"PalWorld" - the new open-world survival game (but with
Pokemon-but-not-really!) - has had an amazing launch weekend. It
currently boasts the fifth largest concurrent player on Steam, and its
launch was bigger than "Elden Ring" or "Cyberpunk 2077".

And yet, it's such an ugly, unexciting game.

At its core, PalWorld* is basically "Ark: Survival Evolved"... except
the world is also populated with rip-off Pokemon that you can capture
(or kill!), to be used as labor, soldiers, or resources/food. And,
okay, I don't really get the appeal of these survival games, where
you're tossed naked onto the shore and have to craft your way up
towards civilization, but people have different tastes, so fine.

Actually, I do understand some of the appeal, having played survival
games myself. What I don't get is the CONTINUED appeal of the games,
since all these games are pretty much interchangeable and identical.
And - fake Pokemon aside - "PalWorld" doesn't really add anything new
to the genre. Artistically, it's a bit of a mess, and the gameplay
doesn't look all that exciting. Certainly the game's "please stop
calling them Pokemon we don't want to get sued" monsters (actually
called Pals) - while visually similar to the critters of its more
famous competitor - lack all the charm and character that made
Nintendo's brand so popular. And - given the lack of real utility -
they don't really add much to the game. They are basically dumb AI
companions (at best).

From everything I've seen, it's just not a very good game. It's a
cheap, unoriginal cash-in of the sort that should slip under the waves
unnoticed. And yet this is the sort of game that has a player count
that would make even Bobby Kotick smile.

Is it just that the survival genre has been so lacking in innovation
over the past decade that fans will flock to any game that seemingly
offers any sort of new idea? Is this just a flocking reaction, a mass
hysteria reaction to a successful marketing blitz, of the sort that
made Cabbage Patch Kids or eating Tide Pods a thing? I just don't get.
Am I so out of touch or is it the children who are wrong?

It makes me worry about the future of the hobby. My only hope is that
- after an initial mad-rush - people start coming to their senses and
abandon this game for something better (which, being such a low bar to
clear, is pretty much any other game). But looking back at how our
hobby has popularly embraced so many terrible games, that's not much
to go on.

-----------------------
* which, I admit, I never played myself but I did /watch/ a young
relative play it over the weekend... so that counts. ;-)

On 1/22/24 09:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> "PalWorld" - the new open-world survival game (but with
> Pokemon-but-not-really!) - has had an amazing launch weekend. It
> currently boasts the fifth largest concurrent player on Steam, and its
> launch was bigger than "Elden Ring" or "Cyberpunk 2077".
>
> And yet, it's such an ugly, unexciting game.
>
> At its core, PalWorld* is basically "Ark: Survival Evolved"... except
> the world is also populated with rip-off Pokemon that you can capture
> (or kill!), to be used as labor, soldiers, or resources/food. And,
> okay, I don't really get the appeal of these survival games, where
> you're tossed naked onto the shore and have to craft your way up
> towards civilization, but people have different tastes, so fine.
>
> Actually, I do understand some of the appeal, having played survival
> games myself. What I don't get is the CONTINUED appeal of the games,
> since all these games are pretty much interchangeable and identical.
> And - fake Pokemon aside - "PalWorld" doesn't really add anything new
> to the genre. Artistically, it's a bit of a mess, and the gameplay
> doesn't look all that exciting. Certainly the game's "please stop
> calling them Pokemon we don't want to get sued" monsters (actually
> called Pals) - while visually similar to the critters of its more
> famous competitor - lack all the charm and character that made
> Nintendo's brand so popular. And - given the lack of real utility -
> they don't really add much to the game. They are basically dumb AI
> companions (at best).
>
> From everything I've seen, it's just not a very good game. It's a
> cheap, unoriginal cash-in of the sort that should slip under the waves
> unnoticed. And yet this is the sort of game that has a player count
> that would make even Bobby Kotick smile.
>
> Is it just that the survival genre has been so lacking in innovation
> over the past decade that fans will flock to any game that seemingly
> offers any sort of new idea? Is this just a flocking reaction, a mass
> hysteria reaction to a successful marketing blitz, of the sort that
> made Cabbage Patch Kids or eating Tide Pods a thing? I just don't get.
> Am I so out of touch or is it the children who are wrong?
>
> It makes me worry about the future of the hobby. My only hope is that
> - after an initial mad-rush - people start coming to their senses and
> abandon this game for something better (which, being such a low bar to
> clear, is pretty much any other game). But looking back at how our
> hobby has popularly embraced so many terrible games, that's not much
> to go on.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------
> * which, I admit, I never played myself but I did /watch/ a young
> relative play it over the weekend... so that counts. ;-)
>

