Palworld's Communications Director Addresses AI Controversy and Misunderstandings

At the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC), we had the opportunity to delve into an in-depth discussion with John "Bucky" Buckley, the communications director and publishing manager for Palworld's developer, Pocketpair. This conversation followed Buckley's insightful presentation titled 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop,' where he openly discussed the challenges Palworld faced, including allegations of using generative AI and copying Pokémon models, which have since been debunked and retracted, respectively. Buckley also touched on the unexpected patent infringement lawsuit from Nintendo, describing it as a "shock" to the studio.

While we have covered some highlights from our discussion in previous articles, the depth and richness of Buckley's insights into Pocketpair's community management and the game's reception warranted a full publication of our extended interview. For those interested in specific topics, you can find shorter pieces on Buckley's thoughts about a potential Palworld release on the Nintendo Switch 2, the studio's reaction to the "Pokemon with guns" label, and the possibility of Pocketpair being acquired.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity:

IGN: I'm going to get the really annoying one that I know you can't really answer out of the way first. You talked so, so lightly about the lawsuit in your GDC talk. Has that lawsuit made it harder for Pocketpair to move forward and update the game, having that still pending?

John Buckley: No, it hasn't made it harder to update the game or to move forward. It's just something that weighs over us all the time. It affects the company's morale more than anything else. And obviously, lawyers have to be involved, but that's primarily handled at the top level. It's just morale more than anything else.

IGN: Okay, real conversation time. I was fascinated at the start of your talk when you talked about, sort of cheekily, the 'Pokemon with guns' moniker. I was surprised that you didn't seem to like that. Can I ask why?

Buckley: A lot of people don't believe us when we say this, but we never set out to make 'Pokemon with guns.' Our goal was to create something more akin to ARK: Survival Evolved, but with greater automation and more personality in each creature. We're huge fans of ARK, and our previous game, Craftopia, drew some inspiration from it. When we showed our first trailer, the 'Pokemon with guns' label emerged, and while it wasn't what we wanted, it's what stuck.

IGN: You said in the talk that you didn't understand why Palworld took off the way it did, you couldn't explain it. And I'm not a market analyst, so I certainly couldn't tell you, but I do feel like I specifically remember when "Pokemon with guns" came into the conversation.

Buckley: Yeah, that was definitely a big factor. It fueled a lot of interest, but what frustrates us is when people believe that's all the game is about without even trying it. We'd rather everyone give it a chance first.

IGN: Well, how would you have phrased it? What would've been your "moniker" for this?

Buckley: I probably would've called it, “Palworld: It's kind of like ARK if ARK met Factorio and Happy Tree Friends.” That's how I might've said it.

IGN: It doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same way.

Buckley: No, no, it doesn't, does it? Maybe that's why.

IGN: Another thing that you brought up in the talk were the criticisms people made saying the game was AI slop. How did that impact folks internally at Pocketpair?

Buckley: It was a massive issue for us, and it still is. It's especially hard on our artists, particularly our Pal concept artists who've been with us from the start. They're not fans of these accusations, but it's difficult to counter them effectively. We released an art book to show our work, but it didn't fully dispel the rumors.

IGN: Yeah, when you gave your talk you mentioned people not wanting to be super visible online because the internet is bad.

Buckley: Yeah, they don't want to be visible. The majority of our artists are female, and in Japan, it's not the norm to be public-facing. So they don't want to be on camera or have their names out there. It's upsetting for them to hear these things, but we haven't found the right way to refute it yet.

IGN: We are having this industry-wide conversation about generative AI and generative AI art, and people think that they're really good at spotting it, and you can't always. If something has seven weird fingers, it's probably pretty obvious, but less so in other cases, right?

Buckley: A lot of the arguments against us are quite hollow. It all stems from comments our CEO made years ago, and a game a few of our team members made called AI: Art Imposter, which was misinterpreted as our endorsement of generative AI. But it was meant to be a fun, ironic party game.

IGN: What's your overall take on the state of, not your community specifically, but online gaming communities in general? You're talking about getting all that harassment and stuff, is social media broadly useful for you all anymore?

Buckley: Social media is crucial for us, especially since our primary market is Asia, where social media is incredibly influential. Online gaming communities can be intense, and while I understand the emotions involved, the death threats we receive are just illogical and upsetting. We spend long hours working on the game, and these things affect us deeply.

IGN: Do you feel like social media is trending worse lately?

