Text | yiye
Rao is not interested, and most players have also been swiped by this game called "Phantom Beast Palu" in the past few days.
On January 19th, "Phantom Beast Palu" was officially launched, and players must have heard of the results since then. Eight hours after the game's release, sales broke through1 millionserving, 40 hours later, the sales came3 millionserving, six days later, sales have broken through8 millionPortion.
For such results, TGA founder and host Geoff Keighley posted his shock, and revealed that he had confirmed with developer PocketPair that this sales figure does not actually include Xbox and Game Pass sales, but only Steam sales. According to Geoff Keighley, this means that Palu the Phantom Beast will sell about 5 days after its release on Steam1.$8.9 billion.
However, PocketPair, which has achieved such gratifying results, is a "small workshop" type developer with only about 40 employees. At the beginning of the project of "Phantom Beast Palu", the production team was only 4 people, and the development cost of this game was only1 billion yen,Approx$6.77 million.
At present, the number of people on Steam of "Phantom Beast Palu" has broken through2 million, ranking second in Steam history. There is no doubt that the first "dark horse" of the game industry in 2024 has appeared and broken into the sight of players and the industry with a "reined" attitude.
With the explosion of "Phantom Beast Palu", the word "stitching" also followed. However, the attitude of players towards this game does not seem to be as repulsive as that of previous games that have been criticized as "stitching", and there are even voices such as "as long as it's fun, stitching doesn't matter".
So, what is it that makes such a game full of familiarity to players become popular? Is the word "stitching" really no longer so harsh?
Phantom Beast Palu is an open-world survival game in which players can collect magical creatures "Palu" in a vast world and send them to fight, build, do farm work, industrial production, and more.
Open the game, and a thick "Pokémon wind" comes to your face.
The main character of the game, "Palu", is borrowed from the image of Pokémon and simplified design, which is the most obvious "stitching" of the game. Therefore, most players have a direct feeling of this game at the beginning - the open-world version of Pokémon.
Station B @ Gabbaton between morning and dusk).
In terms of gameplay, except for the settings similar to "Pokémon" such as Palu can be captured with "Palu Ball" and Palu ecology in the game, other parts are different from the "Pokémon" series. However, if that's all there is, Palu the Phantom Beast might not be called the "ultimate stitching game" anymore.
In "Phantom Beast Palu", the gameplay such as map exploration and survival construction seems to make people see the shadow of SoC games such as "ARK: Survival Evolved"; The use of paragliders to travel from high to low places has a bit of the temperament of "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild"; The collection of items in the process of open-world exploration gives people a sense of "Genshin Impact"; The wanted mechanic is a bit like the GTA ......
All in all, "Phantom Beast Palu" has a certain degree of integration with other games in terms of art design, gameplay and game setting.
In the past, players often lost interest in a game because they had a sense of "copycat" and "familiarity" before they were exposed to it. But why is "Phantom Beast Palu" so popular? What exactly is the cause of the explosion?
First, "Pokémon" allows "Phantom Beast Palu" to save players the process of accepting the game from scratch. Letting one's game stand on the shoulders of those who came before it is something that many games that try to play the "touch porcelain" card want to do, and "Phantom Beast Palu" has indeed become the beneficiary of this idea.
Needless to say, the IP appeal of the Pokémon series has something to do with such a game, even if it is negative, it will bring attention. Moreover, under the effect of gameplay separation, most of the players attracted by "Phantom Beast Palu" are pan-players, and non-core players are not so unacceptable to the game being "stitched", which invisibly improves the word-of-mouth tolerance of this game. Therefore, "touching porcelain" has also become a marketing tool for the game, and has achieved considerable results.
Second, fun is always the core factor of a game's popularity. In "Phantom Beast Palu", players can fight side by side with Palu, and even team battles; In the construction of homes, different jobs can be arranged for Palu according to their different attributes; The Palu ball will be refreshed randomly, and you will no longer be afraid of having a Palu you want to catch but no ...... ballSettings such as these respond to the wishes and needs of players, constantly superimposing a sense of coolness for players, and a smooth experience that was previously difficult to get in other games can be obtained in "Phantom Beast Palu".
Perhaps this is also the reason why some players say that "as long as it's fun, stitching doesn't matter". The "hodgepodge" is commendable because you can taste different ingredients in one dish, and the same is true of the "Palu" game, which has a lot of basic gameplay and a lot of details, and it's hard not to get started.
Third, the curiosity has made more people come to this "carnival". When it comes to "Phantom Beast Palu", "Capitalist Experience Card", "Palu Survival Rules", "I Worked for a Day, My Palu Hasn't Gone to Work Yet" and other jokes with a joking tone have been continuously spread through communities and live broadcasts, so that more and more people know about this "Dark World Edition Pokémon".
In today's high-pressure life, a game can connect **, and the provision of "emotional value" is indispensable. In Palu, the player unloads his fatigue and transforms into a "capitalist" sent by Paru, an experience that attracts more and more people to this world of inverted identities.
