Gaming struggles for originality these days - it’s why MachineGames’Indiana Jonestitle has beenpraised for being first person to avoid seeming like a cloneofUncharted, which itself began life as little more than a clone ofIndiana Jones. Games copy games all the time, but the tone of this conversation is very different when it comes toPalworld, so let’s explore why.
It’s AI… Maybe
First off, we have zero concrete proof that Palworld is made by AI. Its credits lists several human character designers and while they do bear a lot of similarities toPokemon(something we’ll touch on later), so do many other games. There are none of the usual telltale giveaways we see with AI design, and the overall aesthetics of Palworld don’t fit with modern generative AI creation.
It has also been in development for a long time, with trailers featuring these designs dating back three years - it’s easy to forget how far AI has come in that time, which suggests a lot of human input (maybe entirely human input) behind Palworld’s Pals.
Takuro Mizobe, CEO of Palworld’s developer, Pocketpair, isa noted big fan of AI however. He has shared tweets praising AI, including how impressively it can make fake Pokemon designs, although none of these designs made it into Palworld. Pocketpair has also worked on aspecifically AI game similar to Pictionary’s AI, wherein AI is used to guess drawings. While there’s nothing concrete regarding Palworld, it would be fair to say that Pocketpair overall represents an AI-fuelled future we fear.
But Palworld? Not so much. There have been two basic reactions to ‘it might be AI’, both of which highlight the problem with the conversation in their own way. The first reaction has been to take any suspicion of AI as proof positive and shut any discussion down. Anyone playing, supporting, or thinking about this game is the destruction of the industry itself. On the other side of the fence, the reaction has been to shrug. It’s fun, so I don’t really care about AI. They both reveal that gaming has a long way to go if it wants to safeguard itself against AI.
It’s Pokemon… Maybe
There areseveral similarities across Palworld’s designsthat seem to be one to one recreations of Pokemon, whether made by human hand or by AI. Of course, all of these games share some similar DNA - if it came out today,Digimonmight have been accused of using AI. Why else would it end up with some designs that look like Pokemon and others where the machine has inexplicably mixed in human beings?
But this line of thinking assumes Pokemon was first, which is incorrect.Dragon Quest Monsterspredates Pokemon, to the point where several Pokemon look like they were heavily inspired by DQM. Wallop Scallop is a shell with a long tongue sticking out and two eyes perched in the darkness, much like Shellder. Pokemon fans will argue that Shellder is an original design based on an existing artwork, rather than the blatant similarities with Palworld’s models, but perhaps the most important words in that sentence are the first two.
Just a few of the designs with notable similarities
Pokemon has a fervent fanbase, andNintendois so beloved thatfans often root for it to sueanyone and everyone who may have wronged them. While games likeTemtem,Cassette Beasts, andCoromonhave been cheered for their similarities to Pokemon, fans have instead been hoping Palworld goes bankrupt. That may be in part due to the AI misgivings, but it’s likely also something in the tone.
Those other games are made with the reverence of ‘we love Pokemon so much we made our own!’, but Palworld seems to be more ‘ha give ‘em guns, that’d be hilarious!’. It feels, both in its Pokemon with guns marketing and in the violent cruelty of its world, like Palworld is motivated by Pokemon’s success more than any deep love of the series. That shouldn’t make a legal difference, but it will affect public perception, which brings us to the third point.
It’s Plagiarism… Maybe
The funny thing about Palworld is it isn’t really like Pokemon at all. While Cassette Beasts and Coromon ape every aspect of the formula, Palworld is completely different. It’s a survival game with no home town, no starters, no hero’s path for your player character to walk. You just catch Pals (by beating them up, which is different to Pokemon) and use them to battle. Even then, you’re often battling mini-kaiju Pals rather than gym leaders or rival trainers.
Being a survival game is nothing new either, but we wouldn’t call that plagiarism, just as we don’t call military shooters plagiarism. Then there’sFortnite, which not only takes its base battle royale idea fromPUBG, but alsoreleased an Among Us-style mode at the height of the viral game’s popularity. Is Pocketpair an easier target, either thanks to its size or its unashamed support of AI and copying popular concepts? If games copy one another all the time, why is Palworld different?
To hearDeathloopdirector Dinga Bakaba tell it, it’s not. As a relatively neutral party (Bakaba has no connection to Pocketpair beyond the solidarity of being a game dev himself), Bakaba is the most high profile figure to have defended Palworld from the discourse storm, and you canread his full, multi-tweet thread here.
I don’t agree with every point Bakaba makes; he defends accusations of laziness by pointing out that even copy and pasting mechanics in the same engine for a sequel is difficult, but I feel there is an unavoidable laziness in stealing someone else’s concept rather than devising your own. However, his points that there are far more similarities to Ark andRustthan to Pokemon, and just as many toBreath of the Wild,Elden Ring, and Fortnite, has been overlooked by many who write the game off as Pokemon plagiarism.
It’s also true that copying Pokemon is part of the point - Pokemon offers an idyllic world where Pokemon love being caught and forced to fight, and everything is hunky dory. Palworld challenges that view by injecting a much harsher and personal sense of violence, while still keeping the basic capturing and nurturing elements of Pokemon - it’s less a Pokemon clone than an anti-Pokemon.
It all comes back to the first question - why is Palworld different? The answers are numerous; there’s a fear of AI (and wider paranoia about the topic), it has agitated Pokemon fans who usually let clones slide, its designs are more shameless, but also, it’s incredibly popular (making it a natural water cooler topic), and it’s January (meaning it’s either this or bicker about No Return).
Having played a chunk of the game myself, it feels derivative and empty, which you might expect from an early access survival game anyway. But the most interesting thing about it is the way we’re debating it, and that alone could make it one of the most interesting games of the year.
