I realise that at this point probably the last thing anyone wants is a long rambling post about Palworld - either you've chosen a stance already or you are sick of hearing about it, but as part of the discourse in regards to the game - I've heard a lot of things said that bother me in a way I can't shake and that go beyond just Palworld. So in an effort to hopefully try and put this whole conversation behind me, I am going to try and lay out all of my thoughts on the subject in a single comprehensive post.
Before I get to the philosophical meat of this post, there's a few things I need to get out of the way first.
First of all: AI art sucks. AI art is the theft of art without the artist's consent or compensation for the purpose of replacing them. It is fundamentally abhorrent and should be regulated out of existance. I have seen no hard evidence to suggest AI art was used in the creation of palworld.
Palworld has been in development since before the big AI boom we're all still suffering through and of the pal designs we saw then they looked more or less unchanged to the designs we have now. The studio did create a game called AI Art Impostor a few years back - but that's a game whose humor and gameplay are dependent on the AI being kinda' bad at what it does and it's easy to forget, but it really wasn't that long ago that AI art was still seen as just a kind of novel toy before we truly came to appreciate how it worked and the dangers it posed. On the other hand, typically tech CEOs are only too glad to boast about the use of AI in their latest product and yet that hasn't happened with Palworld.
Still could be enough of a red flag for someone to justifiably just not wanna' touch Pocketpair's work. But it's shaky grounds for a full blown accusations - and I don't say that merely to be a devil's advocate, I say that out of self-preservation. We, as artists, are not better off in an environment in which AI art accusations can be thrown around without substantial proof to back them up by any twitter user with an axe to grind. Make no mistake, this will come back to haunt us if the standard for proof is not high enough.
Second thing to get out of the way: plagiarism. This is the second accusation thrown at Palworld. People have compared 3D models from Pokemon and Palworld side by side and discovered, to a lot of people's surprise apparently, that if you scale the models to fit, one cartoon dog has generally similar proportions to another - and that therefore is proof that the models themselves were stolen. It has since been pointed out that the topology doesn't match up, but as ever in cases such as these, evidence to the contrary is only further evidence of guilt.
This claim is particularly bizarre to me. Again, Pocketpair have been working on palworld for years, legitimately stealing assets would be asking to get destroyed by Nintendo and have that work go down the drain, but more to the point I just don't really understand why it would be a cause for outrage? If you legitimately believe Palworld stole assets: you don't need to get mad at Pocketpair anymore - you could just grab some popcorn and wait for Nintendo's lawyers to perform a controlled detonation. It's not as if Nintendo need notifying, their lawyers are clearly paying enough attention to Palworld that a Pokemon Mod that was made for it got immediately nuked from orbit.
Third accusation: Palworld is an asset flip. Buying licensed assets to reduce your workload so that your studio can focus on the aspects of their project that are important to them does not make a game an asset flip. Even big studios buy sound libraries. An asset flip does not take years to make. Stop using terms if you don't know/care what they mean.
But now we arrive at the meat of my concern and the real reason behind this post. The idea that Palworld, and some of the designs therein, is derivative. For what it's worth I agree, at least to a limited extent, but as ever with any legitimate criticism, twitter took it and ran with it to the point of absurdity, as if a pink sheep or a dinosaur with a flower attached to its body are super unique concepts, exclusive to the Pokemon Company. Often this just gets called stealing / plagiarism too, because apparently a lot of people think plagiarism just boils down to being unoriginal. A lot of actual Pokemon wouldn't pass this kind of rigorous and bad faith comparison to every other Pokemon.
But far more insidious in my mind, is the implication being made here. The idea that art being derivative isn't just some kind of subjective criticism - but a fundamental sin. This is especially distressing to see pedaled so uncritically by other creatives, artists and game devs alike. People that really should know better.
Indeed I've seen a lot of criticism of Pocketpair as company on the basis that Palworld clearly draws inspiration from Pokemon, and Craftopia clearly draws inspiration from Breath of the Wild and they have another game in the works that clearly draws inspiration from Hollow Knight.
