January 2024 PCG Articles, Links and Discussions

[Kaamos_Llama]

The problem with your statements is that as I remember the article, he was pretty positive about the game itself, but didn't like the animal cruelty or labor stuff. In fact, the article's headline essentially says that was the case. Personally, I loathe the anti-woke crowd, but they do have some valid points if you can get past their toxic stupidity.

As for the game's humor being dumb satire, it really isn't if you actually play the game, but I can see how a summary of humor from the game might look that way.

As for it being a rip-off, I've read an article produced by actual lawyers, not click-bait artists, which explained quite well why Nintendo wouldn't stand much of a chance in court. It boiled down to three things: 1) Similar is not enough. If it were, the entire entertainment and games industries would be in serious trouble. 2) Nintendo essentially waved its opportunity to sue by allowing games like Temtem and other knock-offs to exist. Furthermore, pet collecting in some game genres has become standard. 3) The presence of guns in Palworld makes it a whole other thing and means it was meant for a different audience than Pokemon.

The accusations about generative AI are ignorant. Everyone needs to understand that this game went into production about 5 years ago. There is no AI TODAY that could create a 3D model of a Pokemon variant, much less was there one 5 years ago. If they used generative AI, all the AI did was spit out a picture which their artists then made models of and painted. Who cares? Personally, I think generative AI should be used by everyone. It's stupid not to. No great technological advance has ever been stopped because of the fear of lost jobs. Are people still writing out books using quills and ink jars? Are teams of workers still plowing fields with hand implements? AI is here and it's going to be used and artists are going to lose some jobs, and I don't care because that's the way it has always been and the way it will always be.

The guys arguments in the article arent mine, seemed to me he didnt like the humour and mechanics pushing you towards cruelty as a joke made a decent enough game distasteful for him. Whatever. My comment was more related to whether this was deliberate rage bait, I wouldnt assume it was.

Who cares? Well Nintendo might, theyre pretty litigious. Whether they have a chance or not I wouldnt know. Its a bit crappy of the dev to just cut and paste pieces of pokemons with slightly different colouring, whether its legal or done with AI or MS Paint.

AI isnt coming after my job so its no skin off my nose, I can tell you that if a video game, movie or book was entirely generated by AI I would have zero interest in consuming it. If it can be used as tools to make better games, great, but I dont want to see it writing stories or dialogue, people are better at that. I do think there should be protections or compensation for actors and artists for their work or images being used to train AIs, however that would work smarter and more invested people than me will have to work out amongst themselves.

 

[ZedClampet]

The guys arguments in the article arent mine, seemed to me he didnt like the humour and mechanics pushing you towards cruelty as a joke made a decent enough game distasteful for him. Whatever. My comment was more related to whether this was deliberate rage bait, I wouldnt assume it was.

Who cares? Well Nintendo might, theyre pretty litigious. Whether they have a chance or not I wouldnt know. Its a bit crappy of the dev to just cut and paste pieces of pokemons with slightly different colouring, whether its legal or done with AI or MS Paint.

AI isnt coming after my job so its no skin off my nose, I can tell you that if a video game, movie or book was entirely generated by AI I would have zero interest in consuming it. If it can be used as tools to make better games, great, but I dont want to see it writing stories or dialogue, people are better at that. I do think there should be protections or compensation for actors and artists for their work or images being used to train AIs, however that would work smarter and more invested people than me will have to work out amongst themselves.

I never said they were your arguments.

Also, which did they do, copy and paste pieces of Pokemons or use generative AI? We can't have our conspiracies this messy.

Nintendo isn't going to sue. This game has been very visible for years now. Everyone in the industry knew it was coming. Everyone saw the pictures and videos of the Pals. Also, the rest of the points I made based on attorneys, not game journalists, still stand.

And, yes, voice actors need to be compensated, but I've never seen anyone suggest that they not be.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I never said they were your arguments.

Also, which did they do, copy and paste pieces of Pokemons or use generative AI? We can't have our conspiracies this messy.

Nintendo isn't going to sue. This game has been very visible for years now. Everyone in the industry knew it was coming. Everyone saw the pictures and videos of the Pals. Also, the rest of the points I made based on attorneys, not game journalists, still stand.

And, yes, voice actors need to be compensated, but I've never seen anyone suggest that they not be.

Conspiracy?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvCZemuggIo


I wouldnt know or care how it was done and havent claimed to, but the designs dont look too original to me. Some are direct copies and other cut and pasted features here. Probably theres other more original ones, but its pretty clear a lot here are rip offs.

