- Palworld. It's the game everyone
can't stop talking about. Not just because it's breaking playtime and sales records on a daily basis, but because it takes place
in a dollar-store Hyrule populated by Kirkland Signature Pokémon Palworld has been in the news all week, in part because of those records, but also due to accusations of plagiarism. I mean, look at it. It's a game where you capture monsters to use to fight other monsters. Those monsters are split into types like fire, water, land,
electricity, and grass. They also just look like Pokémon. Look, a Pokémon. And another. This one looks like the
Catbus from "Totoro." Oh, look, another Palamon. But public opinion on
this matter is divided because Palworld's developers also did something that
Pokémon fans are happy about. They made a fun Pokémon game, one where you can collect
dozens of poke...pals, one where you can build your own base and force those pals to work for berries. One where you can play
online with your friends. One where you can shoot guns and arm the pals with their own guns. One that's got hot tubs and physics and you can capture the humans? So what do we think of Palworld? Is this plagiarism, content
theft, or fair game? Should the Pokémon company
do something about it? Or is Palworld's success the cost of not investing in a popular IP? On today's episode, we're gonna talk about the
history of Pokémon games, and, crucially, the games
they haven't made yet. We're gonna talk about Palworld, its design and where it's
pulling its inspiration from. And then we're gonna talk about the motivations of its developers and try and figure out something from this, frankly, bizarre situation. And while we're at it, let's talk to a popular Pokémon YouTuber about what he thinks of
the current situation. All right, let's get into it. (soft music) Pokémon is a media powerhouse with TV shows, manga, movies, beanbags, skateboards, and costumes. But it's fair to say a lot of Pokémon fans are
mostly there for the games, and they've been rewarded with some absolute
classics over the years. HeartGold and SoulSilver, FireRed and LeafGreen, Black and White, Black 2 and White 2, Sword and Shield, Snap. Not to mention Pokémon Go. There have been some absolutely
fantastic Pokémon games, and as a result, there's a fan base of rabid gamers who are dying for the
next Pokémon adventure. The problem is, though, that many of those classic Pokémon games were handheld affairs, and often 2D. There have been 3D Pokémon games, but I think it's fair to say they've lacked the ambition of other big-budget open-world games, especially when you consider how large an intellectual
property Pokémon really is. This has led to a gaping hole in the heart of many Pokémon fans who crave this type of AAA, immersive, freeform, open-world experience. Breath of the Wild didn't
exactly help matters when it came out in 2017. It created the AAA, open-world adventure that Zelda fans were pining for. And while Pokémon Legends
attempted to realize the game of fans' dreams, it fell short of the high
watermark set by Zelda. So that's the first part of this problem. Pokémon fans are desperate for that type of AAA, immersive, monster-collecting experience. So desperate, in fact, that last week, millions of them put down their Pokédex to play this thing. Okay, before we get into this, can we, just for a second, please acknowledge how dumb, how beautifully dumb the name Palworld is? And I think there's a
truth in that name too. This game, as fun as it is, and it is fun, by the way, has been designed to not
have an identity of its own. The point of Palworld
is that, if you squint, it kind of feels like
you're playing Pokémon. Pokémon is no stranger to copycats. Ever since it burst onto
the scene in the mid-'90's and taught prepubescent children the strategies of cockfighting, others have tried to steal its thunder. Digimon released just a year after Pokémon and is perhaps the most egregious, though fans of the series
will cry to high heaven that it's not ripping off Pokémon at all, but Tamagotchi. To which I reply, why not both? (crowd cheers) Pokémon was a massive inspiration for the anime that followed, with Beyblade, Yo-kai Watch, and Yu-Gi-Oh! owing a lot to its format and success. But the core loop of capturing monsters and forcing him to live in tiny prisons only to release them to
fight each other to the death is a uniquely Pokémon flavor. Perhaps the reason I find Pal World, fuckin' Pal World, so funny, is because it's literally ripped from a "South Park" episode. The Chinpokomon fad that spread through South Park Elementary had kids arguing over
which was the best monster, Furrycat, Pengin, Lambtron, or Shoe. In fact, the idea of creating a parody of this insanely popular media
powerhouse that is Pokémon is so obvious and so played out that even an attempt to do it today seems almost quaint, especially as the idea of
Pokémon as a genre of game has been fairly normalized. We've had loads of games in recent years that have played with this formula. Temtem took creature
collecting into the MMO world, first-person adventure Bugsnax used interesting food-based mechanics to tell an interesting story. And Ooblets recently
married creature collecting with the farming of Harvest Moon, all wrapped up in a whimsical,
Noby Noby Boy aesthetic. All those games took the root of an idea that they did not create, but applied their own artistic vision. Something borrowed and something new. But then there's Palworld. Palworld doesn't have its
