Why PalWorld Copied Pokémon

if there are good ideas in the world I pick them up and I don't necessarily have to be particular about originality these are the words of takuru Mobi the founder of pocket pair the developers behind palor in the past week the studio has garnered a lot of attention for a making one of the most widely popular games on Steam and Xbox game pass of well all time and B shall we say wearing their inspiration on their sleeves in a recent video I explained how palor just about passes the squint t and circumvent intellectual property law so that it's safe from the Pokémon company and Nintendo from a legal perspective largely because in addition to borrowing a lot from Pokémon games it also borrows Concepts from Arc survival evolved this allows it to be just distinct enough to avoid infringing copyright even as it borrows and remixes large chunks of Pokémon character design perhaps the bigger question though is why why does pocket pair take this particular game design approach the mashup approach of taking various different IDE ideas from different games and smooshing them together in such a way that while not necessarily particularly original or unique make something that is distinct enough to be considered its own game to use the phrase mashup does feel appropriate because that is exactly how pocket pair's founder turo Mobi describes the Studio's creative process in an absolutely fascinating interview with Wired from 2022 Mobi explained that the studio borrows so heavily from other existing popular titles because making original games is very difficult that's actually what he said and he is not shy about admitting to this now bear in mind that the initial interview was conducted and published in Japanese so do take this translation with a pinch of salt and bear in mind that I'm trying my utmost hereit to present this information free from my own personal bias to Simply relay what mizobe said so that you're able to form your own opinions on his comments I'm also avoiding the subject of AI for art generation within pal world at the moment simply because that's such a large topic that it really does deserve a video in its own right which may well be coming at a later date with all of that in mind here is why pal World copies from Pokémon and Arc survival evolved I have always been interested in game development the first time I created a game was during my third year at University when I attended a game seminar sponsored by Nintendo that year I believe there were four teams of nine people per team 36 people in total and we took on the challenge of developing a game for the Nintendo DS but to be honest at the time I thought what I want to do now is not make games takuru Mobi has become something of a controversial figure within the gaming sphere largely because he has not come at game development from the same perspective as a lot of other game developers in this interview with Wyatt he goes into detail about how initially while game design was something that appealed to him he felt like he wanted to do something different when he first went out of University the Nintendo approach to game design in particular just did not speak to him instead he entered the financial sector and by all accounts did fairly well for himself earning quite a fair amount of money which he's then able to use to fund his game development projects Mobi has also spent some time in the web sector developing Services which are by his own admission absolutely not original indeed he says himself his goal was to make something that was the Japanese version of LinkedIn which he ultimately developed into stories. JP it became its own thing eventually but right off the bat the idea was let me take something that already works and do it slightly differently to make my own thing when asked why game design didn't appeal to him at University following this game design seminar that he attended that was sponsored by Nintendo he said I honestly didn't think it was worth it because making games was too difficult I also loved Nintendo's culture but I felt it didn't really fit me for that reason I got a job at JP Morgan after graduating but although it was a great company and the pay was good the work was not technically interesting this then LED Mobi to experiment in the web web sector and with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency leading him to the point where he was quite an experienced Tech developer uh but still lacking a particular drive and still having a creative itch for game design that wasn't being scratched by his other projects He ultimately said I gradually realized that I wanted to create games as well so I decided to start my own company and founded what is now pocket pair Mobi is fairly complimentary of the Nintendo approach to developing games but at the same time has said that it is not for him specifically because of the amount of work that Nintendo puts in to making original Concepts that are unlike anything else that are on the market he said when it comes to making games Nintendo has a strong philosophy of creating new and unique games with high quality and this was questioned at the Nintendo Game seminar on the other hand I have a dee rooted desire for my work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible and to that end if there are good ideas in the world I pick them up and I don't necessarily have to be particular about originality I think it would be a good idea to create things in a way that just jumps on what is trendy it's this approach of riding popular Trends to get his work seen by as many people as possible that first influenced mob's work in the web sector and then influenced his work in game development and he said that he has taken a lot of ideas from his work in web services over to his game design projects He said quote copying is common place in the world of web services for example Facebook copied Google's circles feature from Google+ other examples of how the world's largest companies are copying each other's web content include Instagram copying its stories feature from Snapchat I think the same is true in the world of games many fighting games follow the UI of Street Fighter 2 and many car games are influenced by Hearthstone famous Indie Games in particular are often strongly influenced by past masterpieces I believe that culture develops through imitation so as he moved from web services over to game design Mobi brought this mashup mentality with him and he applied it to the Studio's first major game over dungeon to limited success he said over dungeon was developed because I thought it would be an interesting idea to combine two card games slay the spire and Clash Royale however when I actually tried it I found that I couldn't get the balance right and it was much more difficult to integrate the games than I had expected on the other hand I also discovered that by imitating multiple works you can create something unique it's similar to a mashup in music so for the next game we developed craftopia we decided to take a fresh look and try to incorporate as much of the essence of games that we thought were interesting as possible craftopia serves very much as the template for pal world and a lot of the ideas from craftopia migrated over to Powell during the development of that game craftopia can be seen very much as the mashup between Ark survival evolved and The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild and if you think I'm being reductive by describ describing it that way that is exactly how mizobe describes it he said I referenced The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild as a Bas and added as many elements as I thought were interesting such as crafting elements from Minecraft and animal husbandry elements from dinosaur Survival action game Arc survival evolved naturally there were a lot of bugs and the game would fail but I thought it was interesting and I told the staff I'll take responsibility for it so keep working on it this is possible because we are an independent company it is worth remembering yet again that the reason why pocket pair is able to do any of this work is because of the independent wealth that Mobi has brought along from his work in web services and also from his work in the financial sector mobia has also mentioned how the kernel of the idea of the pals in power world started in craftopia and they ended up just fleshing that out and developing it further it's clear from the comments on our first video on power world that The Gaming Community is somewhat conflicted about how we feel as a whole about pal world now I said I'm going to keep my own personal opinions to myself on this Beyond simply reiterating that I feel that intellectual property law just does not suit video games as it currently exists uh but beyond that it is interesting to see this mashup formula which is very popular in other forms of creative entertainment applied so strongly in the video game sphere as mentioned I've entirely ignored for the moment the large very uncomfortable elephant in the room which is pocket pairs use of AI for art generation in games in the past and indeed probably in pal world I think at a later date we'll potentially have a video on how AI can influence game development and how it's potentially influenced power world but at the same time how there are limitations to what can be achieved with current AI technology regarding the kind of resources and the assets that you need to put into a video game but we'll put all of that to one side for the moment ultimately without wanting to color things too far one way or the other on this the moral of this story is simply that the mashup formula that pocket pair has applied works like a charm it has certainly achieved the objective of getting as much attention as possible this is something that is well worth bearing in mind if you are a game developer although you do also have to bear in mind that not all of that attention is necessarily positive as the ongoing discourse surrounding power World shows at the same time something tells me that mobia is not losing sleep over the negative comments while he sleeps on his giant pile of [Music] money

Channel: Video Game Story Time

Views: 25,897

Keywords: palworld, pokemon, ark, ark survival, ark survival evolved, copyright, copy, pal, pocket pair, Takuro Mizobe, mashup, palworld copy pokemon, lawsuit, legal, nintendo, nintendo switch, steam, xbox, xbox game pass, anubis, boltmane, jolthog, robinquill, lucario, verdash, craftopia, overdungeon, nintendo ds, game design, game making, making of palworld, development, dykg palworld, did you know palworld, origin of palworld, creation of palworld, palworld developer, zp palworld, ramblomatic palworld

Id: vbhLil2tRnE

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2024