Artists, (Visual, writers, actors) all need to be compensated if their likenesses or work is used to train AIs. Big company execs are only going to see that they can use AI to do stuff and save costs on staff for a cut in quality of product, smaller devs are going to be happy they can use AI to help them save costs and make poentially better products. Good and bad, like most things. It needs regulation.

I hope people have fun with PalWorld, whether Nintendo sues or not. Edit: no snark intended, must be a fun enough game for those who like that sort of thing.

 

[Pifanjr]

Blind skipping through videos aside, I can read a review faster than I can watch one. But the major difference is that when you move around in a video, you are "skipping", while when you move around in a written review, you are "skimming". Makes all the difference in the world.

But, first admitting that I don't really care at all about YouTube game reviews, I did attempt to run an experiment using AI. I asked Google Bard and CoPilot to give me summaries of Angry Joe's Angry review of BG3. Anyone offering AI summaries of reviews is probably using CoPilot's API.

Google Bard failed entirely. It gave me a summary that initially sounded right, but it soon became clear it was inaccurate to the point that I didn't even have to check the actual video.

CoPilot, on the other hand, gave what appeared to be an accurate summary, so far as I could tell. My plan had been to check it against the video, but the video was mostly unwatchable for me, gratuitously wasting my time. From what I did gather from skipping around the video, CoPilot gave an accurate (and vastly shorter) summary.

The next video that came up in my search was gameranx's review. That video was only 16 minutes, so I decided to try that one, but when I asked CoPilot for a summary, the summary was clearly wrong, so i didn't end up bothering to watch the video. CoPilot was clearly combining the early access review with the final review.

So, as you said, accuracy is going to be a problem here, and based on my understanding of generative AI, it may never be fixed. At the very least, it will be a long journey. AI in its current form will be given lots of new bells and whistles to make it more useful in helping you to create content for one thing or another, but as far as being an accurate source of information goes, I don't see that being fixed without a lot of human intervention. Maybe that's the plan. I don't know.

How did you point the AIs to the video? Did you just give them the URL of the video?

I wonder if it would work better if you just gave the transcript of a video and asked for a summary of that instead.

There are apparently also a couple of AI services specifically for summarising (YouTube) videos, like www.summarize.tech, that might be more accurate.

 

[DXCHASE]

"What Pokemon should have been."

And thats 100% why im not getting it lol, cant stand Pokémon. Big part of the reason why its doing as good as it is and its not coincidental that a lot of these creatures you can capture in the game look like Pokémon characters. Actually took me almost 20 minutes to find a stream that showed somethin other than people making balls to catch animals in on twitch. When i finally did find something it was...fine. But I attribute the games biggest success for its Pokémon similarity. If it wasnt that, i dont think none of its other "great" systems" would have shot this up as high as it is.

 

[Colif]

Automation base building + monster Hunter + gift of the wild + pokemon. Combined

No wonder people can't say no. Its got something for almost everyone... almost.

its being picked on as its from an indie and doesn't include the right messaging. If it was AAA it would be lauded as being great... but its a stinking indie who doesn't listen to the right people. Its not full of stale ideas that are in every other game. It actually innovated... shocking. Next we see articles about how this isn't the new normal... just like Baldurs Gate before it. Must maintain status quo.

Makers of Fork Knife trying to work out how to get all their players back.

 

[Brian Boru]

It actually innovated

Your opening made me think you were talking about the Pokémon clone. But obviously not, you're talking about some game other than the copy-paste wonder. So… which one?

 

[Colif]

its not a pokemon clone. Its much deeper than just what it looks like.

 

[Pifanjr]

its not a pokemon clone. Its much deeper than just what it looks like.

Apparently some people are so upset about the similarities in design of the Pals with Pokémon that some of the developers have received death threats.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Apparently some people are so upset about the similarities in design of the Pals with Pokémon that some of the developers have received death threats.

The usual then. Wish I could add an /s to that.

its not a pokemon clone. Its much deeper than just what it looks like.

I understood the game is like Ark Survival Evolved but with added PokePals.

 

[Colif]

From what i can tell:
Its a survival game - though fairly basic.
monster hunter -need to collect all the pals as they all do specific roles really well. Not just combat, they are essential for the automation. Capturing them can add extra things to tech tree.
Base automation/resource gathering = getting pals to do roles they are best suited to. Need to make new things to capture newer pals and collect newer abilities.
its many different game ideas thrown together.

video says it better than I can

 

[Brian Boru]

its many different game ideas thrown together

Yes, that's what I've seen too—Jake says the 'borrowing' is "pretty blatant" and "sometimes shamelessly"—so I guess it's a multi-clone. Sounds good to me, innovation usually ruins good ideas, apart from the 1-in-1,000 which result in good gameplay. So the lack of it here is almost definitely a good thing—outside the courtrooms anyway.

