(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[pika pal]

On the Palworld issue, just because Pokemon is low effort or heavily flawed doesn't make a competitor that doesn't trip on its own shoelaces a good product either. And frankly I do consider the plagiarism/rip-off debate worth entertaining because it brings up the conversation of if this game is higher effort than Pokemon (relative to their project scales) or just cut different corners.

I'm also going to say, regardless of if the devs do or do not call the game a parody, that defense is irrelevant unless you can prove it fits the definition. Parody as I can best understand and summarize in this context refers to imitating the STYLE of an author or work for comedic effect or critique/commentary.

Palworld's accusation is not ripping off Pokemon's style, but using designs that are not distinct enough from existing specific Pokemon to be separate original creatures, compared to fan projects/Fakemons which want to create things that can look like Pokemon without matching any particular design. If not the creature designs, what does the ARK-based gameplay do to parody or reference anything about Pokemon besides involving the colorful fantasy monsters as companions you capture? Pokemon frequently makes a point about the in-game characters being meant to respect and treat the Pokemon well as Companion, so a game where the entire premise is "hey what if we gave them guns or made them slave labor" isn't deconstructing anything the Pokemon premise actually tries to say or do.

Honestly it's parody on the level of those old dumb comedies like "Epic Movie" which just threw a bunch of slightly-distinct takes on dozens of pop-culture movies into scenes with toilet humor and no coherent resemblance to any of said works. Even if it would hold up in court, the spirit of it is not to satirize or parody the original work because that entails making some kind of point about it. Palworld very clearly does not have any creative resemblance to Pokemon beyond random creature designs, nor does anything indicate it wants to rather than simply marketing with the "haha funny animal mascot has Gun" memes.

The more likely reason Nintendo and Gamefreak aren't going to com down on it is because despite my take above, this would take time to resolve in court, for money they don't need (assuming the trial costs aren't less than what they would get out of winning), while earning ire from people who would not buy their game after making the attempt (whether or not they did prior). Even if it could be proved it's not worth their time, but that doesn't mean consumers should give those kind of practices a pass if something looks wrong about Palworld's models.

tl;dr Palworld is not trying to be Parody nor does it remotely work as one.

 

[Worldie]

The more likely reason Nintendo and Gamefreak aren't going to com down on it is because despite my take above, this would take time to resolve in court, for money they don't need (assuming the trial costs aren't less than what they would get out of winning), while earning ire from people who would not buy their game after making the attempt (whether or not they did prior). Even if it could be proved it's not worth their time, but that doesn't mean consumers should give those kind of practices a pass if something looks wrong about Palworld's models.

I am not completely sold on this subject.
Nintendo expecially has always shown to be *EXTREMELY* protective of their first party IPs.
Remember of when they shown they would rather completely kill their older Smash communities and tournaments than let them play modified versions during Covid, including sending official C&D warnings?
When they shut down Pokemon Uranium despite it being basically a innocent fan made mod because they used the Pokemon name illegally?
They had absolutely nothing to gain from it, and in fact they made a lot of enemies in the Smash community due to that decision, but they did it anyway.

Regardless of the internet opinion, if Palworld or any game remotely dares to touch their IPs in ways they are not allowed to do, they will get nuked instantly, because that is how Nintendo operates.
That's why I'm not quite sold on all the accusations going on regardless and for now I'm just filing them as generic internet tantrum. I don't mind eating my socks if Nintendo *DOES* nuke them, in the end it's their right to do so if that's the case, but I'd be surprised if Microsoft let a potential copyright infringment on their Gamepass, it would be a extremely poor step from them.

 

[Dragapult]

We're so beyond the pale w/r/t moral relativism as cultural zeitgeist that gamers en masse are providing intellectual justification for plagiarism and then claiming at alternating turns that either a) it's not plagiarism ("parody") or b) that the plagiarism doesn't matter because, well, fuck Nintendo (which, if nothing else, is at least honest.)

