Palword producer makes depressing admission: ‘I try to avoid creating new things’

Palworld – why create when you can copy (Pocketpair)

It turns out that The Pokémon Company never bothered suing the creators of Palworld, as the producer reveals his Nintendo background.

At the beginning of the year, it seemed like Helldivers 2 and Palworld were about to set the pace for a new generation of live service games, but a few months later and that’s not quite how things have worked out.

Despite their initial success, with Palworld selling 5 million copies and smashing concurrent player records, interest has quickly declined and they’re both now out of the top 40 games being played on Steam.

In terms of Palworld, that’s largely because there wasn’t a detailed roadmap for future content, since the creators didn’t expect it to be such a big hit. But they’re not giving up, especially since The Pokémon Company hasn’t followed through on implied threats to sue them.

The fact that many of the creature designs (but not the gameplay – which is instead copied from Ark: Survival Evolved) are so similar to Pokémon is hard to deny, with many suggesting that developer Pocketpair trained AI tools on official pokémon to make the Palworld monsters.

Pocketpair has always denied any wrong doing but they’ve always had a strangely lackadaisical attitude towards game development, with producer Takuro Mizobe stating in a new interview that, ’I always think: to make new things is very hard.’

‘In game development, of course, sometimes we have to do it, but, as much as possible, I try to avoid creating new things.’

Speaking to Game File, Mizobe admitted that he had taken part in a one-year Nintendo training programme for creators in Tokyo, when he was a college student.

Evidentially, Nintendo didn’t pick him out as the cream of the crop, but in the end that didn’t matter and his attitude that it’s easier to copy other people’s ideas than come up with your own has paid off.

In the same interview, Mizobe reveals that despite the controversy, The Pokémon Company never even contacted Pocketpair, let alone sued them.

Mizobe has also teased an upcoming PlayStation 5 version of Palword but suggested that the Switch isn’t powerful enough to run it. The Switch 2 probably would be though, which will be interesting if Nintendo allows it.

In the meantime, the next step for Palworld is a new, free update that adds a new island and PvP gameplay to the game. The latter in particular could well see a rejuvenation in the game’s fortunes, when it’s released on Thursday, June 27.

Palworld is getting a PvP mode (YouTube)

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