I hadn't even heard of the game until yesterday.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

> At its core, PalWorld* is basically "Ark: Survival Evolved"...
> except the world is also populated with rip-off Pokemon that you can
> capture

"Ripoff" in its traditional sense is a tame word. They literally ripped
and merged the existing original models to create the new ones with AI.
It's like those Pokémon generator webs that allowed you to mix
Hitmonchan and Kingler to create Hitler.

To make matters worse, that company has such a Hollow Knight ripoff that
it is a bit too obvious on what they have trained the AI model.

I have my serious doubts that it would have gotten to these playercount
numbers if it was not "Pokémon with guns, survival".

PS: It's ironic that people with zero knowledge would accuse Digimon of
being a Pokémon ripoff, but the idea of Palworld is basically Digimon
(the anime, not the digital pet or the games, those are completely
different): Trapped in another world, surviving with your digimon
partners, which also happen to carry guns, from gatlings to railguns.

On Mon, 22 Jan 2024 10:03:09 -0600, candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net>
wrote:

>On 1/22/24 09:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>> "PalWorld" - the new open-world survival game (but with
>> Pokemon-but-not-really!) - has had an amazing launch weekend. It
>> currently boasts the fifth largest concurrent player on Steam, and its
>> launch was bigger than "Elden Ring" or "Cyberpunk 2077".

>I hadn't even heard of the game until yesterday.

I first heard about it maybe a week ago, just prior to its official
launch, when it was lauded as "a new open world pokemon game!" except,
you know, without the official license. And that you got to give the
Pokemon guns.

So when I went visiting family on the weekend, and one of the younger
set mentioned that they had acquired the game, I eagerly invited
myself to watch them play it. I wasn't really sure what to expect from
the game... but it was a lot more than what I got.

It certainly was never a game I was ever going to play myself. I never
got into Pokemon. For one thing, I was a bit out of the intended age
bracket for that franchise when it launched (not that would have
really stopped me, were I interested enough). But mostly it was the
crassness of its marketing. "Gotta catch them all!" the adverts
said... but in order to do so, you gotta BUY multiple copies of nearly
identical games (or lots of trading cards, or toys, or whatever). It
was the absolute worst aspects of rampant consumerism, but extremely
blatant about it, and pointedly aimed at young children.

Even back when I was much younger and far less cynical, it left me
incredibly sour on the whole franchise.

So PalWorld didn't have much of a chance with me. Still, had the game
simply been "Pokemon Silver"... but with guns I would have been a lot
more forgiving. I at least could have understood why others might have
gotten excited about. But the actual game we got: '"Ark: Survival
Evolved" but with Pokemun but with guns'... and not very well done
game at that?

It mystifies me.

On 1/22/24 10:35, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jan 2024 10:03:09 -0600, candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net>
> wrote:
>
>> On 1/22/24 09:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
>>> "PalWorld" - the new open-world survival game (but with
>>> Pokemon-but-not-really!) - has had an amazing launch weekend. It
>>> currently boasts the fifth largest concurrent player on Steam, and its
>>> launch was bigger than "Elden Ring" or "Cyberpunk 2077".
>
>
>
>> I hadn't even heard of the game until yesterday.
>
> I first heard about it maybe a week ago, just prior to its official
> launch, when it was lauded as "a new open world pokemon game!" except,
> you know, without the official license. And that you got to give the
> Pokemon guns.
>
> So when I went visiting family on the weekend, and one of the younger
> set mentioned that they had acquired the game, I eagerly invited
> myself to watch them play it. I wasn't really sure what to expect from
> the game... but it was a lot more than what I got.
>
> It certainly was never a game I was ever going to play myself. I never
> got into Pokemon. For one thing, I was a bit out of the intended age
> bracket for that franchise when it launched (not that would have
> really stopped me, were I interested enough). But mostly it was the
> crassness of its marketing. "Gotta catch them all!" the adverts
> said... but in order to do so, you gotta BUY multiple copies of nearly
> identical games (or lots of trading cards, or toys, or whatever). It
> was the absolute worst aspects of rampant consumerism, but extremely
> blatant about it, and pointedly aimed at young children.

