Starting to believe in himself
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Look at me in the eye and tell me this isnt plagarism.
Like, its just as legal as an Asylum film. Theres nothing legally dubious as far as I can tell and claims of AI generation seem largely unfounded.
The real trick here is if tge concept stands for you. Is Pokemon with guns and sweatshops a gimmick that sells you on the vibe of the game? That its derivative of Pokemon is part of the point here.
I find it novel, but I know the novelty will wear off once I start playing it so I'm not going to indulge. But I don't think its a strictly higher moral position to not play tge game.
There's also the fact that the non pokemon half of the gameplay is just Ark:Survival. The HUD is identical, thr building and craftings, and other assests in the game are just asset flipped unreal engine 5 stuff. Even if you dont believe the pokemon stuff, everything points to it being as vapid as its other trend chasing games, like Not-BOTW (Craftopia) and the upcoming Not-Hollow Knight (Never Grave). The company seems to lack an original bone in its body, and the more I see of it, the less i can be convonced otherwise.
There is multiple layers of questions here:
1) are ripoff designs okay even if its confirmed they weren't made with AI?
They are still ripoff designs so thats kinda questionable. Its kinda hard to tell line between "rip off" and "parody".
2) Its ark survival with ripoff pokemon, does that affect how you interpret the game?
I mean there are lot of indie games that is x but y, so its probably not that bad inherently.
3) Game is getting lot of accusations of being an asset flip.
That sounds bad but I haven't looked up to that yet what are they taking assets from. Either way asset flipping can't really be justified in commercial games
4) Craftopia from same devs was basically breath of the wilds ripoff with enemy models looking to be directly from botw with just different textures.
Okay that kindaaaaaaaaaaa speaks to devs having track record of being creatively bankrupt which puts all other accusations into darker ligth
And thats not getting into their apparent history with releasing games in buggy unpolished state and basically running with money. SO uh... There are lot of red flags with this game, so I wouldn't die on the hill defending the game. That said its true that whole game's parody aspect wouldn't work if monsters didn't make you think of pokemon, but I have no clue where the line goes on that specific point
Edited by SpookyMask on Jan 21st 2024 at 10:01:45 AM
75% of Pokemon are ripoffs of real world creatures, guys.
Honestly my biggest gripe with the game is that it doesn't really have a solid gameplay direction. It takes a little bit of everything shallowly and doesn't innovate much. But hey, it is open beta.
Pokemon needs competition of some sort. They've been coasting along and getting away with releasing unfinished mush for far too long. Anything that forces Pokemon Company to polish their games even a little is a good thing in my book.
Need proof before commenting on the AI stuff. And no, one liked tweet mentioning AI is not proof AI was used in the making of this game.
Edited by PhiSat on Jan 22nd 2024 at 3:48:00 AM
Oissu!Pokemon needs competition of some sort. They've been coasting along and getting away with releasing unfinished mush for far too long. Anything that forces Pokemon Company to polish their games even a little is a good thing in my book.
Leaving aside that the game is currently less polished than SV... It doesn't really work as competition to Pokemon, since it plays entirely differently and the monster design is making no effort to be distinct from or better than Pokemon's designs. At best I can see an argument that Gamefreak should take notes if they ever have another go at the Legends style
^^The question is: Could someone mistake pals for pokemon and would it be reasonable mistake? If yes, then ripoff is accurate.
I personally don't think they are made with AI, but I do think they are purposefully similar if not asset flips
This. Its ark survival with pokemon like characters.
What it does demonstrate is that there is unexploited niche that mon series haven't filled. My guess that part of it is the edgy advertising, but I think biggest thing is that people like "cute pokemon like monsters" combined with games aimed at adults or at least older teens? Like most of mon series that try to be most like pokemon are aimed at same target audience as pokemon which is part of reason they don't really work out
Edited by SpookyMask on Jan 22nd 2024 at 4:22:41 AM
Maybe you are missing sarcasm mode because this is textbook false equivalence. "But your honor, Mickey mouse is a rip-off of a real world animal". An animal might not be copyright or trademaked but even a picture of one can. So a cartoon animal can definitely be considered an original idea.
Most mon games are rpgs. I feel it's as simple as that. Palworld is a shooter on a platform where shooters are popular. Pokemon is an rpg on platforms where rpgs are popular
Edited by NthEquation on Jan 22nd 2024 at 12:57:53 PM
I personally don't think they are made with AI, but I do think they are purposefully similar if not asset flips
The apparent design philosophy is... interesting and kind of weird. There doesn't seem to be any outright theft, but there's a lot of cases where the details on a pal will strongly resemble something on an otherwise unrelated pokemon. Like, that Cobalion-looking pal at the top of the page has fur near it's hooves that's reminiscent of Spectrier's hoof trails. This isn't really something you'd get from AI, but suggests instead that actual people spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the pals reminded you pokemon as much as possible
What it does demonstrate is that there is unexploited niche that mon series haven't filled. My guess that part of it is the edgy advertising, but I think biggest thing is that people like "cute pokemon like monsters" combined with games aimed at adults or at least older teens?
I think it was mostly the advertising. Having a more inviting aesthetic than most games of it's genre probably helped a bit (Ark and Rust are ugly, ugly games), but the game got popular before it was clear what the genre was
Maybe you are missing sarcasm mode because this is textbook false equivalence. "But your honor, Mickey mouse is a rip-off of a real world animal". An animal might not be copyright or trademarked but even a picture of one can. So a cartoon animal can definitely be considered an original idea.
