Is Palworld any good?

[Barry Admin]

It looks alright, I tried it for an hour or two and don't know if it's worth getting sucked into it any further.

Pokémon meets Ark, it seems to be.

[Thursday]

Confused by all I've seen about this. At first all I heard was that it was some cheap "Pokemon but EDGY" thing and it used AI art. I'd assumed it was  just some nonsense on Steam that people were talking about for some reason. But then suddenly I see it's doing really well, people seem to like it, and there's no actual proof it uses AI art.

[Barry Admin]

Yeah it's very confusing, it was a little janky when I played it, but still early access. I flicked through an Asmongold video there and he seems to love it, as do all his commenters.

But I'm a bit wary of the hype. There are also people in the comments saying the makers are ripoff merchants and the game isn't worth getting into.

[Schlippy]

Ten years ago a blatant asset flip like this would have been laughed out the door, but these days it seems people just want more of their favourite things, even if it's in the form of a bunch of AI-generated slop. And I guess Niantec proved their specific customer base will shovel down any old shit with the technically & creatively bankrupt mess that was Scarlet / Violet.

Om nom nom tasty tasty slop. Love some grey goo, me.

[C_Larence]

Niantec had nothing to do with Scarlet/Violet, they just make Pokémon Go (which has its own issues). Personally I loved Scarlet, I thought the new monster designs were the best for many years, the open world was what I had dreamed of as a 5 year old playing Pokémon Yellow for the first time. I didn't have any technical issues problems playing it so maybe I just got lucky.  Similarly I loved Legends Arceus which was the non-mainline game that came out before Scarlet/Violet, and had more of the innovation I think you're looking for.

I saw that Palworld had sold 5 million copies in a week, which is practically unheard of for a "new" IP.  It has the fifth highest ever concurrent players on Steam.

[bgmnts]

It'll have its buzz but reckon the air will go out of it pretty quickly.

Monumental cash cow for the developers, though.

[BRen]

I saw that Palworld had sold 5 million copies in a week, which is practically unheard of for a "new" IP.  It has the fifth highest ever concurrent players on Steam.

It only released into early access last Thursday, so it's sold five million copies in four days.

I've been playing it and really enjoying it, it's basically Pokémon with guns meets Ark: Survival Evolved. But the barrier to entry is much better, and easier than the majority of survival games, and it runs really well. There are some bugs, here and there, but as an early access experience, it's superb so far. It's definitely worth the 22 quid it's selling for at the moment, most certainly.

[kidney]

I've played about 25 hours and it's a lot of fun and is a good game. Hopefully the devs will remain committed to it once the ludicrous initial hype inevitably dies down and it can become a really great game with substantial staying power. Very funny seeing all the frothing online about how Nintendo need to take legal action over it.

[Schlippy]

Nintendo absolutely fucking should! Jesus tapdancing Christ if Pocket Pair can use AI to blatantly rip off a bunch of existing characters from one of the largest developers in the world and get away with it, what hope does anyone smaller than that have of getting remunerated for their work?

This will be the death knell for solo-to-mid tier developers otherwise. OpenAI are already going to court claiming they should be able to train their LLMs on copyrighted and paywalled literature, if they pull that off and these crooked fuckers get away with it, in ten years time there'll be nothing left but grey goo.

Hope you enjoy playing Franchise Quest XXIII, because your options are going to get extremely limited otherwise.

[oggyraiding]

On one hand AI rip offs are bad.

On the other hand, seeing disgustingly litigious Nintendo have people rip off its biggest IP and then make it better than any Pokemon has been in over a decade. That's good to see.

[Barry Admin]

The stuff about AI is really true Schlippy? You've mentioned it twice now and it's been the most intriguing thing I've heard about the game tbh :-D I hate most AI shit but the hall of this is kind of staggering. Is there a good video or article about it?

[Schlippy]

They've not admitted it, but if you've ever messed about with generative AI, especially Dall-E, you can see it all over the character models. Doesn't help that the CEO of Pocket Pair had a tweet blow up a couple of years back when he demonstrated how easy it was to make clones of Pokemons using (I think) Dall-E.

Yeah, here we go: https://www.creativebloq.com/news/palworld-ai-use

So, not proven until they admit it (which they won't, obvs), but these guys were a good year ahead of the competition (ChatGPT only launched in November 2022) and most creatives are looking at this as potentially the beginning of the end of paid human labour if the use of AI like this is legitimised & accepted.

[Thursday]

As a sort of counterpoint

https://videogames.si.com/features/palworld-ai-allegations-controversy-repercussions

[Schlippy]

No-one's suggesting the game or models were made wholesale by AI (no-one sensible anyway, AI code generation is fine at the procedure or class level but falls apart when you try and take it any further than that), but having AI squirt out a bunch of wierd-handed copies of existing characters that then get massaged into shape by your dev team? Well within existing capabilities of AI.

And obviously developers have been knocking off each others ideas for ages, there's nothing new in copying from successful IPs that have gone before (Fortnite is basically Minecraft's crafting squished into the cult hit DayZ with WoW's art style), but it's the scale and speed that can happen at now that's new.

Here's what a self-taught programmer managed to make solo with AI in a few hours whilst mostly shitposting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnN6eBamwj4

[Kelvin]

Couple of moderately interesting videos.

