When you think of Palworld, the phrase "Pokemon with guns" likely springs to mind. This label became the shorthand for the game when it first burst onto the scene, fueling its popularity due to the intriguing mix of two seemingly disparate concepts. Even we at IGN used this phrase, as did many others, making it 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 moniker was never the intended takeaway. In fact, Buckley expressed that Pocketpair doesn't particularly love the label. He shared these thoughts during a talk at the Game Developers Conference, reflecting on Palworld's initial rise to fame in 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 follow-up interview, Buckley elaborated on the game's origins. He clarified that Pokemon was never part of the initial pitch for Palworld. While the development team includes fans of Pokemon, and they recognized the similarities in monster-collecting mechanics, their primary inspiration was 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.”
When asked if the "Pokemon with guns" label contributed to Palworld's success, Buckley acknowledged its impact. “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, in 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, citing a limited crossover in audiences and drawing a closer comparison to ARK. He further noted that he doesn't see Palworld competing directly with other games, including Helldivers 2, which saw substantial overlap in its player base with Palworld at launch.
“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 stated. “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 have chosen a different viral tagline for Palworld, he suggested something more reflective of the game's true nature: “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 noted that this alternative doesn't have the same catchy appeal, 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.