And I'm not going to claim that those games are good or that they're not clearly derivative. But I am going to say that there's plenty of good games and good art that is. Lethal Company's Coilheads are derivative of SCP's scp-173 which is derivative of Dr Who's Weeping Angels and I happen to quite like all 3. DUSK is heavily derivative of Quake, and it single handedly revitalized my love of retro FPS games, and whilst I've not yet seen The Orville, I've heard great things about it from Star Trek fans who aren't vibing with the more recent direction of the franchise. I think that if you like a thing, creating a legally distinct version of the thing you like so that you can do new things with it is good. Especially if, like in the case of Palworld, that thing is owned by a massive corporation. And despite what many of Palworld's detractors will say, a creature collector game, with real-time combat, survival elements and basebuilding is a new take on the genre.
The essence of art is experiencing that which already exists and, through our own perspectives, transforming it into something new. I feel like with the rise of AI, some creatives have grown afraid of admitting that, but the distinction is that AI's do not have a perspective. An AI does not experience a work of art, it can only process and distort it. The distinction is our humanity.
And a big part of the reason why this attitude bothers me so much, is that a lot of the criticisms levied at Palworld for being derivative are also regularly levied at creator collector games in general. Creature collector games absolutely are and deserve to be a genre in their own right, but almost inevitably, with every new release, new creature collector games get pitted against the Pokemon franchise and called ripoffs outright by a select group of people just for having elemental creatures that you can catch. And that group has been out in full-force in the discussion about Palworld. I don't think I really need to stress just how much worse off we would be if Pokemon actually did have ownership over the idea of a creature collector.
And this goes beyond Palworld and creature collector games. Every day I see artists create wonderfully creative and vibrant Fakemon and Mario OCs and pictures of Samus Aran getting railed and it's beautiful - but it's also horrifying. These corporations could crush you all at a moments notice, Nintendo already does it a ton with fangames! But you could just change a few things here and there and change that. File the serial numbers off: make it your own. I think we'd be better off if more people did take that approach, instead of people pouring their hearts and souls into properties owned by corporations that hold them in contempt.
Case in point, here's a recent example: Bunlith, the creator of PSX Bloodborne recently got hit by a legal notice on their latest project Bloodborne Kart and now have to scrub the branding off of their project. Now explain to me this: is Bloodborne Kart a shameful 'rip-off'? Will it become one now that they have been forced to make it legally distinct? What if Bunlith decides to take this opportunity to sell the game and make some money?
I don't believe there is anything wrong with either case, but that isn't the attitude I've seen from my peers over the past week. At least not specifically in regard to Palworld.
Why is it that for a game like Palworld being derivative is a cardinal sin but perhaps the most derivative form of art: fanart, gets a free pass?
Why do we bemoan Nintendo shutting down fangames but encourage this horrific corporation to do the same when a studio has gone through the effort to make their work legally distinct?
Why is it that a game like DUSK is considered a loveletter to Quake, but palworld is a vile rip-off of it's inspirations?
Why do we recognise the modern copyright system for the monstrosity that it is but still seek to actively reinforce it in a Billion dollar corporation's favor?
How did we even get to this point? I have to assume the major contributing factor here is the attachment people have for the Pokemon designs themselves. There've been a lot of indie FPS games in recent years and a decent chunk of them are set in hell and feature their own legally distinct imps, cacodemons and revenants and yet that isn't treated as something nefarious. Unoriginal perhaps, true, but unoriginality doesn't justify moral outrage and spurious accusations. It's hard not to think back to the release of Sword and Shield or Scarlet and Violet - when criticism of the Pokemon series really started to ramp up and it wasn't uncommon for people to say "if it's so easy to make a pokemon game, why don't you make one?". Now someone has, and a lot of those same people are furious.
I don't even know what I'm trying to say anymore, I'm just very tired. The internet turns everything into politics, except politics, which it turns into sports.