Pokemon + Ark + Zelda seems to be the backbone—3 solid franchises to copy, I would think. It's gotta be a great boost to Early Access dev, just paste a few big games into your mashup design—so much labor and time saved, and a potentially huge built-in fan base too. For as long as it's let last—'fair use', anyone?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQfCNWVC0AI

ETA: after finishing that video, it occurs to me that this seems a typical result if you gave a very good project description to a good AI app. Do we have the first AI mega-hit?

 

[Colif]

No AI now is capable of making a game based on one idea. Even if they took ideas from other games, the devs still had to do actual work to make the game

Almost every product takes inspiration from something else. So now games aren't allowed to be like others? Oh well, guess stale industries are the final result as everything has already been done.
Almost every shooter uses the same control scheme... I wonder who copied who? How come copying that is fine but merging different games together is bad,

They asked, what type of game would we like to play, and made it.. but no, must stay inside boundaries... or be criticized. Industry is happy making same old crap... doesn't want change and don't need Indie devs showing what could be done if you looked outside box.

 

[Brian Boru]

don't need Indie devs showing what could be done if you looked outside box

I think the criticism here is they devs didn't look outside the box, but rather inside some very large goodie-filled existing boxes

 

[Colif]

Anyone can look inside all you like, you just have to be careful what you take

You can't copyright ideas, that is what patents are for. Do Nintendo have a patent on any of it? If they have a patent on Pokemon with guns, where is the game? Would have to patent the idea in every possible scenario to cover it, lawyers would love it
Some images may be copyrighted or have trademarks, but they didn't do all characters. Pikachu is trademarked. But a lot aren't and are open to interpretation.
Game mechanics aren't protected, anyone can use them.

Nintendo are however taking down any mods that introduce their trademarked characters into Palworld. As they are legally able to do that. Pikachu is protected. They just can't stop game.

How do you think copy cat games exist now? Wouldn't they all be struck down as soon as released?
Tall poppy syndrome: Cut off the heads of those that reach for the sky

Innovation is what makes great games memorable. It is what got us here to begin with. Saying its bad is just dumb.

• Half Life just copied game play ideas from Doom, should have been cancelled right?
• Mario 64 took ideas from previous games.
• Pokemon itself took ideas from previous games.

If taking ideas and improving is wrong, guess Apple doesn't have a business model... All GUI are a copy of something Xerox made. Guess we go back to dos... phones existed before the Iphone, they just copied the idea... itunes? we had music years before. Hate to imagine progress if copyright was so tough.

IBM would still be only people making PC... first of anything would still be only example. What a fun world that would be. Do you like your hand cranked car? Would we even have cars as they just horseless carriages. Hardly a new idea. Would we even have steam engines? Where do you draw line? How far back do you go?

Our entire modern civilisation is based on other people taking inspiration from what they saw and making it better. Almost all the technology we use isn't an original idea... its an iteration on something that came before.

Lots of games have seen what works and integrated it into them. Fork knife is an example of a game that tries to be everything to everyone to stop them looking elsewhere. Its the end product of other peoples ideas. Its how all the shooters have same control method now. But if no one is having new ideas, games just become... so predictable you don't need a manual to explain them anymore. Not even a chart showing what buttons do.

Almost every meta verse was full of ideas taken from elsewhere. No one was screaming at them, seems the bigger you are, less likely to be criticized for taking other peoples ideas.

So we need people to stir up status quo or it doesn't ever change

Trying to be the only one who can make a thing is why Copyright is now 100 years in USA and used to just be 25. Disney didn't want to lose Mickey Mouse... now it seems they stopped trying as one rendition of him is now somewhat free. Superman is next, sometime in 2030's.

 

[Brian Boru]

Innovation is what makes great games memorable

For some maybe, and the 1-in-1,000. The most memorable game in the West is undoubtedly Chess—been memorable for well over a millennium, with the modern version memorable for 500-800 years. Only some minor tweaks since then—absolutely NO innovation after the 19th Century as the game spread worldwide and became what it is today. Very likely the lack of innovation was what enabled such success.

So why is chess so memorable and so classic? The answer is what makes great games memorable for many. For others, it's the graphics maybe—again, only for some… Chess hasn't had a map or unit innovation for hundreds of years.

How about the world game? Football has occasional tweaks, but very little innovation for many decades—no wonder it's so dominant and produces so many memorable encounters.