Fourth, it is also a topic that players have been suffering from GF (Game Freak, the developer of the "Pokémon" series) for a long time. The Pokémon IP has a long history and is loved by players, but GF's reputation has been declining in recent years. Especially when "Pokémon Zhu Purple" was launched, the endless bugs in the game had long caused players to be dissatisfied with GF.
I hope that the small team of Phantom Beast Palu will use this game to wake up GF and seize their market, this game does what they should have done a few years ago, and I hope it will force them to start working on the next game", in this mindset, more and more people choose Phantom Beast Palu, and increase the acceptance of "stitching".
All in all, under the interaction of various reasons, coupled with the fermentation of various content on the online platform, "Phantom Beast Palu" became unreasonably popular with its price of less than 100 yuan. More and more players are coming to this "stitched" world, and the game's sales are reaching new highs at an astonishing rate.
But at the same time, a sharp question has also been brought to the public's eyes - is "stitching" no longer criticized?
In 2023, the stand-alone game "Baldur's Gate 3", which is defined as a "hardcore niche", can be described as a bumper harvest in sales and word-of-mouth, winning awards repeatedly, and once showing the hope that high-quality single-player games will continue to flourish.
However, at the beginning of 2024, the first hit game was a "stitching" game. When players pay for such a refreshing, interesting and fun game as "Phantom Beast Palu", they may also have a little doubt, if the results obtained by painstaking originality are not as good as taking shortcuts, how can the market encourage originality? Is the argument "as long as it's fun, stitching doesn't matter" really going to become a trend?
After the fire of Phantom Beast Palu, Takuro Tsubabe, the president of developer PocketPair, released a long article telling players about some interesting things in the development of the game. The letter's contents, such as "most of Palu's image designs were completed by a fresh graduate" and "The gun shooting was done by a former convenience store worker with a junior high school education" sparked discussions, and also pushed PocketPair to the front of the stage again.
Looking at PocketPair's past released games, it is not difficult to find that "Phantom Beast Palu" is not the first game they "stitched" out, Xiaohuo's "Overload Dungeon" and "Creation Ideal Town" were both called "Stitching Monsters". Takuro Takibe once said, "Borrowing ideas from your favorite games is PocketPair's game development style." "You can see it"Stitching" is indeed the usual routine of PocketPair, and it has never shied away from it.
If "stitching" has made it easier for this developer in the past, then the fire of "Phantom Beast Palu" can be said to have made it taste the "sweetness". But in addition to this "sweetness", there are actually still many hidden worries, and ** turmoil continues to emerge.
On the one hand, there is the turmoil of legal risks.
Previously, Don McGowan, the former chief legal officer who led the legal team of The Pokémon Company for nearly 12 years, said about Palu the Phantom Beast in an interview with Game File, saying, "The game looks like the kind of random plagiarism that I saw thousands of times a year when I was still working, and I was just surprised that he got to this point." ”
Today, The Pokémon Company also finally released a statement about Palu, the Phantom Beast, which said: "We have received many inquiries about the game released by another company in January 2024. We have not granted any license to use Pokémon intellectual property or assets in this game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate action to address any infringement of intellectual property rights related to Pokémon. ”
The Pokémon Company, which is backed by the "strongest legal department in the Eastern Hemisphere", has only spoken out publicly, perhaps because it is really impossible to define whether "Phantom Beast Palu" is infringing or not at the legal level, or maybe it is just to give an explanation to its loyal players. But in any case, the negative public opinion associated with words such as "infringement" and "plagiarism" has put "Phantom Beast Palu" in a whirlpool.
On the other hand, there is the turmoil over the way the game is made.
In addition to the word "stitching", "AI technology" is also associated with PocketPair. President Takuro Tsube himself is an avid fan of AI technology, and his remarks affirming the value of AI on his social media platforms have led players to suspect that AI tools are also used in the design of "Phantom Beast Palu".
A series of incidents shows that PocketPair's situation is not so smooth. A game that is on fire but trembling on the verge of being accused of plagiarism is not a positive sign for either the game itself or the manufacturer.
In the long run, such a risk will also do more harm than good to the IP construction of the game itself. If you want to operate for a long time, in addition to the explosion, the deep content accumulation of the game is the last word. As the game progresses, what to use to retain players after the initial coolness disappears, and how to improve the current slightly rough production is still a problem that "Phantom Beast Palu" needs to face.
Admittedly, Phantom Beast Palu is hugely popular among players, and it can't be done with simple gameplay splicing, and PocketPair has its own advantages when it comes to content creation. "Stitching" doesn't seem to be so criticized anymore, it's actually players paying for the idea and making of PocketPair. With enough money earned and the team reserves are more sufficient, pocketpair may also be able to go the road of independent originality.
But now, it is still unclear how long "Phantom Beast Palu" will be popular and in what way.
Under various factors, "Phantom Beast Palu" has become the first "phenomenal" explosive game in 2024. No popular game can be copied, but behind the hit, those who point to "stitching", to originality, to gameplay, and to IP construction are all meaningful.
Whether the development direction of the game should be as popular and popular as "Baldur's Gate 3", or whether it should break into everyone's field of vision in a bizarre way like "Palu", has become a choice and a topic, waiting for manufacturers and players to vote with actions.