Story of palworld

disclaimer, this was read with google translate
if you wish to read the actual article yourself the link is here: https://note.com/pocketpair/n/n54f674cccc40

pocketpair was made during 2016 when the ceo was 27
company started with 2 people
the second person was a junior from his uni
both quit their day job
guy believes the junior is better than him
eventually became 3
3rd person would become the director of the company
they originally wanted to joint he mobile market, went through a lot of trial and error to make a prototype
showed to publishers
publishers started asking for things like ip address and development plans, didnt care about the prototype or if it was fun, what they wanted to know was if it would make them money
they got rejected by several more publishers
realization that publishers arent it
realization that the mobile market is super hard to get into and that steam exists
decides to be own publisher
to release games, even if small and not try and make a grand big game as the first project
decide to make a game inspired by clash royale and slay the spire and made overdungeon
went pretty well
made 2 more games before releasing palworld
the first work (the one which they were showing to publishers) was really hard, was remade a bunch, made over 20 prototypes, hundreds of arguments over difference in opinion of how the game should be like, and it didnt pay off
overdungeon was also difficult, first time pulishing on steam and didnt know everything, tried to do daily updates, was too much, overall believe it didnt go too well
craftopia was originally meant to be a battle royale, the direction of the game wasnt decided at all
release was full of bugs, tried to update it every day, ended up hella tired
every time a fatal bug occured, deployed and rewrote the announcement
game ended up being successful
(didnt talk about details on ai art imposter in the write-up)
then palworld, learned a ton from previous games but development was far removed from being called "proper game development"
believes its a miracle the game actually made it
apparently the director was originally going to join netease but noticed the recruitment notice on twitter and decided to contact them casually and ended up joining them
company had like 10 people by now
picking out the "miracles" he lists:
miracle 1: 20 year old convenience store worker with no experience ended up becoming their ace
mentions about the difficulty of making guns in a video game in japan with a small team cause like, fps is not that popular there in comparison to the west
couldnt really hire an english-only foreigner due to lack of english speaking team members
members also had like 0 interests in guns
finds a guy on twitter and youtube who uploads exclusively gun reload animations
was conflicted about talking to him cause tweets were in english but hashtags were in japanese
contacts him
asks if he has experience in the game industry (or any industry) and turns out, nope, he just does this as a hobby
working part time in a convinience store in Hokkaido
self-taught animator and self-taught english from playing fps games
asks for advice
gets enthusiastic reply
stuff happens
gets offered a job at the company
his parents worried cause 20 year old junior highschool graduate with no experience working in a game company and is working part time in a convenience store was told by unknown game company to come work full time in their company so move to tokyo from hokkaido
strikes a deal about making round trips to tokyo for the time being, they decided to pay for the cost of the trip
guy quits part time job and finally works full time in the company
ceo decided to try and arrange some accomodation for him by the end of the year
he was so good at the job he ended up animating most of the human animations (also explains why the gun reload animations are so good)
miracle 2: successful migration from unity to UE4, even though all existing code had to be discarded and the team has no experience in UE4
explaning all the difficulties of switching engine (unity is in C#, UE4 is in C++)
couldnt use the unity store bought assets anymore
3d models were still reusable
depending on the asset some werent available on UE4
contacted by senior developer who said he wants to make a game with them
rare opportuniy
1 major problem
no experience in unity
3 options, dont hire him, ask him to learn unity from scratch, bet everything one him and throw everything made so far away
at the time only 2 other software engineers, neither had experience as a lead
decides to go with option 3
hired 5 more software engineers, they also had no unreal engine experience and had to learn through palworld and be taught by their new lead
guy also had no experience in git, also said perforce was better for UE4, perforce too expensive, settled on using svn
Miracle 3: created over 100 monsters despite no experience in 3d animation
wayyyyyy underestimated difficulty of the task
and noticed after they realized that uh... it took them one month.... to make one pal.... and only the model itself
previously they mostly just to used store bought assets, both 3d models and animations (including for craftopia)
