The wonder of Palworld isn’t its popularity, but that it exists at all

How the heck did it Palworld to happen? In a recent blog post, Takuro Mizobe, the CEO and co-founder of the studio behind the latest megahit, provides some clarity. The answer isn’t what any gaming veteran would call “good game development.” But maybe that’s the secret.

although Palworld recently reached the second highest number of concurrent players on Steam, its success was far from assured. The studio worked with a number of key members who had little or no experience in game development. In the beginning, it took Pocketpair founder Mizobe an entire month to create one monster model. Mizobe had wanted to make it a hundred. Even other basic organizational practices, such as preparing a budget for the project, did not occur.

For these and many more reasons, Mizobe created and released Palworld to be a ‘miracle’. It was a miracle that the team actually managed to make it. It seemed like a miracle it was fun. Now it has become one of the biggest games on Steam, having sold over 6 million copies at the time of publication. From this perspective, Palworld seems to be the fruit of not one miracle, but many. However, if Mizobe’s story shows us anything, it’s that all these miracles happened because of the people involved: an unusual mix of veterans, newcomers and a high school student with a talent for animation.

In case you are new, Palworld is the latest hit sensation in gaming. At first glance it looks a bit like “Pokémon, but with weapons.” However, the game, which is now available in Steam Early Access, is much more than that. Sure, it has its fair share of cute Pokémon-like creatures, but it also features a mix of RPG exploration and open-world survival elements. For PalworldPocketpair has released three games: Overkerk, CraftopiaAnd AI: Art trickster. According to Mizobe it is Palworld without these games this wouldn’t have been possible.

“If it weren’t for the first phantom game, which was never released, Overkerk would not have been born. Without Overkerk, Craftopia would not have been born. Without Craftopia, Palworld would not have been born. And every game was released with great difficulties,” Mizobe said in one developer blog translated from Japanese to English via Google Translate.

The development of Palworld was full of difficulties. Members of the team did not know key skills, such as building drilling rigs, to help create animations for the Pal characters. Mizobe described other work processes, such as file management, as a “mess.” In a particularly stunning example, given the time it would take, the team made the decision to migrate development from Unity to Unreal Engine, when an experienced game developer – a rarity on the team – expressed interest in the project, but only knew how to work in Unreal engine. This decision required the team to virtually rebuild the game thus far.

What Mizobe initially envisioned as a small four-person project that could just be launched to test the waters quickly grew out of control. Production costs continued to rise and Pocketpair eventually employed a team of 40 people for the game. The studio had achieved modest success with the release of Craftopia, but it was possible that this would not be enough to finance the new game. With an unusual degree of transparency by gaming industry standards, Mizobe talked about how the budget worked, or more importantly, how it didn’t even exist.

“The budget limit is initially until the balance in your bank account is zero. When it reaches zero, you can borrow money. In that case, should you manage your budget? No, all you have to do is borrow money or release money right before the company goes bankrupt and your account balance drops to zero. We can probably develop it for another two years or so.

For now, I decided to keep making it without worrying about the budget. We want to finish it as quickly as possible, so let’s hire a lot of people.”

Mizobe hired a part-time supermarket worker and a high school graduate who made weapon animations as a hobby, and moved them from Hokkaido to Tokyo to become an animator for the game. The person responsible for designing many of the Pals was initially turned down for a job at Pocketpair, but subsequently followed through and eventually became central to the development process. There was a more experienced freelance engineer who helped train the team and recreate the game in Unreal Engine, and an experienced animation developer who helped create a process for mass production and animating of the game’s creatures.

Image: Bag pair

In Palworldplayers can recognize elements likely inspired by a variety of games and series such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildPokémon, survival games like Ark: survival evolvedeven Fortnite. Therefore, Palworld can’t really be reduced to any gaming influence. It’s a living bastard of video games and represents the confluence of several points of inspiration. And yet somehow it works and it clicks with a huge audience.

In this sense, the game itself reflects the history of how Pocketpair’s developers created the game: an unusual mix of people and perspectives that somehow come together to form something original and special. Palworld represents the culmination of every stroke of luck and the contribution of every worker and all of the studio’s previous games. It wasn’t about a single determining factor that contributed to the making of this game. Mizobe found talented entry-level developers in unusual places and relied on more experienced developers to support development. The studio could have run out of money, but it didn’t Craftopia brought the team just enough success to create Palworld.

Because of this genuine sense of serendipity – that so many development factors can come together to create a popular game – there is almost a sense of wonder that Palworld even exists, let alone has become a hit game. To this end, Mizobe said: “Looking back at the results, it is truly a miracle that Palworld has now been completed and released in this manner. I can only say that I was lucky.”