan designs earlier and I really think wixon is pretty suspect but then I saw a similar controversy about hangu which it turns out was definitely not a stolen design I think it's important not to rush into these criticisms because you might end up getting something wrong and generally even if I do think you could defend most of these as parody for me this is less about some kind of fair use type dispute and more just about creativity in general and a lot of this does just feel trashy to me and it lets down what I think has the potential to be a new and interesting franchise I do even agree with people saying this could potentially push the Pokémon company to do more to innovate their own games to me honestly the worst outcome of this would be Nintendo using a legal Strongarm to clamp down on this and then going back to exactly what they were doing before what I guess I'll conclude on is that I do hope going forward power well is able to do more to distinguish itself to do what again pretty much every other game of this type has been able to do and establish its own identity I am cautiously optimistic and for the section of the audience that are more concerned about the exploitation of artist labor that may have resulted in this product I definitely encourage a wider look at the standard practices of the video game industry because you will quickly find this problem definitely reaches far beyond the scope of the Pokémon slavery simul later now go play cassette beasts or coron or Monster Sanctuary actually just go to the creature collector steam page and just run down the list uh and and never stop gaming but first uh consider liking this video and leaving a comment with your thoughts I actually sometimes do followup videos if there are a lot of opinions in my comment section so yeah if you think I'm a corporate Shield who just wants to attack small Bean game developers please let me know otherwise got a patreon link below if you want to support future videos or be in the credits scrolling now or you can just share the video or or you can just let another video of mine aut play your TV and enjoy that too either way thank you for watching and least sting such a serious SP Jack like this Pokemon at the end Pokemon like that oh my God prepare for trouble and make protect our world from Devastation unite all peop and our nation to denounce the evil for and love to extend our reach to the stars above Jesse James rocket team rocketr now or prepar to fight team Ro surrender now or prepare to fight duh that's right and then it'll be the name of that Pokémon the name of this Pokemon is it meow oh know meow sh me now oh my God me I'm trying to think of any oh remember to use that rocket money link

Channel: Jack Saint

Views: 84,794

Keywords: palworld, pokemon, plagiarism, copyright, ai, jack saint, critique, analysis, lackingsaint, pals, grizzbolt, lovander, palworld pokemon, palworld review, palworld news, palworld game, pocket pair, nintendo

Id: cSPkBM-1yHM

Length: 32min 43sec (1963 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2024