Palworld's Communications Director Addresses AI Controversy and Misconceptions

At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) last month, we had the opportunity to sit down for an in-depth discussion with John "Bucky" Buckley, the communications director and publishing manager for Palworld developer Pocketpair. This conversation followed Buckley's insightful talk at the conference titled 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.' During his talk, Buckley candidly discussed the challenges Palworld faced, including accusations of using generative AI (which Pocketpair has debunked) and claims of stealing Pokémon models for its Pals (which the original accuser has retracted). He also touched on Nintendo's patent infringement lawsuit against the studio, describing it as a "shock" and an unforeseen issue.

While we have already covered some highlights from our conversation with Buckley in shorter articles, the depth of his insights into Pocketpair's community experiences warranted publishing the full interview. For those interested in specific topics, you can find Buckley's thoughts on the potential release of Palworld on the Nintendo Switch 2, the studio's reaction to the "Pokémon with guns" label, and the possibility of Pocketpair being acquired at the provided links.

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 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. Obviously, lawyers have to be hired, but I'm not involved in that, and really, no one else at the company is other than the top management. It's just about morale.

IGN: Okay, real conversation time. I was fascinated at the start of your talk when you talked about, sort of cheekily, the 'Pokémon 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 'Pokémon with guns.' Our goal was to create something like ARK: Survival Evolved, but with more automation and unique personality for each creature. We are huge ARK fans, and our previous game, Craftopia, drew inspiration from it. We wanted to expand on that concept, making each creature special and unique. When the first trailer came out, the 'Pokémon with guns' label emerged, and while we weren't thrilled about it, it is what it is.

IGN: You said in the talk that you didn't understand why Palworld took off the way it did, and 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 "Pokémon with guns" came into the conversation.

Buckley: Yeah, that was a big thing. It definitely fueled the fire, and it's fair enough. But what upsets us is that people believe that's what the game actually is. It's not even remotely like that when you play it. We'd rather everyone give it a chance first before labeling it.

IGN: Well, how would you have phrased it? What would have 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, 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 impacted us massively. It's by far the biggest thing against us, and it still is. You'll see comments on any Palworld post saying, "I hate this company. They use AI," which is complete nonsense. It's upsetting, especially for our artists, particularly our Pal concept artists who have been with us since day one. They take it the hardest, but it's very hard to counter these claims. We released an art book to refute this, and it made an impact, but not as much as we hoped.

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 pretty hollow. It all stems from comments our CEO made in 2020-2021 about AI, which were misinterpreted. And then, in 2022-2023, two members of Pocketpair made a game called AI: Art Imposter, which didn't go down as we thought it would. People took it as our declaration of loving generative AI, but it was quite the opposite.

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 big for us, especially since we are primarily an Asian market game. In places like Japan and China, social media is essential. Online gaming communities can be intense, and people get emotional. I used to play a lot of MMOs, so I understand getting swept away in emotions. We take a lot of criticism on the chin, but death threats are where it becomes too much. It's never that serious, and often, the threats are illogical. We work 12 hours a day on this game, and when something goes wrong, it hurts us more than the players. I wish people were more sympathetic to that.

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

Buckley: I think there's a trend where people say the opposite thing just to get a reaction. There are big accounts that always seem to be on the opposite side, and it's getting clicks and trends. Luckily, Palworld has avoided a lot of political and social controversies. We mostly get feedback about the game being broken.

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—half love us, half hate us. Not a lot of Japanese game companies make games for the overseas market first, whereas we do, with a Japanese flair. We call ourselves indie, which some Japanese gamers don't like. The heat from overseas might have been because we were easy pickings at the time, but it's simmered down a lot 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: Yes, our server team has grown, and we're hiring more developers and artists all the time. Our goal is to speed up development for our fans. The company culture hasn't changed much, though. We're now 70 people, but our CEO wants to keep it small. 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 huge success. Two million? Unbelievable. When you get into the tens of millions, it gets surreal. Steam sends us monthly reports with numbers that don't make sense, and 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 we're committed to it. We also want to work on other projects, like Craftopia, and support our developers who want to do their own things. Palworld has split into the game and the IP, and they're on different trajectories.

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

Buckley: 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.

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 off 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 totally different. We released after Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and while some fans compared them, I think it's just people stirring the pot online. We don't see it as competition. We were more focused on other survival games like Nightingale and Enshrouded. 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: We haven't seen those specs yet, so we're waiting. If it's powerful enough, it's definitely worth considering. We did a lot of optimization for Steam Deck and would 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 drama completely misunderstand what the game is. I would say play it. We should release a demo or some kind of free hour if we could figure it out. People who have never played it and only know it from the drama would be surprised if they played it for one hour. It's not anything like what they imagine it is. We're not as seedy and scummy as people seem to think. We hid from the public to protect our developers, but that made us look inaccessible, which inherently makes you look bad. If we'd been more public, maybe we wouldn't have gotten that reputation. It's a double-edged sword, 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 Pokémon with guns. So that's what everyone's sharing.

Buckley: I think we're a very nice little company. We've done well with every game we've made, and we'll continue to do well, hopefully. Last year was crazy for games, with so many successful titles like Black Myth: Wukong, Helldivers 2, and Palworld hitting numbers that are not normal. Emotions were high, and people got swept away in the fun.