No matter what your beef is with Nintendo this sort of shit poses a tremendous risk to the long-term livelihoods of a lot of people who've dedicated their lives to making games and creating characters many if not all of us here grew up with. There doesn't have to be any further reasoning beyond basic ethics for someone to get spirited about it.

 

[Worldie]

We're so beyond the pale w/r/t moral relativism as cultural zeitgeist that gamers en masse are providing intellectual justification for plagiarism and then claiming at alternating turns that either a) it's not plagiarism ("parody") or b) that the plagiarism doesn't matter because, well, fuck Nintendo (which, if nothing else, is at least honest.)

No matter what your beef is with Nintendo this sort of shit poses a tremendous risk to the long-term livelihoods of a lot of people who've dedicated their lives to making games and creating characters many if not all of us here grew up with. There doesn't have to be any further reasoning beyond basic ethics for someone to get spirited about it.

No, I think you've not read the discussion correctly.
I'm quite sure I'm the only one providing justification for it, and "justification" is a big word, rather I'm more on the line of "let Nintendo decide if it is". Whereas the others are offering opposing viewpoints, some of which I agree with, some much less.

I don't have any beef with Nintendo (actually, I do, but it's not relevant with this specific discussion nor to Pokemon in general), I'm just stating my annoyance that the general Pokemon fanbase has shown at being rabid any time a potential ""competitor"" comes out, regardless of "plagiarism". Which funnily is super inconsistent with how the same fanbase is the first to call their own producer a trash company and wishing anyone else took their job over (but when someone does, they hate on it instead, instead of maybe hoping GameFreaks takes some notes...).

Once more, emphasis on "regardless of plagiarism". As I said, this same scenario that is going on with Palworld recently happened with TemTem a year or two ago. I don't recall TemTem getting in trouble with Nintendo despite their game actually trying to be "Pokemon but better" and maintaining same artstyle and design style and even a very similar combat system.

Palworld will very likely be forgotten within a month, like all Early Alphas that make their name off imitating something else, but this scenario is doomed to happen again next time another monster collector happens.

 

[Hugin]

Galactic's entire thing was not focusing on a specific type. Also Crogunk is prevalent in Galactic because it's the lower stage of Saturn's ace, not because it's a Poison-type. 90% of the Pokémon used by Galactic Grunts are the lower forms of the bosses' aces (Glameow, Stunky, Croagunk) or Bronzor and Zubat/Golbat who are used by all the Admins (and Cyrus has a Crobat, but not Bronzong). Platinum adds Murkrow and Houndour to some Grunts, but Cyrus has always had Honchkrow and Platinum gave him Houndoom. The only line used by the Grunts that isn't by one of the Admins is the Wurmple line.

Bolded are all the mons that are Poison or Dark that you mentioned(Wurmple is debatable). Fun fact, in Platinum, the only mon used by a Galactic Grunt that isn't Poison or Dark is Glameow. I'm not saying Galactic should be mono-psychic, I'm saying they shouldn't be focusing on the exact same mons you'd expect to see Team Rocket: Sinnoh Branch using.

Worldie, you seem to be assuming the worst bad-faith interpretation of fans(including of people on here). No, I didn't care about other monster collector games(I've tried some and liked fewer than I've tried). I do care about this one plagiarizing its designs. That's morally wrong, and they need to stop. Hopefully, the fact that they plagiarized a massive franchise gets this company smacked down, because if not, then they'll keep doing it. They probably have targeted smaller artists in the past and gotten away with it because those artists were obscure enough they couldn't object.

 

[Worldie]

Worldie, you seem to be assuming the worst bad-faith interpretation of fans(including of people on here).

To be precise, I'm not "assuming", i'm specifically criticizing that part of the fanbase, which is the most vocal. I wish even half of the people trashtalking on the major media had the contexts presented by the other people who replied me, which as I said, are reasonable, and I even agree with some.

