Steam, lemmy and reddit are currently creaming themselves over a game which devs makes multiple really cringe “jokes” about slavery and exploitation. Read the steam page descriptions.
Those “pals” are clearly antropomorphised creatures being dogwhistle for humans. And if you read the game reviews, even the g*mers are not lost on that fact (just they love that):
Honestly, mixed feelings on this TBH. There’s a lot of appeal that I 100% get for games that allow you to do anything, games that allow you to be a crapsack person in a crapsack world, etc. If I hadn’t seen this thread I don’t think I’d have seen any problem with it at all.
I’ve enjoyed Conan: Exiles (not that I did anything with the slavery mechanics in-game as I mainly went around singleplayer cheating my ass off, but I also didn’t care), Rimworld and Tyranny have been in my library with intent to getting around to playing for a long while now, slavery gets whittled down to either numbers or actually pretty neat roleplaying/lore mechanics in games like Humankind, Endless Legend, and maybe in some Civ games, and I’ve not batted an eye at any of it. Such things can exist, there can even be a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor about it particularly when it’s all fictional and not representing real life humans and events, and the truth is slavery did and does exist, and is a large part of human history- and its inclusion can add a lot of character to a game or setting if done right (and not in a glorified, whitewashing way- that’s definitely icky)
On the other hand, I have actually cared when I saw slavery and such topics being represented incorrectly in games. At least, I didn’t like the pleasant whitewashing slavery got in one quest in AC Odyssey, for instance.
Honestly, I had the game wishlisted already and had been planning to get it- even now, hell if I know if I will. Enslaving Pals or humans IG doesn’t appeal to me, but what I’ve seen of the game (not the slavery bits, the gameplay, the Pals, the artstyle, etc) absolutely does. And what I’ve seen so far even in this thread doesn’t quite sell me on the “Pals are dogwhistle for humans” (quite a stretch IMO) and “Palworld is a dogwhistle for Frenworld” (far less of a stretch, but the devs are Japanese) bits.
There will always be plenty of g*mer chuds even, but I’m not sure I read the comments (the English ones anyways, I don’t understand Polish) as chuds, or particularly bad or glorifying the subject rather than that similar blend of humor which honestly seems pretty tame and acceptable given the context (fictional Pokemon, and if you do so and like the game advertises, you’re playing a cartoonishly evil shitlord- but even that doesn’t mean either being a shitlord, condoning shitlordism, or anything other than making a light joke of it in a fictional, non-human context).
Same here. I played a lot of Pokémon as a teen and for what I have seen there is an undeniable tie between the concept of Pals and the one of Pokémon, and most of what this game seems to offer is a version where all things that are implicit possibilities in the Pokémon world become an explicit reality - Because, who hasn’t thought about what would happen if you threw a pokéball to another trainer? Or about where does their meat come from? Or about why they seem to use Pokémons as manual labor, and if they pay them at all? The concept of throwing a 10yo out of their houses with an electric rat to travel the world competing in animal fights is a very long-lived meme too.
The message of this parody-game seems to be clear: all those hidden, shady bits in Pokémon are now real, and you are as free to be as much of a shithead as you wish with that. Again, not so strange, since the appeal for fictional cruelty has been a thing since you could remove stairs from pools in The Sims and even before.
Agreed, and the possibility of being a shithead adds to the meme factor, but not quite in a way that I feel would be considered problematic or actually glorifying the issue.
If I get the game I’m not likely to abuse my Pals at all, rather the opposite. I’m not generally the kind to engage in wanton or unprovoked cruelty (though I’ll admit in-game- vidya, DnD, etc I do tend to be very… “justice oriented” and entirely willing to indulge in that, which is pretty much just how I tend to be as a person anyways).
Tyranny is great, loved the conversations about law in it.
Interesting; I hadn’t been aware it delved into that. While I’d not call myself a law nerd it does get me more interested yet. Maybe I’ll try it later today- I think I already have it installed anyways.