You completely misrepresented what that Steam chart was showing and that was peak "Concurrent player count" all time and the last 24hrs. The amount of actual players on Steam was 12 million about a week ago as per the developers own statement, so a shit ton more than you indicated by way of that chart.
As long as its fun and entertaining, and not full of predatory practices. Players will support them buying multiple copies and spreading its name through word of mouth. Gosh, makes me wish games felt complete like in the early 2000's where they can't afford to mess up a launch and fix it mid update, we didn't have reliable wifi back then.
@@stevenyee1055 I agree. I do like the benefits of being a part of a games development and helping shape the end product. I feel like this process has helped deliver some truly unique games. The problem I have is when early access games are retail price and release paid DLC before they are finished.
“This game was released seemingly out of nowhere” Me having been tracking this games progress and eagerly awaiting its release for the past three years: 😬
Yeah, loved Craftopia and wishlisted Palworld immediately I think early 2022, I was playing at like 3am on release day. I hopped on to play after work and had to do a double take when I saw like 800,000 people playing
Mizobe is the best kind of manager. He’s the dude that gets shit done, because he puts not just trust in the skills of the people he hires, but also agency and autonomy. Reminds me of how Valve sort of does things. Except with less money and they killed it 🎉🎉
This is def your best video essay. I have never seen someone use sims as b roll but it definitely gets the job done. It would be nice if you could get them in different positions talking to each other rather than have them only at the computer. Overall amazing video !
"broke all the genre norms" Well waddaya know? Producing something that is not stale and the 100th copy of a game with slight tweaks is awesome! Yes it is ark with pokemon. But so many mechanics are different, that it feels completely fresh!
I received Craftopia from the devs early access and made content for my channel. It felt like a bunch of games just thrown together. It was fun for a bit then I stopped playing due to bugs and whatnot. I forgot about it and who created it. Fast forward. The first thing I thought when I saw Palworld was, this reminds me of some game.... What was that game I played...ummm... Craft something...I had to look it up in my steam library and see it was still there, being sorted, and updated. Long story short. Congrats and salute to Pocket Pair for never giving up, making a hit, and taking the gaming world by storm.
Hard to believe they were a week away from bankruptcy and they put one of the best, if not, the best game of 2024 out in early-access. Those publishers must be kicking themselves now for rejecting them, and losing out on that sweet cash (lol maybe they were the ones sending the death threat emails?). Truly happy for Pocket Pair Inc.
Thanks for putting this together! I’ve been dying to know how this team of amateurs was able to come up with these heart-tugging designs. It was cool to hear their story!
Well presented and enjoyable coverage. Thanks for the summation of the journey. No denying that Palworld is a hit, I’m loving the game. Something worth considering when you listen to how this game came together is the Survivorship Bias. Where it is encouraging to see plucky team up against the odds succeed and prosper, but their survival is not a reliable model. This is a story of their skill, luck, and funding taking them to the top of the market. Had their situation lacked one of those key factors this game would not exist. We’re all lucky it does.
Palworld is one of the most fun games I played in a while. It just lacks some multiplayer features to make it a even better game. I can't wait to see what the team is working on.
Honestly goes to show you how sometimes taking risks like that can be worth it in the end. Worst that can happen is you start back at zero, but in this case, BANKRUPTCY xD. I’m happy things worked out cuz the game’s great!!! Also I never realized the entire time that there was no “Story Mode” lol
Agree 100 percent. It's hard to believe that this game came from an indie studio. The success of this game is like a divine intervention that will probably not be repeated for a long time.
Cheaper than free games and better value than most legacy studios. Had to be an indie. Hopefully they continue to follow Larian's example rather than Bethesda.
Thank you for this amazing video! I'm currently very sick, but your videos makes me feel a little bit better, keep going with these interesting content!
Fantastic summary and story of the path to success, very well put together and delivered! Goes, to show that there is seldomly instant success, but a path before that few hear of. In one word, inspirational.
I'm glad that Pocket Pair was successful. Palworld is a fun game. :) Now they have the time and money to make the game even better and funner to play by adding more story and Pals! :D
I loved this deep dive, I have to admit it is a very fun game. I wish I had the confidence to throw money at people instead of doing everything myself. I don't even want to share my code with anyone for fear of it being stolen!
beautifully done mini documentary Sam! This story is wild, inspiring, and also very eye opening. You might be a bit busy but I wanted to say there's a typo on Pal World. Something minor. Hope this didn't affect the video as it's greatly done.
Yeah this game is literally what I wanted pokemon to do for years, its pretty much how I pictured an open world pokemon game, where you physically fight and catch them, this team needs all the awards 😅
I watched this and I was like "Damn this video is really good, it must be one of those 3 million views videos that gets recommended to me" And then I look at the view count and see 12.8k! You deserve way more views! This was a genuinely very entertaining video to watch and the first one I've seen in a while that didn't feel like a chore to watch. Good job.
Sammy, thank you for a very inspiring video. the way you present it using Sims is hilarious :D Anyway, would there be a chance for you to show up in LinkedIn?
It's funny how this guy took so many risks, even though in Japan, it's normalized to not take any chances on even garunteed things. Dude just went "Hit me. Hit me. Hit me." and got a blackjack out of it.