That's morally wrong, and they need to stop. Hopefully, the fact that they plagiarized a massive franchise gets this company smacked down, because if not, then they'll keep doing it. They probably have targeted smaller artists in the past and gotten away with it because those artists were obscure enough they couldn't object.

and this is where I refer with "It's Nintendo's job to fight it".
I specifically mentioned a couple episodes where Nintendo aggressively nuked people for *daring* touching their franchise, in ways that were not only not profitable but literally free advertising.
If Nintendo doesn't act against this, it means that in same way as they didn't for TemTem or Nexomon, they do not consider it plagiarism, or there are not enough "copied aspects" to consider it so. With how many sales it got (as I mentioned, millions of sales, currently most played non F2P game on Steam), as well as a ton of famous streamers streaming it, surely the game got to their attention.
If they do take action, good for them. If they do not, also good for them and maybe they can take some lessons on how to make a 3d world.

That said, all my complaint is on how the "big pokemon community" tackles these scenarios. Of all the random peperaging I see about it, most is just people either going into the Pokemon official streams spamming "PALWORLD" for attention (to the point the word is now automodded out), going into streamers that stream it to insult them, or going into streamers that stream it to say "hah finally a good Pokemon game". There is the occasional person asking how comes that Nintendo hasnt taken it down yet, but they're sparce, and large majority are just the two facets of Pokemon fans, aka "Pokemon games suck finally a good Pokemon game" and "Why is this copying pokemon it needs to burn".

To be fair, that's also on me for expecting the average person "on the internet" to be reasonable. I know I should lower my standard. Just after seeing this scenario happen for 3 separate franchises, it kinda bores me now.

 

[AztecCroc]

It's not plagiarism to copy design elements, let's take the three comparisons from earlier:

View attachment 595301
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Other than the color that deer looks nothing like Cobalion, if it was, for example, red literally no one would even make the comparison. The only resemblance to Cobalion is the fact that it's a blue deer, are you saying no one's allowed to make blue deer monsters because Cobalion exists.

Now the lion. Again the fact it's a black lion with a mane like that is the only similarity. And fun fact, that image is super zoomed in like that for a reason:

Spoiler

Because the thing barely looks like Luxray from the neck down, it's a mostly black electric lion, but if it held its head forward instead of upright no one would have made the comparison.

And then there’s the rabbit, aside from being an anthropomorphic rabbit, what exactly is the similarity to Cinderace? Most of the circled features are generic rabbit features. Hell aside from the hands most of circled similar features are either shared with fucking Bugs Bunny or are completely different between the two. They circled the green ones tail despite Cinderace's clearly not looking anything like that.

Plagiarism is bad, but actually taking design cues from Pokémon (unlike most Pokémon-likes) is not plagiarism. It just makes far more appealing designs than most. Like compare it to Temtem or Coromon, even the ones like the yellow round one that drives a tank in the trailer or the mammoth just have a quintessential Pokémon-ness to them that most clones can't achieve.

I have no interest in actually playing the thing, I've played ARK, it's not fun solo. But aside from the lion, the rabbit, and the plant dragon that's probably a little too Goodra-like, most of them aren't that similar to a specific Pokémon.

 

[Coronis]

I still boycott Scary Movie because it ripped off Scream.

 

[woodgoldtwo]

I still boycott Scary Movie because it ripped off Scream.

Did you post this in the wrong thread by any chance?

 

[Coronis]

Did you post this in the wrong thread by any chance?

Nope. Just making fun of the current discussion in this thread.

 

[pika pal]

In fairness I did brig up a movie by the same creators as "Scary Movie" in on of my rambles because I felt the level of "Parody" was about the same as trying to compare Palworld to Pokemon.

 

[Dragapult]

No, I think you've not read the discussion correctly.

lol

en masse

As in on the street, in Twitch lobbies, Discords, other online spaces. I never once suggested *you specifically* are frustrated with Nintendo. If I were looking to do so or directly engage your argument I would've replied you directly. I didn't. I'm simply sharing my observation on the discourse I see/hear everywhere else here because this seems to be the only place on Smogon where this conversation is taking place and generally the discussion here tends to be a bit more intelligent than whatever is going on on Twitter these days.