Buckley: I think there's a trend of people saying the opposite thing just to get a reaction, and some big accounts are notorious for this. Luckily, Palworld has mostly avoided getting caught up in political and social controversies; we mainly get feedback about game issues.

IGN: I thought it was really interesting in your talk that you said that the majority of the heat came from the Western audience. I guess I just assumed it would be equal across the board. Do you have any insight as to why that was?

Buckley: We've tried to figure this out too. In Japan, we're quite divisive, with a 50/50 split on whether people love us or hate us. We focus on overseas markets with a Japanese flair, which some Japanese gamers don't appreciate. The heat from the West might have been because we were easy targets at the time, but it's simmered down now.

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IGN: So Palworld was extremely successful, and I get the sense, perhaps in a way that was maybe unexpected for you all based on your talk. Has that changed anything about how the studio runs or what your future plans are or anything else?

Buckley: It's changed our future plans, yes. It has not changed the studio. For better or worse, we remain basically unchanged.

IGN: You said the community team did not get bigger in response. Did the studio get bigger in other ways?

Buckley: Yeah. Our server team has grown, and we're hiring more developers and artists all the time. Our CEO wants to keep the company small, but we're now at 70 people. This level of success was unexpected.

IGN: You knew it was a good game, but you didn't know that it was going to be this big.

Buckley: A million sales for an indie game is a platinum standard. Two million? Unbelievable. When you get into the tens of millions, it gets surreal. It's hard to grasp.

IGN: Do you anticipate that Palworld is something that Pocketpair is going to support for a really, really long time to come?

Buckley: Palworld's definitely going nowhere. What form it will take, I've no idea, but it's something we'll always stick with. We also want to work on other projects like Craftopia, and support our team's individual ideas while maintaining Palworld as both a game and an IP.

IGN: Yeah. You talked about that partnership that everybody misunderstood.

Buckley: Yeah. No one understands. Someone, literally yesterday, asked why I wasn't wearing a Sony jacket. We're not owned by Sony at all. That'll be forever misunderstood, I think.

IGN: Do you think you guys ever would get acquired?

Buckley: No. Our CEO would never allow it. He likes doing his own thing and being his own boss. Maybe when he's old, he might sell it for money, but in my lifetime, I probably won't see it.

IGN: I know we talked earlier about the Palworld comparisons to Pokémon, and that you actually feel it's more like ARK. ARK is not actively releasing brand new games every one to two years and has an anime and merch like the way Pokémon does, but Pokémon is gearing up. They've got a release this year. They're constantly doing stuff. Do you see that being competitive in any way or meaningfully impacting you all?

Buckley: I don't think the audiences cross over that much. The systems are completely different. We don't consider Pokémon as competition or want to be involved in that dispute. We released alongside other survival games like Nightingale and Enshrouded, and we were more focused on them. Competition in games is often manufactured for marketing. We're more in competition with timing than anything else.

IGN: Would you ever release on the Switch?

Buckley: If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld's a beefy game.

IGN: The Switch 2?

Buckley: Well, we haven't seen those specs yet, so we're like everyone else, we're waiting. If it's beefy enough, it's 100% worth considering. We did a lot of optimization for Steam Deck, which we were happy with, so we'd like to get it on more handhelds if possible.

IGN: My big takeaway from your talk is that outside of the existing Palworld community of people who have played and enjoyed the game, you feel that Palworld is extremely misunderstood.

Buckley: Yeah, 100%.

IGN: What is your singular takeaway message for people who have not played it and you think misunderstand it?

Buckley: I think a lot of people who only know of Palworld from the news and the drama probably completely misunderstand what the game even is. So I would say play it. We should do a demo at some point. A lot of people who have never played it and only know it from the drama would be surprised if they played it for one hour. We're not as seedy and scummy as people think. We hid from the public to protect our developers, but that made us look inaccessible. If we'd been more public, maybe we wouldn't have that reputation. But we have to protect our team.

IGN: That’s also just the way the internet works. Whatever other things there are to do in Palworld, what’s funny is a meme video of what is effectively distilled down to Pokemon with guns. So that's what everyone's sharing.

Buckley: I mean, I think we're a very nice little company. We've done very well for ourselves with every game we've ever made, and we'll continue, hopefully, to always do well. Last year was just such a crazy year for games. People don't appreciate how crazy it was. There were so many successful games like Black Myth: Wukong, Helldivers 2, and Palworld. Emotions were high, and people got swept away in the fun.