What makes this story even more crazy is hiring the Lead Engineer who only knew Unreal engine, so they swapped everything over to that instead of Unity. Then just before the end of this past year, Unity screwed the pooch and tried some crazy shite to force developers into paying for Unity as a subscription service. The game companies would have to pay Unity for the initial rights to use it, and also pay an ADDITIONAL charge not based on sales of the game, but downloads in order to KEEP using it (you as the customer would only purchase the game once per platform, but if you ever had to reinstall it, the producers would have to pay Unity for each individual install of the game - forever). If Pocket Pair HADN'T switched over before, even just the threat of this would have been enough to put them out of business.
To be fair Unity did change it to 2.5% revenue cut if you didn’t want to do it via # of sales (and they now take max 2.5% even through # sales) and starting in Unity 6 version. (Still not a huge fan of this but better than the previous policy).
I think the Pal artist are lucky to get this job, pokemon designs aren't very high skilled to draw and design that's why Nintendo wanting to sue is just a stupid idea, look at the designs! They are so simple to the point of make a simple (cute) version of animals mix with elements and they'll all look like pokemon. It's as dumb as suing someone who drew eyes, ears and mouth that your character has.🙄
I think it is mostly a remix of all sorts of games and genres that works so well for the majority because you can be very silly in it and forget all morals and logic, along with a lot of proven mechanics that mean that no matter what kind of play style you have, there will be something you want to do, so the social component, regardless of multiplayer, is there. About development, whenever I got stuck with a university project I had the most success when I decided to abandon everything and start from scratch. When you are having issues from an early lack of knowledge and sticking to wrong decisions, starting from scratch is probably faster. Whenever I didn't back then after getting stuck, I failed. Also the lack of "proper" management might have helped the development, management people put the functionality and goal of the project second at best.
Maybe,just maybe modern game development teams are chasing paper and lost ability to make good games. Palworld developers just remembered the correct way to make fun video games.
You know? with all the pokemon thing, I thought that this guys were walking on thin ice, but I had no idea that it was that on all the phases of development, hope they manage to get themselves in a good place of the market, also no rig, really?
I really hate the "out of nowhere" thing, because they've been popping out trailers and social media posts for three years. It's not "out of nowhere" it's just that the bulk of its current fans didn't care until it was already popular.
i guess his idea was that "hey if we aint broke yet we good!" also the fact he was only hiring developers who knew unity engine because unreal engine developers are more expensive 💀
Dude did for palworld what Elon did for Space X, and it worked out, I hope their studio gets bigger and bigger, we need new big boys to create the games we really want for, like Hello Games.
For me Palworld is just a younger cousin of Craftopia. Craftopia lets you do almost everything Palworld does and much more, 100+ pets, crafting, automation, exploration, build as many bases as you want as big as you want. Palworld just streamlined the experience and did some things a lot better. The Pals have much more personality than the pets in Craftopia and although the building is limited in Palworld, it's better for overall performance and is less clunky. Palworld is a lot more controller-friendly and casual in general than Craftopia so it's nice also. Craftopia had a massive focus on building complex automation and fighting with many skills on a hot bar, much better with keyboard and mouse imo Basically Palworld is a slimmer, sleeker version of Craftopia that's more approachable to the average gamer, not to mention newer. A lot of Craftopia fans have become embittered due to slower-than-expected updates
Tool assets yes would have been useless but anything besides that wouldn't have completely useless. In most to every case there is nothing legally preventing anyone in any of the agreements on Unity or Unreal's marketplaces that you can't use that asset in the other engine or even Godot
Yeah, there was no evidence for that. Someone made that up and since AI is a popular term today. People (mostly so called game journalists) hopped on the claim for sake of getting attention.
So far, no. Palworld has not used AI creating the Pals. Although some Pals looked similar, it's mere inspiration. As for the stolen models, the Twitter OP confessed that they resized the Palworld models to fit with Pokemon after 3D artists took a closer look at their evidence and called out his discrepancy.
this game was great adventure to play... now i know the story behind palworld man that MR.Takuro Mizobe was a real great adventure he goes against all odds and they did it they beat the Boss FATE ...12,000,000 million just in a week all big AAA game industry is in shock just like Zeus lightning bolt hit them stright to their face...this man was Legend it is Miracle level 1 player to fight Boss FATE in real life
Honestly the dev hiring some 20 year old self taught convenience store worker shows how unnecessary college is. Can't get in student loan debt if you don't go to college and you teach yourself.
Palworld being a rip off of Pokemon, is equal to Saints Row being a rip off of GTA Its just a different take on the genre, besides, nobody thought Digimon was a rip off of Pokemon
hey sam, i need advice. how, if you've never worked in game dev should one go about getting a job in it??? whatever you'd call my strategy, it aint working. send help lol
I’ve never had a job in game dev so I couldn’t tell you, but portfolio is one of the most important things so making cool technically challenging projects (depends on what field you are aiming for) will help you a lot. Also working on interviewing software skills etc.
@@samyam I lost this reply in the notifications list lol but thanks for the advice. I got an idea to just ask a few friends who make music if I can make some plugins for them, mostly to focus on UI design. Gonna start to build up a portfolio with those for now, and also they'll be useful for my buddies.
