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Night Light | Pokémon With Guns

Night Light | Pokémon With Guns

You’re not going crazy, we’re moving Night Light to Thursday mornings.

Pokémon With Guns

If you’ve been following what’s been happening in the gaming industry over the last few weeks, you’ll notice some pretty interesting developments. Back in November, I covered Lethal Company, a game that has made $114M with just a single developer (who is also only 21). We’re now seeing a similar trend with Palworld, which recently sold its 8 millionth copy in under 6 days. I still stand by my prediction that big video game publishers are going to have a rough year because these huge breakout games from smaller developers are eating their lunch.

Both Palworld and Lethal Company have consistently been in the top 15 best-selling games since their release.

Why Does This Matter?

Palworld and Lethal Company blew up out of nowhere. Now, smaller game studios have just as good a chance of having a breakout game as a big AAA studio. Palworld is the second-bestselling game on Steam ever, and there are a lot of reasons why it’s successful.

I’m not trying to downplay how hard AAA publishers are working on their games; it’s incredibly difficult to put out groundbreaking games. With all the new development tools, there’s a more level playing field, and a much better chance that independent game studios can create a popular game. It’s pretty clear that we want better games, and we’re not just going to buy whatever remaster or sequel they throw at us.

Criticism of Palworld:

A few criticisms I’ve seen are that some character designs share a resemblance to popular Pokémon characters. As of this morning The Pokémon Company is investigating Palworld.

Seems somewhat similar.

Two of Pocket Pair’s previous games have looked very similar to other games. Craftopia looks very similar to Breath of the Wild (even the glider looks the same).

These games look similar.

Never Grave looks exactly like Hollow Knight.

These games look very similar.

I’ve also heard that Takuro Mizobe, CEO of Pocket Pair, has had a fascination with generative AI becoming inevitable in the video game industry. Although there’s no proof it’s being used in the game, I do think we’re nearing this point.

Mods are Becoming Extremely Important:

There’s already a mod pack to replace your main character with Ash and all the “pals” with Pokémon. I think now, more than ever, mod packs are extremely important when developing games. It’s also been beneficial for the Lethal Company community. Mod packs are constantly coming out for the game, making improvements to the vanilla (original) game, and most of them aren’t being made by the game’s creator. The crazy part is that some of the mods are actually really good, and I’ve noticed that most people I know are playing a modded version.

The Big Takeaway:

We’ve now seen two games over the last 6 months from independent developers that have made breakout games, gaining a lot of steam. I think this also marks a defining point for the video game industry regarding copyright and AI. Right now, there’s no evidence that Palworld is doing anything wrong or unfair; they just made a game that we want to play. In my opinion, the door is wide open for other small companies (or even single developers) to make incredibly popular games. Very interested to see how this story develops.