This past weekend, Palworld exploded onto the scene and immediately caught the attention of many gamers, myself included. Millions of people have played it within the first week of launch, and its rise in popularity is, frankly, astonishing.
As a primarily console-based gamer, I’m not really aware of what happens in the PC space, but I remember hearing about the concept of Palworld years ago. Pitched as “Pokemon with guns,” the premise of the game was quickly conveyed and easily understood. At first, the concept sounds like parody. It sounds like the kind of joke that a show like Family Guy would make about some ridiculously violent game marketed towards children. I thought the concept was pretty underwhelming and that it would quickly wear out its welcome. But now that Palworld is available and people are diving into it, my opinion about the game’s concept has shifted. Yes, the concept is funny, but what I most respect is how Palworld finds the perfect balance between stupidity and parody.
Comedy is extremely difficult to nail down. Because humor is so subjective, something that one person finds funny may be completely impregnable to others. To use a modern example, I personally thought that Barbie was one of the best comedies last year, but there’s no way in hell my dad (who gets laughs out of movies like Cocaine Bear) would find it amusing. So, creating a game with an inherently comedic premise is risky. If someone doesn’t find the joke funny, they won’t engage with it. If they do, great — but for how long? Comedy is finite, and the more you’re exposed to the same joke, the more it loses its impact and punch.
Even though it hasn’t even been a week, what I find consistently entertaining about Palworld is how committed it is to the gag. Despite not really being about shooting these knock-off Pokemon and being more of a crafting sim, it’s funny just watching your Pals do things that would never happen in a Pokemon game. Making them mine, putting them to work in factories, and making them breed parodies stuff we’ve seen or heard about in Pokemon but never experienced. People were always curious about how the world of Pokemon functioned if its society centered around the exploitation of these critters, and now you can learn what it’s like first-hand! There’s just something inherently silly about taking a cute and cuddly sheep and putting it to work at a literal plantation.
Of course, the stupidity is there in spades too. There’s something immediately eye catching about a cartoon character grabbing a realistic gun to shoot at a cuddly creature or watching these little Pals line up to defend their base with semi-automatic rifles. I admit, it’s a visual gag that’s been done before. I still have fond memories of the memes surrounding Isabelle and the Doom Slayer trading places that basically repeated the exact same joke, but it’s a visceral joke that hits. I will never not find the juxtaposition of cute and cuddly creatures and potential violence to not be at least worth a chuckle.
But even then, a lot of the real humor in Palworld centers on what the game allows players to do and how they can exploit the mechanics. While I was at a party this past weekend, I got into a conversation with someone who had already put well over a dozen hours into the game. I was asking him about his thoughts on the game, and he said that he was enjoying all of the ridiculous things it allows him to do. So, for the next couple of minutes, he talked about the human slave trade he established in the game.
Now of course, I was pretty taken aback that this was a thing you could do in the game. I didn’t really understand why the game was controversial until I heard him talk about how he was able to capture several NPCs and sell them off for minor benefits. It’s shocking, to say the least, and totally understandable why some people would find that in poor taste.
I, however, do not.
It’s a form of shock humor. Something as out there as capturing and enslaving NPCs in a game where you’re supposed to capture cute and cuddly creatures, again, can border on bad humor. However, as a parody of anything and everything Pokemon, it works. It’s stupid, but it makes sense given the rules of the world. Polarizing humor generates discussions and conversations about the subject, whether it be in films like Blazing Saddles or games like Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and those examples are heralded as some of the best comedies of their time.
I’m not saying that Palworld will go down as a landmark example of comedy in video games, but it’s at least a solid example of a game that’s inherently funny without actually being funny. The concept and design decisions lend themselves a lot to humor and, when compared to Pokemon, the jokes are even funnier. They’re not laugh out loud jokes, but they’re enough to generate fond, fun memories and experiences to share with others. So, when I see people say that the jokes and humor of Palworld begins and ends with “Pokemon with guns,” I have to disagree strongly. Its polarizing humor definitely isn’t for everyone, but its creative blend of ideas has clearly found a place within the gaming community, for better or worse. Now let’s see how long it lasts.
