{"id":13329,"date":"2024-02-14T17:38:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T16:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/14\/pushing-buttons-why-palworld-leaves-me-cold\/"},"modified":"2024-02-14T17:38:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T16:38:07","slug":"pushing-buttons-why-palworld-leaves-me-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/14\/pushing-buttons-why-palworld-leaves-me-cold\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing Buttons: Why Palworld leaves me cold"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not here to start a moral panic about this violent survival game. Its transgressions are simply that there\u2019s nothing here I haven\u2019t seen before<\/p>\n

\u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The biggest story of the year so far in games has been Palworld<\/a>, the \u201cPok\u00e9mon-with-guns\u201d early access game that broke and rebroke concurrent player records on PC. It\u2019s showing a few signs of being unsustainable, as those player numbers have dropped off<\/a> in recent weeks and the developers reveal the eye-watering cost<\/a> of keeping servers online for so many people (almost $6m a year), but it\u2019s still in with a shot of being 2024\u2019s biggest game in terms of pure revenue.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something a little unsavoury about Palworld that has other developers and critics wrinkling their noses. It\u2019s not just the ick of turning guns on creatures that are, unlike Minecraft\u2019s blocky animals, designed to look cute. Its character designs are so close to Pok\u00e9mon\u2019s that it has sparked allegations of plagiarism<\/a>, with some 3D models of the game\u2019s creatures aligning improbably closely with those from recent Pok\u00e9mon games. (The Pok\u00e9mon Company is investigating, while Pocketpair\u2019s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, said that Palworld<\/a> \u201ccleared legal reviews\u201d, and that the studio has \u201cabsolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies\u201d.) Its lead developer has also been cheerfully outspoken about using AI tools, which is a super-unpopular opinion among everyone who works on games in 2024, except certain company executives.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nI\u2019m not here to start a moral panic about this violent survival game. Its transgressions are simply that there\u2019s nothing here I haven\u2019t seen before
\n\u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here
\nThe biggest story of the year so far in games has been Palworld, the \u201cPok\u00e9mon-with-guns\u201d early access game that broke and rebroke concurrent player records on PC. It\u2019s showing a few signs of being unsustainable, as those player numbers have dropped off in recent weeks and the developers reveal the eye-watering cost of keeping servers online for so many people (almost $6m a year), but it\u2019s still in with a shot of being 2024\u2019s biggest game in terms of pure revenue.
\nThere\u2019s something a little unsavoury about Palworld that has other developers and critics wrinkling their noses. It\u2019s not just the ick of turning guns on creatures that are, unlike Minecraft\u2019s blocky animals, designed to look cute. Its character designs are so close to Pok\u00e9mon\u2019s that it has sparked allegations of plagiarism, with some 3D models of the game\u2019s creatures aligning improbably closely with those from recent Pok\u00e9mon games. (The Pok\u00e9mon Company is investigating, while Pocketpair\u2019s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, said that Palworld \u201ccleared legal reviews\u201d, and that the studio has \u201cabsolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies\u201d.) Its lead developer has also been cheerfully outspoken about using AI tools, which is a super-unpopular opinion among everyone who works on games in 2024, except certain company executives. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not here to start a moral panic about this violent survival game. Its transgressions are simply that there\u2019s nothing here I haven\u2019t seen before \u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here The biggest story of the year so far in games has been Palworld, the \u201cPok\u00e9mon-with-guns\u201d early access game …<\/p>\n

Pushing Buttons: Why Palworld leaves me cold<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13329"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}