Yes, but copyright is generally quite specific. Pals are legally distinct from pokemon
Most mon games are rpgs. I feel it's as simple as that. Palworld is a shooter on a platform where shooters are popular. Pokemon is an rpg on platforms where rpgs are popular
What? Doom is popular on Switch. Baldur's Gate did well on PC. Smartphones have been the only platform with a meaningfully different library/audience for like a decade now
Edited by Hylarn on Jan 22nd 2024 at 5:31:30 AM
So been seeing this blow up and figure I give my own two cents on the whole thing:
From what I can tell it's clear that this game didn't use GenAI for its Pals. Emphasis on "this game" because it's clear the devs are totally into it in general - CEO Takuro Mizobe has openly gushed about incorporating GenAI into the dev flow
, and one of Pocketpair's games, AI Imposter, literally uses Stable Diffusion as a core mechanic. So Palworld itself is "clean" for now...whether or not it stays "clean" is another matter.
Also it seems clear to me that the Pal designs are legally distinct enough to not be infringing copyrights, but it's also clear to me that they are still straight-up knockoffs to the point where people have been able to pick apart the parts used to make them. And not only is that intentional but that's basically the whole damn point here. Again it's a thing the devs are totally into - their whole library is a giant exercise in creating Mockbusters out of popular ideas mashed together, and Mizobe has openly boasted
about caring more about following popular ideas than being original. Whether or not it counts as plagiarism is very YMMV - I think there's an argument for the designs being plagiarized from a general standard even if it doesn't broach a legal one.
The Asylum is honestly a good comparison here, not just in terms of how much they copy and how shallow the "parody" is but in how their whole business model is sliding just enough to the line that the ripoff is obvious without it being legally enforceable and teasing and winking about just how close to the line they are. Pocketpair is basically what would happen if the Asylum's movies were actually still good in their own right.
And that's really the rub, right? The game is shamelessly derivative and kitbashed together and is cynical to the point of being meanspirited...and yet it still carries solid-enough gameplay and technical polish that to at least some degree reflects sincere effort and care. And its to a point where I don't blame people for not being comfortable with what the devs are doing, but I also don't blame people for just looking past it and having fun with what's there. And like, I'm a comic book guy, I'm used to ideas being shamelessly recycled and reiterated on and expies upon expies that still carry legitimate creativity to them so....y'know.
If anything truly gets me a bit uncomfortable it's the idea that the game being such a shameless knockoff is a huge reason why it's so popular to begin with, the game being rewarded for cutting to the chase and just giving people a bunch of Serial Numbers Filed Off fakemon for people to play their Pokemon fantasies to their heart's content. I kinda don't have the words to parse that out yet.
Not trying to say shooters aren't popular on switch or vice versa, but relative to the popularity of the other genres? At the very least, shooters are more popular on steam/pc than on switch. So if you were to make a multiplayer shooter Mon game it would probably be more popular on PC.
Hmm yeah, I don't feel like reason why Coromon, Temtem and Cassette Beasts didn't get as big was because designs weren't close enough to pokemon, I think the edgy "lol this looks like pokemon shitpost" marketing is what got the word to word going through.
Its just that that alone wouldn't make game sell million copies if there wasn't something in that shit post that resonated with people. Thing just figuring out is "is it mon series trait being applied to different genre, is it just quote and quote 'adult pokemon', or is there something else we are missing that could be learned here"
Its not likely any one factor. But the premise is novel and the trailer sells it well. The Pokemon fandom is starving for originality. Theres a non zero number of 2 edgy 4 you teens and adults waiting in the wings for stuff like this. Survival/crafting games have a gameplay loop that keeps people engaged.
Theres likely more to it.
Honestly, my biggest takeaway is that people should try to push their dumb ideas more. If this can catch, then anything anyone can come up with could catch under the right circumstances.
Edited by Zeromaeus on Jan 22nd 2024 at 10:42:03 AM
Well even if you think pokemon series is in rut, you still have the series. Its not like a series where gameplay style was completely switched out or series is in hibernation.
So those games have to compete with actual pokemon with pokemon fans who want to play pokemon.
Takeaway probably is "yeah even if survival crafting game wasn't popular, likely various pokemon copies would have done better with different gameplay genre"?
@Watchtower: For your last point
, I think part of the reason people latched so hard to the game is because of the fact that Pokemon is just plain stagnant at this point, and Palworld—despite being almost entirely shameless in how similar its Pal designs are—brings enough originality and engagement to to the table that actually manages to make it feel like how we used to imagine playing Pokemon back in the day as kids, AR-wielding grass monkeys notwithstanding. Discounting the ARK-style base building, the exploration of just hopping onto a Pal's back, and then physically engaging against other Pals, either by yourself or alongside one or more of your own Pals, is literally how most of us imagined the Pokemon gameplay loop in the past. If TPC and Game Freak weren't so bullheaded in their decision to keep the series the way it is and actually innovated, Palworld wouldn't have caught on like it did.
And I can't say much for Coromon or Cassette Beasts, but Temtem died because there wasn't enough challenging content to keep players engaged and for some braindead reason the devs decided that adding endgame content and expansions, either through new locations or new Temtems, was a hard no for them. There was literally nothing to keep players hooked, hence its hard decline. It was basically a live service MMO with no service. Which is a shame, because I actually really liked the design of the Temtems.
Edited by ITNW1989 on Jan 22nd 2024 at 8:03:30 AM
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.I'm not even sure that Palworld has a "novel premise," especially since the Megami Tensei franchise has been around for even longer than Pokemon has.
Granted, I get the feeling that Palworld is going for a different feel than the Megami Tensei franchise, but "Mons with guns" is not exactly unexplored territory.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jan 22nd 2024 at 8:05:31 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."