My opinion is that pokemon are cute and fun to draw, but the mainline
games are boring. PMD is great tho.

> Even back when I was much younger and far less cynical, it left me
> incredibly sour on the whole franchise.
>
> So PalWorld didn't have much of a chance with me. Still, had the game
> simply been "Pokemon Silver"... but with guns I would have been a lot
> more forgiving. I at least could have understood why others might have
> gotten excited about. But the actual game we got: '"Ark: Survival
> Evolved" but with Pokemun but with guns'... and not very well done
> game at that?
>
> It mystifies me.

I never played ARK
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On 1/22/24 10:08, H1M3M wrote:
> Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
>> At its core, PalWorld* is basically "Ark: Survival Evolved"...
>> except the world is also populated with rip-off Pokemon that you can
>> capture
>
> "Ripoff" in its traditional sense is a tame word. They literally ripped
> and merged the existing original models to create the new ones with AI.
> It's like those Pokémon generator webs that allowed you to mix
> Hitmonchan and Kingler to create Hitler.
>
> To make matters worse, that company has such a Hollow Knight ripoff that
> it is a bit too obvious on what they have trained the AI model.
>
> I have my serious doubts that it would have gotten to these playercount
> numbers if it was not "Pokémon with guns, survival".
>
>
> PS: It's ironic that people with zero knowledge would accuse Digimon of
> being a Pokémon ripoff, but the idea of Palworld is basically Digimon
> (the anime, not the digital pet or the games, those are completely
> different): Trapped in another world, surviving with your digimon
> partners, which also happen to carry guns, from gatlings to railguns.

Oh god AI
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On 1/22/2024 7:51 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> "PalWorld" - the new open-world survival game (but with

> It makes me worry about the future of the hobby. My only hope is that
> - after an initial mad-rush - people start coming to their senses and
> abandon this game for something better (which, being such a low bar to
> clear, is pretty much any other game). But looking back at how our
> hobby has popularly embraced so many terrible games, that's not much
> to go on.

I was somewhat interested before it came out because of a certain
Youtuber I follow (PirateSoftware if you're interested, good guy.) He
too was expecting it to be crap, but got into it.

It doesn't look like it's for us Spalls. We aren't the target audience.

From what I can glean from elsewhere on the intertubes most of the
reason it's so popular is that there's a lot of lovers of pokemon and
the studio that is licensed the video games makes piss-poor games and
few and far between games. In other words, they're far away from
meeting the demands from the market, and as bad as this game is, it's
still better than what's available for those interested.

It's also in early access, so it may be too early to judge, and from
what I've seen it needs a lot of work.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>"PalWorld" - the new open-world survival game (but with
>Pokemon-but-not-really!) - has had an amazing launch weekend. It
>currently boasts the fifth largest concurrent player on Steam, and its
>launch was bigger than "Elden Ring" or "Cyberpunk 2077".
>
>And yet, it's such an ugly, unexciting game.

Have you seen the Pokemon games on the Switch? Compared to them the
graphics in Palworld are amazing. The gameplay may not be the most
innovative, but thats true of the official Pokemon games as well.

It surprised me how much of hit this game has become, but it didn't
surprise me that it did well. Pokemon fans, and there's two generations
of them now that have grown up playing the games, have been eager for
bigger more mature open-world Pokemon game for a long time. Combining
Pokemon with a crafting survival game was always going to do well,
there's plenty of gamers today that grew up playing Minecraft as well.

The whole Pokemon-with-guns thing turned it into a viral sensation that
drove a lot big names on social media to talk about it, so that's why
its such a mega-hit, but even it without that I think this game would
have done well. It's filling a demand that's been out there for anyone
to see, but one that Nintendo and Game Freak have chosen to ignore.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 07:05:10 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:
expecting it to be crap, but got into it.
>
>It doesn't look like it's for us Spalls. We aren't the target audience.
>

No, I get that. I totally understand that the 'survival game' genre is
one that is weirdly popular, and I'm fine with it.