How do you think copy cat games exist now?

Same as Palworld, I assume? *shrug*
I'm not questioning its existence, just its place in the limelight when it's mostly a blatant ripoff of other franchises. I could care less about the legal justifications or exposure, once the debate goes legal we're at the bottom of the barrel and Godwin's Law should apply. Maybe there's such a law already for law—Devillose's Law

Innovation … Saying its bad is just dumb

I'm not saying it's bad. It is needed for the 1-in-1,000 which does make a breakthru. But the other 999 are pretty miserable to deal with, if one exposes oneself to them—masochists excluded, of course. Innovation is bad for those 999—rubbish doesn't get a magical free pass just because it's new or different rubbish..

If you'd asked for my help with the rest of your argument, I'd have recommended Newton's quote:
""if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
—which ironically is based closely on quotes from centuries earlier

But I may have misunderstood, as the point evades me. But it is passionately argued for sure, which is always nice to see.

so predictable you don't need a manual to explain them anymore

You think that's a bad thing? Okay, that gels with thinking innovation is so much better. 🙃

 

[Colif]

Chess - Many of the greatest players innovated in the way they played it. Does that count? The rules might be the same but way it was played changed. Or it wouldn't still be played today. There wouldn't be videos and movies made about that one game/move that stunned the chess world. I seen some of them.

Copying ideas and altering other peoples works is totally within the rules. Its how we got here today. You may not like it but its reality. If ideas died with their creators and no one else was allowed to improvise with them, we wouldn't have science... we wouldn't have anything now. Human progress would still be pre industrial age.

Video showed an example of a book that copied the central idea of another book but changed it enough to be successful, they were taken to court and won as it was a derivative.

Provided you don't just copy paste entire sections of the work, you can use it in yours... helps to show references but how many games do you see with those in credits? thanking the games that came before them who inspired them or they took ideas from? I expect its a really small number so why is this game expected to do it and no others?
If you can't take from other people, shouldn't we just have one shop in one game that lets you buy things in game with cash? As surely everyone else doing it just copying?

Almost every genre of games is like this. Someone thinks up an idea, 6 to 8 months later a ton of other games are released or incorporate that idea into them. Almost all shooters in the last few years have randomly changed something to be more like Fork knife or whatever was popular at time... thats fine, but no one else allowed to?

Perhaps this is one of those times where me not being taken in by appearance is why I don't just see this as Pokemon with guns. I figured there had to be more to it to be getting this much attention and purchases. So its more than just what it looks like.

The graphics did however show me I wasn't target audience anyway... too old for this

I liked manuals. I used to read them on way home from buying games. Flight sim manuals used to be massive. Making every game basically have same control method doesn't lead to change, it leads to set rules for that sort of game. It makes it harder to break out of the pattern. rules for Chess being the same forever are fine as its the players who innovate within space, but for an entire genre of video games, I am not so sure.

Nintendo are striking down mods of the game, that put their characters in it. Don't you think they would have stopped a game that has been in development for 3 years? The devs live in the same city in Japan as the Pokemon company hq. Its possible there was an agreement made already, we wouldn't know. If anything does happen legally, the case will be in Japan since they all Japanese companies.

 

[DXCHASE]

Copied, not copied, this game will never escape that it shares so much with Pokemon and fortnite and monster hunter, its not hard to see why its a popular game in 2024. esp. when the indie dev has a total of... 4 other games?

Kinda crazy to me too that these indie devs were so sure that the game would succeed, they didnt add a cash shop to its EA live-service type game.'

And, if nintendo winds up never pushing anything on Palworld, when theyve jumped on pokemon mods already, i find it kinda sus like they have some kind of hand in this. But even if nintendo has no basis, noones gonna deny that the cute characters in this new indie released 'banger' look identical to pokemon.

Imo its originality and creativity is not why its popular, theres nothing ive seen in the videos and twitch streams that captured me like that, which could just be because i didnt see too much? Most of the time people were making pokemon balls, i mean, pal-balls, to catch their monsters. But i do like that you can fire chickens like grenades.

 

[Colif]

How many people come here looking for a game like X?

Making a game that is like something else happens all the time. So its not like its something it needs to escape from. I don't get the outrage.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

The outrage is from some Pokemon fans who see the Pokemon designs copied in the game. Thats it. The game has over 2 million players today I dont think most people care much. If it every became a problem legally, which it doesnt look like it will, they could fairly easily switch out for different designs, its in EA after all.

 

[Colif]

Nintendo are all over taking down mods that add any Pokemon characters... so if they aren't taking game itself down, that should tell you something. They are one of the companies most likely to strike it down if they could.

