Not that long ago I touched based on what was happening to Palworld in the face of Nintendo lawsuit and I was very raw with my emotions then. Largely of being upset at the big N for what they were doing to Palworld as a developer and the ramifications it could have on a larger scale. Now I understand that within Japan itself there's a lot more Nintendo Loyalists who get tilted at the mere thought of any Nintendo product being revigorated and iterated upon outside the confines of the Nintendo sweat shop- but personally I'm all for opening up the creativity well to see what spills forth. Plus you're kidding yourself if you think a developer who is making pure copycat content has any chance of standing out in a market as crowded as ours. If Palworld took the stage it was because something they did earned the limelight, or rather something Nintendo didn't do- if taking advantage of another's laziness counts as moral failing- then perhaps the society you have in your mind is incompatible to the ideals of a meritocracy- which artforms at least pretend to be.
But since then we're had a lot of pundits and third part observers throw their opinions and analysis into the pot regarding the truth behind this situation and with any new voice it just gets worse to bear. First off we need to differentiate the whole 'patent breech' thing which has nothing to do with the designs of the creatures resembling Pokemon. Whilst that is the most compelling argument from a Layman's perspective it might be a harder sell in a court of law and Nintendo aren't about proving themselves in the light of day- they're about other methods that, should speculation be true, whiffs of hints of desperation- to be honest. You see these 'patents' might not even refer to anything as specific as design documents but perhaps individual miniscule snippets of processes or even software practices that Nintendo sought ownership of specifically to go after Palworld.
What made Palworld such a success was the fact that it took the idea of what Pokemon was and gave it the ambition that the franchise has seemed to reluctant to seize hold of all these years. Pokemon ain't no wide-eyed new comer- and still it's difficult to see any vast leap forward in the fundamentals of it's game design that match what everyone else in the industry is doing. Even other yearly or bi-yearly release schedule games, such as 'Like a Dragon', manage to cram in more experimentation and iteration than your average Pokemon squeezes out entry after entry- and Palworld expose that with a quirky, violent, twist of their own to bring to the formula. One might think that a Studio as comparatively large as Nintendo would take such a know on the chin- but speculation assumes not.
Crafting hyper specific legalise patents in order to smite a potential rival so that you personally don't have to feel the pressure to improve your own craft is perhaps the single most anti-consumer measure possible by Nintendo- and if you consume that news and remain in Nintendo's camp, regardless on your thoughts regarding Pocket Pair's creative morality then you are an enemy to this industry. Because that is how Nintendo are framing themselves, to join them is to join ranks of the 'enemy'. And what do I mean by 'enemy'? I'm talking about being a champion of regression, of formulaic stagnation, of meandering ambition of anything anathema to art. That is the world that Nintendo are playing towards.
And trust me when I say, this is not the precedent you want to be setting as a leader of this industry. There's always a strange balance between the cooperate and the artistic and it's because the forces are like oil and water- they don't neatly mix with one another. In order for us to function as a collective there has to be a conduct we all follow, morals we uphold, behaviour we condemn and lies we do not cross. Nintendo might have fouled all of those stipulations with this move. Introduce legalese as a cudgel to swat down competition and suddenly we've lost the hope of this industry. The hope to build upwards and create something of substance is already naturally precarious- Nintendo are threatening to straight knock it over.
Let's pan this our, to a natural conclusion- shall we? So know we can lock down patents on the basic systems of how games are made so that if anyone so much as sneezes in a manner somewhat similar to a game that already exists- they can be shut down? Okay then- Super Mario RPG uses turn based gameplay- Final Fantasy did it before them. Do you see how easy it is to do this? So many of the games we love borrow ideas, use similar game engines that run the same software, build upon what was to make something new. The very idea of art is from absorbing what is around us, developing it through the lens of our experiences and creating something knew. Or does Nintendo really want to go to court over the fact that 'Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom' plagiarised it's vehicle building tools from Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts? Is that the kind of lawsuit they want to see in this world?
And I will be the first to say that Palworld is absolutely not the hill we should be dying on for this! They did absolutely borrow the visual designs of several Pokemon for their cast and if you go after them anything it should be that! But Nintendo are such contemptable little worms that they don't want to enter a good faith lawsuit with the chance of failure when they can just legally bushwhack them with a 100% chance for success. Once again the Family Friendly, positive values company are the harbingers of the worst practices you've ever seen in any market! Just like Disney before them! Don't you just love being part of this world?
As much as it seems utterly impossible given the fact that Nintendo has literally never lost a case that they've initiated- it really is in the best interests of this entire industry that Nintendo lose this case. Say whatever you will about Palworld, again I'm not their biggest defender by any stretch of imagination, but what Nintendo are doing seems entirely lacking in positive influence to this industry. If you love this hobby as much as I do- until Nintendo can prove themselves to be acting entirely in good faith you just cannot consider them righteous in this- regardless of how good their games remain. I know it's so much easy to get angry at a developer who are provably bad like Konami and Ubisoft- but the buck cannot falter at talent or else we're all screwed.
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