and also that with human characters they could reuse the same animation if the skeleton matched
problem escalated as you know... 100 monsters, all with different skeletons, all with unique shapes
humans were fine due to the reusing thing
sudden realization of making a terrible mistake since monster hunter world, for example, has around 50 monsters
and he counted at least 20 animations per monsters, with more being better for the monsters
takes one day to make one animation, as an industry average, so like, at least 2000 work days to do every animation
with 0 people in the company who had experience with animation, had he realized this earlier he would have been opposed from doing it, instead of like, 6 months in
wasnt a problem till now cause they were buying assets for animation, but cant do that with over 100 unique monsters now can you?
never used rigs before and realized that trying to animated over 100 monsters without one would be, like, impossibly difficult
approached by veteran 3d animator, veteran 3d animator joins them
file management was a mess cause of no establish naming convention
veteran was surprised they were planning to make 100+ creatures with this many people
but the veteran did it anyway
no other recruit was a veteran like this guy
miracle 4: didnt manage budget properly, cost 1 billion yen, barely made it to completion
small company, previously had no need from financial management cause it wasnt worth it
made budget allocation based on trailer responses
palworld exceeded expectations of responses
originally planned to be released in one year
wasnt originally planning on making a big game and they still had craftopia to continue developing
original team for palworld was 4 out of 10 of the employees
just wanted to release it and gauge reactions due to risk of long developments
originally planned for like 25 monsters, but after trailer response changed their minds
decided to see how it goes after a year
to the slow realization that they may have bit more than they could chew
it was not complete yet, as you can tell, at the time they could only have the player and enemy move with the basic game systems done, not like, everything else in the game
became very clear just how out of their depth they were, with the lack of budget and lack of manpower and lack of development time
also need more background artists for map
no idea how game would turn out
thinking about maximum budget, the most obvious one being as much money as it would take the company to go bankrupt, there was the option of loaning money but that was something for after the bank account hits 0
decides not to think too hard about it and goes with that as their budget
2 more years pass and 40 additional people have been hired and more outsourcing too
and they could release it in early access, not truly complete but finally releasable
practically all their money was gone
~~it was just as calculated!~~ he joked
not sure what the actual budget was but considering all their money was gone they guessed like, 1 billion yen
miracle 5: fresh graduate who was rejected during document screening became the most important position
2020 hiring artists through twitter, person applied, looked at portofolio, decided that her style wasnt suited for what they were making and rejected it
2021 hiring against through twitter, person applied again, was interested since the only reason why they rejected last time was due to style clash and decided to listen to her story
she was a new graduated who applied to nearly 100 companies but was rejected by all of them
decides to hire her, she now designs the pals
ceo thinks she's a genius, though she doesnt like being called that
said she draws the fastest he had ever seen
feedback and corrections were super fast
knows english and what was popular overseas
reason why the over 100 pals were complete
miracle 6: palworld ended up an interesting game
talks a lot about how difficult it is to make an interesting game, what makes a game interesting, etc.
mentions how the only other survival crafter with taming was ark: survival evolved  and talks about how the game is also different to ark
happy how it turned out

finally
reflects over all the things that could have gone wrong and all the things that went exactly right
how it wouldnt have been completed without the miracles or the 40 new memebers
from the guy who did the movement system, to the one who did the character designs, to the modder from craftopia who they approached to join the company, the nearly 10 people hired from twitter who found the project interesting and joined
how it wouldnt be the same without them
how if they hadnt made ai art imposter their planner would have never applied
if craftopia was never made the palworld members wouldnt have existed
if overdungeon wasnt made cratopia wouldnt have either
if that first game didnt exist overdungeon would have never been born
and lastly, general reflections over everything


as of now craftopia has received an update as of 24 January 2024 and even has a roadmap, so despite what people say, no its not abandoned.