own whimsical aesthetic. Palworld looks like a Pokémon game. But Palworld also looks like a Zelda game, like a lot like a Zelda game. Wait a second. When games copy each other, we don't usually call it plagiarism. Owning game mechanics is frowned upon. Nobody likes when companies patent them, and, in general, we like it when developers
take popular ideas and apply them to new games. Because no matter what, a game has to be fun to be successful. Unlike many other products, you can't just steal the
recipe from another game and undercut their price
to gain a market advantage. It doesn't stop people from trying, just search for craft on
Steam or your Nintendo Switch for proof of that, but popular new ideas applied
to good games often sell. For example, Fortnite, the biggest gaming success
of the 21st century so far, became successful by applying its world and gameplay to a popular new game mode. But it's also fair to say that Palworld is taking a lot of direct inspiration from a lot of games. The font treatment and chimes are ripped straight from
recent Zelda titles, as is the climbing and the floating down on a sail, and the towers. And kind of the fast travel and probably lots of other
things I'm not really noticing. The survival and base-building
aspects of the game are pretty commonplace these days, reminiscent of titles like Ark or Valheim. And of course the boss fights
and general use of pals is very much inspired
by the Pokémon games, though, crucially, in
real time and with guns. Eyebrows started to raise moments after Palworld
burst onto the scene. Initially, there were accusations that the studio had used AI tools to generate their own
versions of the Pokémon, but those claims didn't
hold up to scrutiny. Then last week, 3D modelers
matched the dimensions of many of the game's pals with existing models of Pokémon. Now, that's a smoking gun. But then those modelers
themselves were accused of fabricating the models
they used in their videos to make it look like
Palworld had stolen them. What's going on? Time will tell if somebody
finds a smoking gun or if this is all just wishful thinking from Pokémon fans looking for retribution. In fact, since I started
writing this episode, the Pokémon company has come
out with their own statement, which amounts to, "We're looking into it." But I wanna gauge the community on this. I'm not a massive Pokémon fan myself, even if I've played a few of the games. I need an expert, somebody who was one of the first people to stream Palworld, somebody with over 5 million
subscribers on YouTube, somebody with a cool, Old
Testament name like myself. Wait a second, I know just the guy. - [Noah] Hey, all, my name is NoahJ456. I am a longtime Pokémon fan, huge gamer, and also a huge fan of Palworld. - Hi, Noah. So how did you first react
when you saw Palworld? - [Noah] So my first reaction on seeing the first
Palworld reveal trailer was this game looks absolutely hilarious. It's this bright, cheerful, cute, monster-catcher game, except in the middle of the trailer, they just start injecting guns into it, have a bunch of pals all on a line, just assembling AK-47s. I thought it was an
absolutely hilarious idea, but was never really
expecting an indie studio to be able to put out a game that actually held up to this and looked as fun as
the reveal trailer did. - So do you think Palworld appeals to Pokémon fans,
Survivalcraft fans, or both? - [Noah] When I look at
a game like Palworld, I see a game that is
essentially trying to do two different things. The first of which is just
draw on people's nostalgia. However, once you get into the game, you discover it is a
little something more. It's not just catching and fighting. It is also base building. It is also survival. It is definitely drawing on a couple different audiences here, which is why I think it
makes it such a unique game. - As somebody who admitted
to being a Pokémon fan, what do you think about these
accusations of plagiarism? - [Noah] It's really funny
to look on the internet and see a hundred-tweet-long thread. Here is every single Pokémon
and their pal counterpart that was just stolen from Pokémon. You got people on the other side saying, "Stop defending Pokémon. "Billion-dollar corporation. "These guys deserve to
have everything stolen "for their terrible games. "Also, Palworld nothing wrong. "They didn't plagiarize anything." And as always, with the
internet, really hard to do, I think it is somewhere in the middle. This is just like two
different games' take on a ferret or a sheep. They're not gonna look that different. They're gonna look pretty similar no matter what kind of take
you put on a ferret or a sheep. And then there's other ones
like Anubis and Lucario, which these are a little
bit harder to defend. It's really, really hard to say whenever you're just looking at this, and it's hard to know unless you were someone who was actually working on this game. - Would you like to
see the Pokémon company make a game like Palworld? - [Noah] I would absolutely love it if Pikachu could have a grenade launcher and Charizard could have a bazooka, except I don't think they will
ever do it for two reasons. The first of which is that the Switch is just not
powerful enough of a console. They tried to do it with
Pokémon Legends: Arceus. They couldn't spawn in like more than four Pokémon