Former long-term Nintendo employees talking about what will likely be happening behind the scenes at Nintendo and Pokemon Company in response to Palworld.

Talks about why they were probably caught of guard by the game's success.


Also, a videogame IP lawyer talking about the legal aspects of the game, including some discussion about the issues around AI.

[Schlippy]

Thing that jangles my chain most about this is the blind acceptance by the gaming public; just give us our treats, we don't care how they were made or how shady the practices that went into them were. In 2017 pretty much the entire community came together as one to tell EA to fuck right off after Star Wars Battlefront 2 was a lootbox-riddled pay-to-win scam that tried to fleece even the people shelling out hundreds on the most feature-soaked launch editions. Now it seems no-one gives a fuck as long as the treats keep coming and the people having their throats cut are "just" the creatives behind the scenes.

[Milo]

I found the character builder annoying so went back to Deathloop.

[Schlippy]

Watching that first video Kelvin posted and looking at the footage from this game, 'king hell there's not a single original character model in there. I saw sheikah slates, bowsers, recognised the towers from somewhere, even the biome background textures all looked like facsimilies from other games.

The idea that Nintendo will let it slide and hope it blows over, sheesh, that's gaming fucked then. Microsoft, Sony, Epic, everyone will be watching this and going, k, everything's fair game now then is it? Won't be smaller devs ripping off the big ones for long.

[bgmnts]

Fuck me some poor 80 year old judge is going to have to spend hours looking at 500 Nintendo characters and deciding if they're rip offs or not, aren't they? Gutting for them.

But yeah, Nintendo do not fuck about. They must have an army of top gun lawyers on retainer at this point, the litigious bastards. Palworld gon be choppes?

Case won't be helped when the developer says this:

I have a deep-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 think I need to be particular about originality. I want to make it less serious, or rather, more easy-going. I think it's good to create something in that way, like jumping on what's trendy (lol).

[Schlippy]

But yeah, Nintendo do not fuck about. They must have an army of top gun lawyers on retainer at this point, the litigious bastards. Palworld gon be choppes?

The vibe from the two (ex-?)employees in that video Kelvin posted seemed to be that Nintendo won't want the negative press of taking down everyone's fun new game in the run up to their new console launch, so will most likely try backroom negotiations if they do anything, presumably hoping fickle public opinion will just blow over and latch onto something else in the meantime. If this turns into the next Fortnite instead, Nintendo may just have to eat shit or ruin their reputation and look like backfooted trend-chasers, which is apparantly cardinal sin #1 within Nintendo culture.

[Vodkafone]

Also, a videogame IP lawyer talking about the legal aspects of the game, including some discussion about the issues around AI.

That was interesting, thanks. More lawyers who know their Pokémon please!

[Schlippy]

I'll stop firehosing negativity into this thread, but Pocket Pair's next endeavour looks, erm, familiar:

[Milo]

Oh how dare they, Hollow Knight is special. Hollow Knight doesn't have ladders though, maybe that's the original feature.

[Jerzy Bondov]

If you've paid money for this game you need to have a good hard look in the mirror, where you will see a fool

[brat-sampson]

Looks shait aI raickon

[VelourSpirit]

Watching that first video Kelvin posted and looking at the footage from this game, 'king hell there's not a single original character model in there. I saw sheikah slates, bowsers, recognised the towers from somewhere, even the biome background textures all looked like facsimilies from other games.

The idea that Nintendo will let it slide and hope it blows over, sheesh, that's gaming fucked then. Microsoft, Sony, Epic, everyone will be watching this and going, k, everything's fair game now then is it? Won't be smaller devs ripping off the big ones for long.

and anything else that doesn't look like it's ported from other games looks like defeault Unreal assets. The whole environment. Doesn't look like something I'd want to explore at all. Ugly ugly game. A bit disgusted at how insanely popular it is.

[bgmnts]

Played a little bit and it's not a pokemon game obviously; it is a bit crap though. It almost feels deliberately so - making a mockery of the industry to make a point whilst coining it in.

Looking forward to the release on Switch!

[Mister Six]

Not going to care about this until Moon Channel weighs in on it, but it's hardly out of the realm of possibility that they paid some humans to knock out 300 shite Pokemon-a-likes, is it? Especially if there's a pre-existing aesthetic that you're ripping off.

In any case, it's tacky as fuck. But I don't think it'll deplete interest in games with original art design or mechanics, or indeed actual polish. Even if the market does end up awash in mass-produced, janky generic slop, it'll just make the artfully crafted games all the more unusual and appealing.

[Schlippy]

Honestly surprised at the lack of pushback on this. 6 weeks ago hbomberguy released a video detailing plagiarism in the video essay business which went nuclear, nearly 15 million views for a 4 hour long video, and the only pushback against that I saw were a few Internet Historian fans saying it was old news. The main target scarpered, tried a half-arsed "I'm sowwy" then fled the internet, much to everyone's hooting delight.

Stick a few pokey mans in one of the most obvious and blatant rip-offs, however, and it's all "cry more, Reddit!" and "haha Twitter tears lol". I wonder what it was about the homosexual youtuber James Somerton that made him fair game where Pocket Pair get a (mostly) free pass.

[madhair60]

probably because he was provably directly lifting shit from other peoples' work while Palworld has been proven not to be doing that. it's very derivative but it's not direct plagiarism.