 

[Brian Boru]

Chess - Many of the greatest players innovated in the way they played it. Does that count?

I doubt it. I innovate in how I play Civ and Far Cry by that definition—but I regard it as playing how I want to. If I post about it and some go "Oh great idea, I must try that", it's not a deal—I get similar ideas from posts and mods etc etc all the time.

Players like Philidor and Lasker did of course innovate, Philidor's strategies stood for ~a century while Lasker was for sure ahead of his time, and also an innovator in other areas. But the millions of others who played tens of millions of games—it was and is still a great game despite those tens of millions of games not being in the slightest innovative.

So innovation can make a great player, but rarely a great game—one in a thousand for argument's sake.

videos and movies made about that one game/move that stunned the chess world

Maybe this is all a semantic difference? You're talking about a player's excellence, whereas I'm talking about innovation in a game. Messi and Ronaldo are 'above the crowd' for sure, but they haven't changed football one bit—just like a brilliant move or player hasn't changed chess one iota.

Its how we got here today. You may not like it

Maybe I didn't express myself clearly before to lead you to that conclusion. So to clarify, I'm fully behind Newton's
"if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"
and everyone's
"Great artists steal".

its more than just what it looks like

May well be, I won't be finding out either—not that my individual reaction would mean anything anyway
But 'more than it looks' is a far cry from 'innovative'.

manuals. I used to read them

Yeah, me too—those 500-page DOS books and 200-page Word… *shudder*
If you have the time for it, it's a great retro pastime, but if not then standardized control schemes and good Help menus are immensely superior—perhaps 100 times better at a wild guess. That's one of the great things Windows did, it was such a time waster in DOS days trying to figure out where each app put its commands, and even if they had certain expected commands.

Standardization of replaceable parts has played a huge part in human progress, especially in the wide dissemination of products and services. Any game which uses non-standard controls gets an immediate rebind from me—I have no liking for devs who disrespect my time, expecting me to admire their 'Mom look at me' innovation… or maybe ignorance

Anyway, nuff said, we're talking about different things, it seems.

Nintendo … Don't you think they would have stopped a game

I do, that is odd. As you say, maybe the various franchises which have been copied are 'in on it', or perhaps merely waiting for the game to accumulate a nice bagful of millions they can claw back.

I'll be amazed if such a blatant and shameless ripoff is allowed a free run tho, since it's a far worse 'offense' than say piracy, which most companies jump on. It's one thing stealing a product, it's another entirely to steal, rewire some bits, and sell for profit.

 

[Colif]

its not stealing if its transformative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use
Works get altered all the time and become new works. Movies made from books, for instance.

the book that was sued for taking other ideas, you may have heard of it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code#Lawsuits

Almost every idea in video games has been copied after it was thought up.

If any case happens, it will be in Japan and their copyright law is not the same as other countries.
I am not a lawyer anyway... maybe we should defer to them

 

[Zloth]

How many people come here looking for a game like X?

None, sadly. If they did, I would send them to one of these:

X2: The Threat on Steam

X²: The Threat is of a new generation of space simulator games, you play the role of Julian Gardna who continues the story set by X: Beyond The Frontier. The updated graphics engine gives the universe a fresher feel with newly designed ships and stations adding to the complexity of the universe.

store.steampowered.com

X3: Reunion on Steam

X3: Reunion continues the epic space saga, blending deep space trading and intense real-time combat. Explore a vast universe, establish your empire, and shape the new frontier. With enhanced graphics and intricate economies, it's a journey of strategy, simulation, and interstellar intrigue.

store.steampowered.com

X3: Terran Conflict on Steam

It is the year 2938. The long wished-for encounter of the X Universe and the Earth holds both joy and sorrow for the people. Despite flourishing trade, the clash of the diverse races, cultures and life forms creates new tensions, mistrust and open conflict that need to be overcome!

store.steampowered.com

X4: Foundations on Steam

X4: FOUNDATIONS brings our most sophisticated universe SIMULATION ever. Fly every ship, EXPLORE space or manage an empire; TRADE, FIGHT, BUILD and THINK carefully, while you embark on an epic journey. Experience tons of improvements with the massive 6.00 Update!

store.steampowered.com

<smirk>

 

[Brian Boru]

Movies made from books, for instance

Right. Agents or studios buy the rights to option the book, and if they exercise the option there's a nice contract and suitable reward for the author.

Not a blatant shameless ripoff

a lawyer … maybe we should defer to them

Aargh! Wouldn't that be a sad day!