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This Week in Games - Not The Best Of Pals

When asked about his creative vision, Pocket Pair's CEO responded, "I don't have a creative vision. I just want to make a game people like."

Shout out to the Larian Studios CEO who dropped an entire think piece on why subscription services like Game Pass are bad for developers and games the day before Palworld dropped and went on to sell 8 million on Steam alone while on Gamepass.

GAME FREAK's genuine craft in the Pokémon games means nothing to people who stick to surface-level "Lol, look at the framerate and draw distance!" complaints

(and even then the series kind of became long in the tooth before then with the rather pointless remakes and spin offs

It also doesn't help the target audience for the games now seems to be nothing more than pandering to streamers and their followers like Yong Yea and xQc and all the other people who were literally put in Isshin.

It was like Cyberpunk's gimmick of having streamers in it but even worse since the original version didn't have them. I kind miss when "Yakuza" was more niche and focused on what it wanted to do rather than mass market appeal.

That's actually really nice to hear. I feel like a lot of modern game designers have lost sight of this. We really don't need any more Hideo Kojimas or Neil Druckmanns who hold themselves as the saviors of a medium who are redefining what it means to be a video game which always seems to mean making them more like Hollywood movies and TV shows. Just focusing on making fun games is something a lot of modern studios and creator have forgotten.

I think it's great if people are able to overlook these issues and still enjoy the game but it's incredibly difficult for me. I've tried three or four times to go back to it and give it another chance. To say the people upset about that maybe just "grew out of Pokemon" is absurd. I know a lot of people have unrealistic expectations of these games, but "running well/not looking like garbage" is absolutely not one of them. I adore Legends: Arceus, and Scarlet/Violet looked like they would be even better gameplay-wise, and I still think that's true. I just don't understand why some people are so dismissive when other people bring up how atrocious those games look/run. I don't think they're objectively bad games and I don't expect everyone else to feel the way I do, but the people who have issues with the visuals and performance are not overreacting.

To say the people upset about that maybe just "grew out of Pokemon" is absurd. I know a lot of people have unrealistic expectations of these games, but "running well/not looking like garbage" is absolutely not one of them.

People aren't disappointed with modern Pokemon games because they're for kids, they're disappointed they're just mediocre..

oilers2007 wrote:

People aren't disappointed with modern Pokemon games because they're for kids, they're disappointed they're just mediocre..

Exactly. Being a "kids game" doesn't mean they should stop trying to challenge the player or push the envelope. Imagine not releasing a game like Mario 64 because it wasn't "child friendly" enough back in the day.

But I think a lot of folks who wring their hands about The State Of Pokémon™ would be better off just realizing that they outgrew Pokémon and stop making that GAME FREAK's fault.

Quote:

But I think a lot of folks who wring their hands about The State Of Pokémon™ would be better off just realizing that they outgrew Pokémon and stop making that GAME FREAK's fault.

Yup, another way I've seen it put is that a lot of people are going through a breakup with Pokemon and making it everyone else's problem. No guys, Palworld is not making Game Freak nervous, especially when the release calendar has bigger names coming out.

And of course I have to bring up the other big news story this week in that the thing we predicted would happen with the ActiBlizz buyout happened: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1750543289227284649

I'm sure there will be a more comprehensive write up, so I'm just going to get to the point and say screw Satya Nadella, screw Matt Booty, and screw Phil Spencer and his overpriced working class cosplay. Despicable behavior that anyone could have seen coming.

I'm not sure what I couls add about the Acti-Blizz layoffs, I could cut and paste everything I've said about all the other layoffs and it still applies. It's like The Onion and the "Only Nation Where This Happens" template they use. Not that I don't care, it's infuriating. But you'll forgive a man for getting a little tired once every while.

No game could reach a peak of 2+ million players on Steam just thanks to pure spite. If the game is this successful, it's because people like it for what it is (not Pokemon but a survival game) and find it fun, which is reflected in the user reviews. Very weird to try and build a strawman out of people rightfully frustrated with GameFreak's embarassing laziness. The catastrophe that was Scarlet/Violet still was a massive success despite all its infinitely many problems, so not sure why anyone would take TPC's side and attack an indie game that managed to explode like this. Also to say Palworld runs "marginally better" than those games is utterly ridicolous, you can easily reach 60 fps on low end GPUs while S/V surpassing 20 fps was a miracle.

"This episode of Caillou is too simple, they need to make better television for children."