on screen at one time before the console would
just start crashing. It is simply not a powerful enough console for them to add anything. So I think it's held back by the hardware. And the second of which, and the more important,
I guess, of the two, is that this game is
a E for everyone game. Pokémon is supposed to be for everyone, it's not supposed to be this violent thing with guns or anything. And I think the Pokémon company cares mostly about that
more than anything else. - Okay, the golden question. Do you think people
will be playing Palworld in a month's time? - [Noah] That is really,
really hard to say because it does not have the
staying power that Pokémon has. Even if you haven't played
a Pokémon game in years, you still know a ton about Pokémon. There are movies, TV shows,
board games, card games, everything you could think of. Pokémon is so prevalent in our society that you just see it
walking down the street. That cannot be said of Palworld. So they don't have the luxury of just staying in people's minds. They have to keep it
interesting with new content. Can they put out meaningful updates? It's been shown time and time again, a game can have massive success on launch, but fall off super, super quickly if they do not keep the
community's interest with new updates. - Noah makes a great point there. Palworld's use of pals is definitely bringing
people through the door, but it's the gameplay that's keeping them and helping them recommend
the game to their mates. There's a blog post from
the CEO of PocketPair which I read translated from
his native Japanese to English with Google Translate. So I'm not going to quote him here. But the story of the
games development is wild because it seems not
particularly well managed from a production or budget standpoint. The game cost 1 billion
yen or about $6.5 million. And some of the key people they hired were either rejected
for the job initially, or in one case was a hobbyist young adult who worked in a convenience store. And there's this wild story where the CEO, who had never used Unreal Engine before, was forced to optimize the game himself right before release because it was using too much memory and wasn't fit to be sold. In general, he also seems to be a fairly
profit-motivated person, which tracks when you
look at some of the games that PocketPair have made. Craftopia, which feels like a
proto-Palworld in some ways, is very Breath of the Wild-looking, and feels a lot like your
common garden-builder game. Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse is a metroidvania roguelike that looks a lot like Hollow Knight. And Overdungeon is one that
has so many inspirations it's hard to pin it on
one game in particular. But it's certainly derivative. I mean, look, PocketPair aren't
the only company doing this, and the chances are, if
this game hadn't exploded, we wouldn't be looking
at all these old games. But this ethos is largely
backed up by the CEO himself. He calls their games safe. He says they're fun, but that they incorporate
reliable game systems and then add good graphics. And most importantly, they're proven fun. His philosophy is that you
don't need to break the bank by making the best game ever. You can just gameplay
that's proven to work, wrap it in good art, and as long as you've play-tested enough and make sure it's pretty fun, it has a chance of finding an audience. It's an incredibly unsexy way
of talking about game design, one that my creative heart
recoils upon hearing. But from a purely business perspective, he's not incorrect. If I'm being critical, I would say that this is
game-design-by-numbers, somebody taking a few gameplay mechanics and an art style that seems
popular and combining them. And if I'm being generous, well, perhaps this is what happens when people without a
creative vision of their own decide to make a game, like the video game
equivalent of a cover band or an Elvis impersonator or all those terrible
Jane Austen parody books. Because at the end of the day, it still requires skill and determination to learn an instrument or write a book or put on tight pants. And if there's one thing I know to be a fairly universal
truth in games development, it's that making games is hard. Even if Palworld feels to me like it's lacking its own creative soul, it's a well-produced piece of software, one that many people are
enjoying with their friends. And in that way it stands with games like Lethal Company or BattleBit, new indie spins on popular
ideas that blew up overnight. And while Palworld certainly stands alone in how it looks like other games, the one thing they all share is that these are all games that you can experience with others. So I'm not sure what we
can learn from Palworld. I certainly don't want the lesson to be, "Hey, just copy a bunch of other games, "mash them together,
and cross your fingers." Maybe it's that the games market will always have an element of randomness and that the next hit can
truly come out of anywhere. Maybe the lesson is to
listen to your fans. Because if they're craving a
game that you're not making, somebody else might
get there ahead of you. Or maybe the lesson is that in 2024, with so many AAA games keeping it safe, even something as superficially subversive as a cute animal holding a gun is enough to get you noticed. Yeah, there we go, there we go. That's the real Palworld right here. You want a rocket launcher? (soft music)
