When escapism is no longer liberating, the goal of the g*mer is to become the oppressor

I mean, this has always been true about the monster taming genre. This game just kinda leans into it like it’s a joke instead of pretending it isn’t happening. Not saying I’m a fan of that angle. In fact, the original trailer had CG video of pals working in sweat shops and they all looked sad and tired, and it was a huge turnoff for me from the game. But let’s not pretend that the premise of every monster taming game ever isnt that you force them into servitude and almost always into violence.

That said, after seeing actual gameplay, all you do is send your pals out on your ranch and they perform chores. It’s not especially dark or gruesome about it. Sometimes the chore is helping you make food or medicine, and sometimes it’s mining or logging, and yes, sometimes it’s making weapons or ammo. I’m not a fan of the memes about slavery or the people who think it’s funny, but the game marketing doesn’t strike me as all that problematic. I would argue it’s worse that you run around punching and shooting these creatures and making them fight to the death, but again, that’s the whole genre. Did you know there are games where all you do is shoot people? People love that shit

I think the writing is generally on the side of satirizing the monster collection genre rather than, I don't even know what you're getting at, trying to advocate for slavery?

Now, is it done well? No, the game design is still fundamentally one of power fantasy, wake me up when there's a Pal Revolt mechanic, but it's not even all that ambiguous.

The game itself is fine, it's a fun, if fairly generic "survival" sort of game with heavy base building mechanics. But the memes about it all became about "edgy pokemon with guns and brutality" so this very PG sort of game is being treated like some R rated gorefest by idiots trying to be funny because their favourite youtuber made a joke about it. So naturally CHUDs love it because they get an excuse to be openly horrible.

Honestly, mixed feelings on this TBH. There's a lot of appeal that I 100% get for games that allow you to do anything, games that allow you to be a crapsack person in a crapsack world, etc. If I hadn't seen this thread I don't think I'd have seen any problem with it at all.

I've enjoyed Conan: Exiles (not that I did anything with the slavery mechanics in-game as I mainly went around singleplayer cheating my ass off, but I also didn't care), Rimworld and Tyranny have been in my library with intent to getting around to playing for a long while now, slavery gets whittled down to either numbers or actually pretty neat roleplaying/lore mechanics in games like Humankind, Endless Legend, and maybe in some Civ games, and I've not batted an eye at any of it. Such things can exist, there can even be a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor about it particularly when it's all fictional and not representing real life humans and events, and the truth is slavery did and does exist, and is a large part of human history- and its inclusion can add a lot of character to a game or setting if done right (and not in a glorified, whitewashing way- that's definitely icky)

On the other hand, I have actually cared when I saw slavery and such topics being represented incorrectly in games. At least, I didn't like the pleasant whitewashing slavery got in one quest in AC Odyssey, for instance.

Honestly, I had the game wishlisted already and had been planning to get it- even now, hell if I know if I will. Enslaving Pals or humans IG doesn't appeal to me, but what I've seen of the game (not the slavery bits, the gameplay, the Pals, the artstyle, etc) absolutely does. And what I've seen so far even in this thread doesn't quite sell me on the "Pals are dogwhistle for humans" (quite a stretch IMO) and "Palworld is a dogwhistle for Frenworld" (far less of a stretch, but the devs are Japanese) bits.

There will always be plenty of g*mer chuds even, but I'm not sure I read the comments (the English ones anyways, I don't understand Polish) as chuds, or particularly bad or glorifying the subject rather than that similar blend of humor which honestly seems pretty tame and acceptable given the context (fictional Pokemon, and if you do so and like the game advertises, you're playing a cartoonishly evil shitlord- but even that doesn't mean either being a shitlord, condoning shitlordism, or anything other than making a light joke of it in a fictional, non-human context).

Before I realised it was a video game I genuinely thought “palworld” was the latest frenworld baby speak nazi ban evasion sub.

Idk about this one. It's not like the sole goal of the game is to enslave and exploit people/mons. I haven't played it so I wouldn't know but I was actually excited for a monster collector that didn't continuously keep disappointing me like Game Freak does every other year.

The Pokémon comparisons are obvious but it doesn't play at all like Pokémon, which is a turn based RPG, this game feels more like an action RPG/shooter/factory sim.

Yeah this game is just a mish-mash glorifying both slavery AND animal cruelty. Very uncomfortable... and the fact this game is so popular speaks volumes.

EDIT: Learned a lot about certain comrades through this comment thread, didn't expect so many to get so defensive about their favorite bourgeois franchises.

You don’t need a dog whistle to imply human slavery when you can literally enslave humans in the game.

There are human NPCs in the game and you can put them in the pokeballs. At that point, they become docile and you can put them to work.

This is silly

The hitler particles in white gamers can be seen from space with their reaction to this game. The reviews on xbox are also very disturbing.

This is literally just "frenworld" the reddit Nazi community (but I repeat myself) embodied in a game.

I really don't think Pals are a dogwhistle for humans. Its just a monster collection game where you can make the monsters do stuff. Its legitimately not that deep. Its not like a game is saying slavery is good or anything. Like sure, you can be mean to the digital puppets if you want, but really a lot of stuff is just head cannon. Are they working for you because they are scared or because they live in some communist utopia and work as a choice? Up to you. Really I think its just a way to put them to use for more than just combat. Plus it means you can focus on tasks you find fun instead of some of the busy work of survival games. Seriously, every game has things like this. You can take any idea and if you intentionally read it in a negative light that will be what it looks like. Does pokemon promote dog fighting? Ofcourse not. Even if it really is just digital dogfight simulator. Does Disco Elysium promote drug use because drugs have useful effects in it? Does Skyrim promote capital punishment as a good thing because guards will try to kill you for committing crimes and you can kill bandits for the government? Irl crime is caused by disenfranchisement of the poor, is Skyrim proposing we kill them all? No. Skyrim wanted an easy low level enemy you could deal with to learn the game and make some early money. In fact, any game that involves killing anything can be construed in such a way if you like. Ofcourse this isn't to say games can't carry messages, but I don't think this one really does. I think the devs just saw they could do some edgy marketing and went for it.

Maybe it's just me being jaded and cynical af, but is there a chance that the game was intended to be a commentary on worker exploitation? I don't know much about the game and I doubt the average game consumer would see it that way though.

You can capture full fledged NPC humans and make them your “Pals”.

Yes you can enslave actual humans.

I've somehow managed to avoid all discourse about this game and am only just finding out about this.

So this is why pokemon never made a 3D realistic game.

I get what you're saying, but I think it's a bit of an overreaction.

The 4 first screenshots could very well be criticism what you do in-game, tho I doubt it is, it's probably the devs just wanting to be edgy.

The reviews are pretty standard from g*mers too. Most are probably just making fun of the fact, but since it's Steam there's 100% someone that wrote stuff like that unironically.

I think discussion about possible AI use by the devs and it just being another lazy survival game with ripoff pokémon and guns are better talking points. There's also the IP infringement, but I don't care about Nintendo's property.

It's why I love this instance so much, only place which remains lucid during even the biggest of bullshit circlejerks.

What the fuck happened. There was some pretty good discussion yesterday and now suddenly it's a bunch of useless trolling comments.