The debate born around the explosive success of Palworld it has something surreal, because it fundamentally arises from the underestimation (or lack of knowledge) of an entire genre on the part of professionals, and of a large segment of gamers; snubbed for years and years by public discourse despite the considerable accumulation of hits.
Ark: Survival Evolved, Sons of the Forest, Subnautica, The Forest, Conan Exiles, Rust, Minecraft, Terraria, Valheim are all survivalas well as all titles that have sold millions of copies (sometimes even tens of millions of copies), on PC in particular (Minecraft is now more transversal, but the phenomenon was still born on PC with a long early access phase between alpha versions and beta).
Who frequents Steam has often seen them in the top 10 best sellers of the platform (for example Sons of the Forest is one of the games that produced the most revenues in 2023). But let's say more: if Bethesda has introduced survival mechanics in Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Starfield it is because it is aware of how much the genre attracts players (so much so that it wanted to gratify them). Again: if The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a system like that of the Ultraman it is because someone over there has looked at and reworked some of the specific survival mechanics with great intelligence, knowing they could get good feedback (excellent, in the specific case). This is to quickly clarify that if a survival game is successful, it shouldn't really surprise anyone these days, considering that we are talking about a market trend that has been consolidated for years, certainly not an exception, as demonstrated by the large quantity of titles announced and launched every year.
Refocus the debate
Another essential point to clarify, which arises from the previous one: Palworld is not a Pokémon clonebut a survival, so much so that this constant comparison with the Game Freak series is quite funny, motivated only by the appearance of the creatures that Pocketpair has shamelessly copied (let's face it) and by some mechanics that cite those of Pokémon, but which are used in different way and are linked to completely different systems.
Now, having clarified these two points, we have to ask ourselves why the debate relating to Palworld continues to revolve around the idea that it is a success that came out of nowhere (the development studio has launched at least another survival game in the past, Craftopia, so it has a certain competence in the genre) and in comparison with the Pokémon games, complete with bombastic declarations such as “they did what Game Freaks should do”. So, change gender completely? With this we do not want to defend the latest Pokémon, which in any case have produced sales that Palworld still dreams of (we'll see if it will reach them), but only to try to refocus the discussion, inserting the Pocketpair title into a framework that is more appropriate to it, perhaps cleaned up by the exaltation of the masses and the need that many feel to immediately jump on the winners' bandwagon to position themselves in a speech that didn't interest them in the slightest until the minute before (it's a polite way of saying that they want to show off).
Survival games are popular for several reasons, not least the fact that they are often excellent titles for creating content for the various YouTube and Twitch, given the high number of fun situations that they manage to generate or to which they can be bent, favored by their sandbox nature . A game like Palworld is practically perfect from this point of view, considering that it allows you to transform it into content virtual suffering of Pokémon, or Pal if you prefer, appearing as a caricature and triggering the same involvement as a blasphemy shouted by a group of kids who want to finally feel like adults. We are talking about a title that resonates strongly with the contemporary public, often psychically very childish even when in their thirties, and made with enormous competence. Reducing everything to the use or not of generative AI for the design of the beasts, when the game was released in early access with very few problems is really unfair and a little short-sighted. It was certainly difficult to predict similar sales, but the fact that it would have a certain appeal was understandable, considering how much it had been talked about practically from the moment of the announcement in the communities that follow survival games.
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