What I don't get is why "PalWorld" - which is such a mediocre survival
game - has garnered such numbers.

As far as I can tell, it SEEMS to be because people were expecting a
Pokemon style game... but PalWorld really isn't that, from what I can
tell. It just has monsters that are badly skinned replicas of Pokeman.
But - reading up on the game - that was pretty much known before
release too.

Good games that aren't targetted at me I've no problem being popular.
It's the bad ones that get huge sales that mystify me.

Maybe - once people realize that "PalWorld" isn't the Pokeman game of
their dreams, its numbers will drop precipitously. It would reinforce
my faith in humanity if that happens...

On 1/23/2024 9:57 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 07:05:10 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> expecting it to be crap, but got into it.
>>
>> It doesn't look like it's for us Spalls. We aren't the target audience.
>>
>
> No, I get that. I totally understand that the 'survival game' genre is
> one that is weirdly popular, and I'm fine with it.
>
> What I don't get is why "PalWorld" - which is such a mediocre survival
> game - has garnered such numbers.
>
> As far as I can tell, it SEEMS to be because people were expecting a
> Pokemon style game... but PalWorld really isn't that, from what I can
> tell. It just has monsters that are badly skinned replicas of Pokeman.
> But - reading up on the game - that was pretty much known before
> release too.
>
> Good games that aren't targetted at me I've no problem being popular.
> It's the bad ones that get huge sales that mystify me.
>
> Maybe - once people realize that "PalWorld" isn't the Pokeman game of
> their dreams, its numbers will drop precipitously. It would reinforce
> my faith in humanity if that happens...
>
Well, the fact that that would reinforce your faith in humanity is
probably why its numbers won't drop precipitously....

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

For me, I don't have time to grind! I already grind enough IRL. :P

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

> "PalWorld" - the new open-world survival game (but with
> Pokemon-but-not-really!) - has had an amazing launch weekend. It
> currently boasts the fifth largest concurrent player on Steam, and its
> launch was bigger than "Elden Ring" or "Cyberpunk 2077".

> And yet, it's such an ugly, unexciting game.

> At its core, PalWorld* is basically "Ark: Survival Evolved"... except
> the world is also populated with rip-off Pokemon that you can capture
> (or kill!), to be used as labor, soldiers, or resources/food. And,
> okay, I don't really get the appeal of these survival games, where
> you're tossed naked onto the shore and have to craft your way up
> towards civilization, but people have different tastes, so fine.

> Actually, I do understand some of the appeal, having played survival
> games myself. What I don't get is the CONTINUED appeal of the games,
> since all these games are pretty much interchangeable and identical.
> And - fake Pokemon aside - "PalWorld" doesn't really add anything new
> to the genre. Artistically, it's a bit of a mess, and the gameplay
> doesn't look all that exciting. Certainly the game's "please stop
> calling them Pokemon we don't want to get sued" monsters (actually
> called Pals) - while visually similar to the critters of its more
> famous competitor - lack all the charm and character that made
> Nintendo's brand so popular. And - given the lack of real utility -
> they don't really add much to the game. They are basically dumb AI
> companions (at best).

> From everything I've seen, it's just not a very good game. It's a
> cheap, unoriginal cash-in of the sort that should slip under the waves
> unnoticed. And yet this is the sort of game that has a player count
> that would make even Bobby Kotick smile.

> Is it just that the survival genre has been so lacking in innovation
> over the past decade that fans will flock to any game that seemingly
> offers any sort of new idea? Is this just a flocking reaction, a mass
> hysteria reaction to a successful marketing blitz, of the sort that
> made Cabbage Patch Kids or eating Tide Pods a thing? I just don't get.
> Am I so out of touch or is it the children who are wrong?

> It makes me worry about the future of the hobby. My only hope is that
> - after an initial mad-rush - people start coming to their senses and
> abandon this game for something better (which, being such a low bar to
> clear, is pretty much any other game). But looking back at how our
> hobby has popularly embraced so many terrible games, that's not much
> to go on.

> -----------------------
> * which, I admit, I never played myself but I did /watch/ a young
> relative play it over the weekend... so that counts. ;-)

--
"For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God." ???1 Peter 1:23. Slammy Mon. with rain, cleaning, Apple, etc.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
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