Cognition Dissemination: Gotta Pal ‘em All

The Summer Game Fest trailer for Palworld, which marked the first time plenty of gaming types saw the game in action, clearly outlined what it was intended to be and the audience it was gunning for.

The glance showed how it was essentially Pokémon with guns within the confines of a survival MMO. The question of whether The Pokémon Company, Game Freak, and Nintendo should have made a game like this themselves was previously asked in several gaming communities, though the question never made sense. These were not the kinds of themes either company was willing to embrace, nor will they ever be willing to. The Pokémon franchise has appealed to generations upon generations of kids, alongside adults who’ve remained with the series. The same goes for whether a Pokémon survival MMO should have been made. Demand always existed for the concept, and that’s where Palworld has come in.

That demand has assuredly been fulfilled. Palworld released on Steam, Xbox Series, and Xbox One this past weekend, and it’s already sold more than six million copies as of this writing. (I’m expecting this number to be outdated by the weekend.) It feels like half the streaming world on Twitch and YouTube is playing it. Palworld wears its Pokémon inspirations on its sleeve, but it straddles very closely to the Pocket Monsters in terms of its aesthetics, especially the Pals themselves.

There are several examples. The fin on the “Dumud” Pal looks identical to the one on Pokémon Sobble. The face on the Grintale Pal similarly looks heavily inspired by that from the Galarian Meowth Pokémon. The Verdash Pal brings to mind the Pokémon Cinderace. The… well, you get it by now.

There are a lot of tweets and posts making comparisons, and others made videos comparing design elements of Pals to those from Pokémon, both their inspirations and others that go further. It’s one matter to use designs for ideas, but it’s another to lift design elements.

It’s even more dramatic to suggest that developer Pocketpair might have used AI for assistance with some designs. CEO Takuro Mizobe made several tweets promoting AI usage, including using AI-generated designs to bypass copyright laws and being excited about the prospect of games generated by GPT-4. Most damningly, he also used an AI generator to create off-brand Pokémon for a supposed bit of fun.

This is a tough game to define. The Pokémon inspirations couldn’t be clearer and are undeniable in terms of their aesthetics, but it’s being utilized for different gameplay. The Pokémon games tend to be more traditional turn-based RPGs while Palworld is a survival MMORPG, the latter genre of which tends to perform incredibly well with the PC audience. There’s also no denying how the Pals have elements to their designs that look remarkably similar to those from Pokémon, but there’s no evidence that they’re using the same models. Similarly, there’s no concrete evidence that AI was used to make the designs either.

There have been discussions about The Pokémon Company suing Pocketpair, with Nintendo’s assistance. But that’s unlikely to happen for at least a couple of reasons. Lawyers who follow gaming developments like Richard Hoeg of Hoeg Law discussed how difficult of a case this would be for Nintendo to win. The chief issue here is how Palworld isn’t in the same video game genre as Pokémon, and is closer to the likes of Minecraft with a little The Legend of Zelda sprinkled in. Some elements of Pals look taken from Pokémon, but there’s no proof of that; not to mention how several of those Pokémon elements were similarly inspired by other designs from the real world or other media.

A lawsuit would go in a similar direction to Nintendo’s against Tear Ring Saga, should anyone remember that one, despite Nintendo having a stronger foundation for their case then. Tear Ring Saga was a strategy RPG released for PSOne designed by Fire Emblem creator Shouzou Kaga, to the point that its grid and battle fields even resembled those from the Fire Emblem series at the time, and featured work from late character designer Mayumi Hirota of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776. This led to Nintendo suing developer Tirnanog, but the content they presented wasn’t enough to prove Nintendo’s case, which led to Tirnanog and Enterbrain winning.

The lawsuit was unsuccessful, but Nintendo did influence changes to the game (it was originally called “Emblem Saga”) and especially sequel Berwick Saga. The changes to the latter game on PlayStation 2, which included altered visuals and camera angles on the battlefields, led to it selling far fewer copies. The lawsuit also led to localization companies avoiding both games, leaving them only in Japan. Nintendo has an even weaker case with Palworld, and has undoubtedly learned from this ordeal.

Palworld’s designs feel as if they intentionally straddle the line. It’s like Pocketpair had someone overlooking the designs to make sure they closely resembled Pokémon enough that the gaming audience would know what they’re going for, but ensured that they featured enough changes for them to be legal to use. Their inspiration is clear, but that’s ultimately as far as it goes. Nothing will stop this train, though Nintendo’s could still make interesting moves from here. But I can’t emphasize “could” enough.