I'm really just trying to figure out the exact point at which this degree of copying became socially acceptable, if not even championed. Hell, Mizobe himself doesn't recognize PalWorld as a "parody" so why exactly are people so insistent on falling on this sword?

Is Robinquil not blatantly Gallade + Decidueye? Bushi? Dinossom? Have there not been multiple credibly reported instances of the game blatantly knocking off of fan designs? Hell, this isn't even the first time this studio has found itself under fire for getting "inspired."

 

[Worldie]

I'm really just trying to figure out the exact point at which this degree of copying became socially acceptable, if not even championed. Hell, Mizobe himself doesn't recognize PalWorld as a "parody" so why exactly are people so insistent on falling on this sword?

Is Robinquil not blatantly Gallade + Decidueye? Bushi? Dinossom? Have there not been multiple credibly reported instances of the game blatantly knocking off of fan designs? Hell, this isn't even the first time this studio has found itself under fire for getting "inspired."

Let's accept that it's not a Parody.

Ok then what? AztecCroc made the subsequental point better than I did: the designs are mostly unique, and while there are some clearly inspired (or very likely intentionally made like it, see the not-wooloos), they are different enough where calling it plagiarism is excessive.
I still haven't seen a Nintendo action against it by the way, which given how much money the game made, is pretty surprising if there indeed was "plagiarism" at work.

Plus, this is just my personal opinion there, there's only so much monster design you can do before you start overlapping. Pokemon has what, over a thousand different pokemon, many of which sporting several forms, and many of these pokemon are more or less classic designs (sirens, animals, objects, soccer players, we got them all). Putting aside whenever Palworld was intentionally trying to meme/imitate Pokemon or not, once Pokemon has made a Pokemon that resembles almost everything in existance, are we going to call any attempt at making a "capturable monster" a pokemon ripoff?

At that point I agree with Coronis ' response, may as well start calling everything a <insert previous similar entry> ripoff.

 

[Just A Shroom God]

Let's accept that it's not a Parody.

Ok then what? AztecCroc made the subsequental point better than I did: the designs are mostly unique
At that point I agree with Coronis ' response, may as well start calling everything a <insert previous similar entry> ripoff.

I personally can't see how these designs can be considered unique, and there have been plenty of other "monster-hunter" franchises that have done fine with creating unique monsters seperate from pokemon, such as digimon, but at this point we just gotta agree to disagree.

 

[LonelyGaruga]

Whether or not it falls under plagiarism, so many Palworld designs come across as using a Pokémon (or multiple Pokemon) as a starting point and then modifying it from there, or taking a singular design element from a Pokémon and putting it on something that would otherwise be distinct enough (I.E. the thing with almost exactly the same eyes/mouth as Galarian Meowth), I certainly can't see the designs being interesting or well designed on their own merits. That is a separate issue entirely from whether or not the designs are good to begin with. And the quality of the designs is a separate issue from whether or not the gameplay is any good.

E: Been seeing some deeper looks into Palworld models that explicitly confirm that some of them are just straight up modified Pokémon models, with the polygon count and layout being exact matches in some spots. This is definite plagiarism. Legal action by Nintendo will probably only take place when they've fully examined everything and know precisely all of the assets Palworld uses that were stolen from Pokémon games. It did only just come out a couple days ago, lawsuits take time to prepare.

 

[pika pal]

A lot of type discourse in another thread making me think of this: Why is Fire Resistant to Ice? The weakness makes sense on its own sense but if you put Fire and Ice together, the Fire usually gets smothered as much as the Ice melts (never mind the water dousing, the Ice still stops it breathing), and most RPGs (which Pokemon started its design adhering to very closely) make the elements weak to each other respectively. Heck, I'd settle for Gen 1 where Ice was Neutral hitting Fire Types being kept as the standard.

This one isn't really even a call for balance, because Ice's offensive profile is fine, just seems weird to me given all the other RPG's I played, many of which preceded Pokemon in release.

