Palworld Developers Reject 'Pokemon With Guns' Label

When you think of Palworld, the phrase "Pokemon with guns" might immediately come to mind. This shorthand became popular when the game first gained traction, likely boosting its visibility due to the intriguing mix of two seemingly disparate concepts. Even we at IGN have used this phrase, much like everyone else, as it was a convenient way to quickly convey the game's essence to newcomers.

However, according to Pocketpair's communications director and publishing manager, John 'Bucky' Buckley, this label was never the intended takeaway. In fact, Buckley expressed that Pocketpair doesn't particularly love the moniker. He shared these sentiments during a talk at the Game Developers Conference, reflecting on Palworld's rise to fame since its reveal in June 2021.

"We revealed the game to the world in June of 2021, so quite a few years ago. We posted a trailer at what's called Indie Live Expo, which is an indie gaming event in Japan. We showed this off to the Japanese audience initially, and we had a really, really good reception. But very quickly, Western media got eyes on this little game, and we were very quickly branded, as early as 2021, as a 'certain franchise' plus guns. This would be something that has stuck with us to this very day, despite our best efforts to shake that off."

In a subsequent interview, Buckley elaborated that Pokemon was never part of the game's initial pitch. While the development team includes fans of Pokemon, and they recognized the similarities in monster collecting, their goal was to create something more akin to ARK: Survival Evolved.

"A lot of us are huge ARK people, and our previous game, Craftopia, kind of has some stuff in it that we really loved from ARK and some ideas from ARK," Buckley explained. "So we wanted to just take that and make it bigger. And one of the things about ARK, is that everything's about the dinosaurs. Some are cute, some are cool. But we wanted to give them more personality, more abilities, more uniqueness. So that was the pitch. The pitch was, let's make something like ARK, but a lot heavier on the automation and each creature's like its own very special thing. And then we show that first trailer, and then this title kind of came out. And no, we weren't super happy about it, but it is what it is."

Buckley acknowledged that the "Pokemon with guns" label did play a significant role in Palworld's success. "Yeah, I mean, that was big," he said. "That was definitely a big thing. Dave [Oshry] from New Blood [Interactive, publisher of Dusk, Fallen Aces, and others] messaged us because he trademarked the website, 'Pokemonwithguns.com' and stuff. All this kind of stuff happened, and I'm sure that fueled that fire, which is fair enough.

"But still today, 2025, if people want to say ['Pokemon with guns'], that's fine. But the thing that upsets us, I guess, a little bit, is the people who firmly believe that's what the game actually is. But it's not even remotely like that to play the game. So if you want to say that after playing, that's fine, but we'd rather everyone give it a bit of a chance first."

Buckley also believes that Pokemon isn't a significant competitor to Palworld, pointing out that the audience crossover isn't substantial. He considers ARK a more fitting comparison and doesn't see Palworld as competing directly with any specific game, including Helldivers 2, which many Palworld players also purchased.

"I've gotten in trouble for ranting about the 'console wars' before, but I think the competition in games is kind of manufactured for the sake of it," Buckley remarked. "Almost like a meta-marketing kind of strategy. I don't really think there is competition in games. I mean, there's so many games right now. How can you be in competition with one or two? It doesn't really make sense anymore. We're just always in competition with the timing [of releases] more than anything, I think."

If Buckley could choose a different tagline to go viral, he suggested, "I probably would've called it, 'Palworld: It's Kind of Like ARK if ARK Met Factorio and Happy Tree Friends' or something like that. That’s how I might’ve said it."

I pointed out that this alternative doesn't quite have the same catchy ring to it, and Buckley agreed.

Buckley and I also spoke about the possibility of Palworld coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, whether Pocketpair would ever be acquired, and much more in our interview. You can read the full discussion right here.