 

[Just A Seaking]

A lot of type discourse in another thread making me think of this: Why is Fire Resistant to Ice? The weakness makes sense on its own sense but if you put Fire and Ice together, the Fire usually gets smothered as much as the Ice melts (never mind the water dousing, the Ice still stops it breathing), and most RPGs (which Pokemon started its design adhering to very closely) make the elements weak to each other respectively. Heck, I'd settle for Gen 1 where Ice was Neutral hitting Fire Types being kept as the standard.

This one isn't really even a call for balance, because Ice's offensive profile is fine, just seems weird to me given all the other RPG's I played, many of which preceded Pokemon in release.

I think the idea here was to buff Fire, which was a pretty weak type in Gen 1. It kinda goes under the radar a bit because Gen 1 had more immediately bad types in the likes of Fighting and Bug, but Fire wasn't doing well for itself either. Its offensive profile was mediocre, only super-effective against 3 types in a game where most Ice types are Water/Ice, and then resisted by 4 types, one of which was extremely common in Water. Not only that, but its defensive profile was pretty poor, too - weak to 3 types, with both Water and Ground being very common, and resisting 3 types, all of which had poor offensive presence.

People focus on Steel's positive impact on Fighting types and its negative impact on Psychic types, but I think an aspect of Steel that goes under the radar as a result is that it was a huge buff for Fire types. The new best defensive type that focused on physical Defense was weak to Fire, a Special type, giving it a definitive offensive niche and solidifying its place in the game. The new-found Steel resistance was less valuable since Steel is a poor offensive type, but certainly helps Fire types switch in. Finally getting back to what your original post was talking about - that Ice weakness helps Fire types switch in to a type they ostensibly are supposed to have an advantage against, and gives them another useful defensive tool to work with.

As for the logic of it, I think it makes sense considering that Water and Ice are two separate things in Pokemon, which is pretty rare as far as JRPGs go. Water already covers that idea of dousing the fire to put it out; accordingly, Ice having the same interaction would arguably be redundant.

 

[Hugin]

Whether or not it falls under plagiarism, so many Palworld designs come across as using a Pokémon (or multiple Pokemon) as a starting point and then modifying it from there, or taking a singular design element from a Pokémon and putting it on something that would otherwise be distinct enough (I.E. the thing with almost exactly the same eyes/mouth as Galarian Meowth), I certainly can't see the designs being interesting or well designed on their own merits. That is a separate issue entirely from whether or not the designs are good to begin with. And the quality of the designs is a separate issue from whether or not the gameplay is any good.

E: Been seeing some deeper looks into Palworld models that explicitly confirm that some of them are just straight up modified Pokémon models, with the polygon count and layout being exact matches in some spots. This is definite plagiarism. Legal action by Nintendo will probably only take place when they've fully examined everything and know precisely all of the assets Palworld uses that were stolen from Pokémon games. It did only just come out a couple days ago, lawsuits take time to prepare.

Having just looked through a thread of the Palworld designs, and based on the CEO being an outspoken AI art advocate, I suspect that they fed a bunch of ripped pokemon(and other?) 3d models into an AI art program, then pulled out a bunch of results and had human artists clean them up. There's plenty of "similar concepts" that are anywhere from straight-up clones(the Gyarados) to "well, a red fox that's on fire is reasonable enough", but the stuff with stolen elements is often not that. The Meowth is identical face on a different mon, the Lucario head is on 2 different dog-themed Pals...it feels like stealing the creature concepts and the design elements happened separately and at random, which is much more what I'd expect of AI than of humans making intelligent decisions.

 

[Mad Ram]

E: Been seeing some deeper looks into Palworld models that explicitly confirm that some of them are just straight up modified Pokémon models, with the polygon count and layout being exact matches in some spots. This is definite plagiarism. Legal action by Nintendo will probably only take place when they've fully examined everything and know precisely all of the assets Palworld uses that were stolen from Pokémon games. It did only just come out a couple days ago, lawsuits take time to prepare.

Yeah, the models are really what clinches it in my opinion. If it weren't for that you could make an argument it's inspiration but not really anything illegal. But when you take Serperior's geometry and put on Primarina's hair but just remove the pearls, you clearly are doing a lot more than simple homage. Then again this is really something more for Nintendo's lawyers than anything Pokémon fans should be up in arms about. If anything it's just really funny how they thought they could get away with it and how some people are so defensive about blatant illegal behavior. It's like treating this as a sports rivalry. It's not something worth getting to serious over.

Ok, I might have also bought a copy with some of my friends for the lulz just because we all guessed the lawsuits were coming and we didn't want to miss our chance so I can't really act superior to any side

 

[Coronis]

Even some coworkers tonight were discussing Palworld. Struggle street

 

[Worldie]

Even some coworkers tonight were discussing Palworld. Struggle street

To be fair, regardless of one thinks about it, it *is* the talk of the week.
It has had a *insane* launch week, which would have made headlines even without the "pokemon with guns" controversy.

 

[Kin+ak (✧∇✧)]

palworld is not free. How dare you sell a game that much money when It's pokemon With guns? Pokemon arceus imo is better Because well It's authentic, it has shinies and afaik a scenario

 

[Coronis]

To be fair, regardless of one thinks about it, it *is* the talk of the week.
It has had a *insane* launch week, which would have made headlines even without the "pokemon with guns" controversy.

tbh I wouldn’t have heard of it without these OI threads… its not a game that interests me at all. The gameplay isn’t similar to Pokemon (unless I’m misunderstanding) and I’ve seen plenty of ads with far more obvious rip-offs and not given a shit.

 

[Worldie]

tbh I wouldn’t have heard of it without these OI threads… its not a game that interests me at all. The gameplay isn’t similar to Pokemon (unless I’m misunderstanding) and I’ve seen plenty of ads with far more obvious rip-offs and not given a shit.

Eh, even outside of Pokemon-related environments, most of the biggest e-news sites that deal with videogames have been talking about it. Same for youtubers.

Obviously, if one's interests arent into "generic videogame stuff", it's unlikely you'd hear of it, it's not like you're going to see merchandise or anime about any kind of pokemon ripoff.

 

[ant4456]

My artistic perspective is that Palworld does do plagiarism. Especially since many of the model rigs seem extremely (extremely) similar to Pokemon models.

I think a lot of people who say "plagiarism is fine if it's against a big company we hate" will never get the usual artist perspective. That is, artistic communities do not just see merit and care about artistic integrity to some material purpose.

ie. us saying that Palworld's plagiarism is bad is not to defend Game Freak/The Pokemon Company. It is to defend the concept that making new things should matter, and that an asset flip topping games like Elden Ring is a horrible omen for the industry.

Mass consumers don't care, but all of the friends I know who are artistic, really do. Because we hate plagiarism period. Against anyone.

Also, artists are not the same as companies. Former or current artists that work at Game Freak often show that they love their designs which have now been ripped off. Which is extremely disrespectful from the Palworld devs for shamelessly stealing, and for those of you who just say "well lol big company". Individuals created and loved Pokemon that they made.

Consider this: If every single artist working at Pocket Pair did designs, that's still a hundred for 4ish developers, IIRC. Most Pokemon artists make < 10 designs that actually make it into the games. They aren't shitting these out.

It's also not just plagiarism, but also a creatively bankrupt game with almost no original assets. Then you have the fact that Pocket Pair has several Early Access titles, and is releasing a Hollow Knight "based" game next quarter.

Then you have all the AI Art/Crypto shit, and it kind of makes my blood boil that some of you would just turn your cheek to that.

I played Palworld for a few hours and Legends Arcues back to back, as I felt that a lot of the appeal in Palworld could be found in Arceus. For instance, Arceus is not a base builder, but both are IMO addicting because they so heavily reward doing tasks such as catching the same creatures over and over. And I'll be honest, Legends Arceus is just way better. Because it's a cohesive original experience by artists. It's also ridiculous when people say "Palworld is a kick in the balls Pokemon needed, they should have evolved the formula,"

They did. It just came out 10 months before Scarlet/Violet (which also did major changes tbh), and then somehow you all forget???