Pocketpair Talks Palworld – Expansions, Spinoffs and the Future
Possibly one of the biggest surprises of 2024 is Pocketpair’s Palworld. Originally thought of as just a Pokémon clone, the game has proven to be a lot more than that.
While most games lose steam after a year or two, Palworld shot back into the spotlight with the launch of its 1.0 state earlier this year.
With that in mind, we were able to talk to the studio about the hit game, their thoughts on expansions, and what to expect from update 1.1 and more.
Answering the questions is Pocketpair’s John “Bucky” Buckley, the studio’s Head of Publishing and Communications
Pocketpair on Building on Palworld’s 1.0 Release
MP1st: The release of Version 1.0 was met with tremendous success – so much so that the game’s player base started climbing back up again. Where else can Pocketpair take this?
Bucky: We’re so proud of how far Palworld has come, and version 1.0 being a success was a very special moment for us.
There are still many things we want to explore, both within the game itself and across the wider Palworld IP. At the same time, we don’t want to expand simply for the sake of making things bigger. Palworld is already a very large game, so we want to make sure if we do add new content to it then it will feel meaningful.
What matters most to us is continuing to create things that players find fun, surprising, and memorable. As long as we can keep doing that, we believe there is still a lot of room for Palworld to grow.
MP1st: Palworld doesn’t really follow the traditional live-service model of seasonal content drops. Is that something the studio is looking to do at some point? Or does the studio prefer larger, more premium (read: paid) content drops/DLC?
Bucky: We don’t think Palworld needs to follow a traditional live-service model simply because that approach works for other games. In the first place, we don’t even consider Palworld a “live service” game.
Rather than committing ourselves to a fixed seasonal cadence or a particular monetization model, we prefer to first think about what we want to create, and then choose the format that makes the most sense for that content.
Sometimes that may mean smaller updates, and sometimes it may mean something much larger. We want the content itself to determine the format, rather than the other way around.
MP1st: With Sony’s announcement that it plans to go all-digital in the future, has that affected Pocketpair’s output or what the studio plans to release on PlayStation platforms?
Bucky: From our perspective, our focus is simply on making Palworld available to as many players as we reasonably can, and providing the best experience on the platforms we support. We haven’t released any physical versions of our games up to now, so it’s a bit difficult for us to comment on the current state of physical distribution for games.
MP1st: Does Pocketpair believe Palworld’s Version 1.0 delivers the complete experience players expected or what the devs had in mind, or do you consider it the foundation for a much larger game?
Bucky: Palworld 1.0 represents the experience we wanted to deliver when we set out to bring the game from Early Access to full release.
That said, “complete” doesn’t have to mean “finished forever.”
Palworld is the kind of game where new ideas naturally lead to new possibilities, so while we’re proud of what Version 1.0 represents, we also see plenty of opportunities to continue building on it.
On Palworld’s Endgame and Balancing Future Pals
MP1st: What are the team’s plans for Palworld’s endgame? Are there plans to have an actual ending for it?
Bucky: One of the things that we think makes Palworld fun is that there are many ways to play.
Some players want clear progression and difficult endgame challenges, while others enjoy building, finding new Pals, exploring, or simply spending time in the world.
We definitely want to continue giving long-term players meaningful goals and challenges, but at the same time, we don’t want to undermine the freedom that sits at the heart of Palworld.
Balancing this is important for us and for the future of Palworld as both a game and an IP!
MP1st: How will you keep the Pal roster fresh and balanced as more and more are added?
Bucky: We try not to think of new Pals as simply adding another number to the roster.
Rather than saying, “We need to release 100 new Pals with the next update,” we try to add Pals in a meaningful way.
Ideally, every Pal should have something that gives players a reason to remember it, whether that is its design, abilities, work suitability, combat role, personality, or sometimes just something strange or funny about it.
Of course, balance becomes more complicated as the roster grows, so we continue to look at player data and feedback every time we release new Pals.
MP1st: How will the ongoing legal dispute affect Palworld’s future?
Bucky: As this is still an ongoing legal matter, we’re not able to comment on the proceedings or speculate about its outcome.
Our development team remains focused on developing and supporting Palworld.
Palworld’s Update 1.1, Spinoffs and the Future
MP1st: When will players hear more about Update 1.1, and can you reveal what highly requested feature it will introduce?
Bucky: An answer that no one wants, but everyone expects… you’ll have to wait just a little longer!
While 1.1 isn’t a massive update, we do think players will be pretty happy with it! That said, we’re not quite ready to start teasing it just yet!
MP1st: Will future Palworld content be free or paid? Not just game updates, but actual content?
Bucky: To be honest, we don’t really think about future content in terms of whether we should monetize it or not.
So far, we’ve been happy to continue supporting Palworld through free updates, and we haven’t felt the need to approach things differently.
Of course, we wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility of something larger, like an expansion, in the distant future, but we have no specific plans to announce and it’s not something we’re actively working towards right now.
MP1st: We know multiple spinoffs are coming, with Palfarm being one of them. It seems the studio is pressing hard on the accelerator to expand the IP’s footprint. That makes sense given the success, but the online gaming landscape has been leaning toward building more of a metaverse-type experience, with Fortnite being the biggest example.
Why not build Palworld itself out with these experiences? What led to the decision to move toward standalone spinoffs instead of turning the main game into an all-in-one metaverse?
Bucky: Well… I can certainly understand why some people might expect us to take Palworld in that direction, but for us… we just want to make fun games in our own way.
I know it sounds a bit cliche, but while we obviously want our games to be successful, maximizing revenue as quickly as possible isn’t what drives our creative decisions.
When it comes to Palworld, we feel that some ideas would be better served as standalone games, where we can fully design the gameplay systems, pacing, and overall experience around that specific concept.
Palfarm is a good example. Rather than trying to fit that experience into Palworld as just one mode, we believe making it a standalone title gives it more room to develop its own identity and become something special in its own right.
We don’t see this as one approach being better than the other. Different games and IPs will naturally benefit from different strategies.
For Palworld, this is simply the direction we felt made the most sense.
The main Palworld game remains extremely important to us, and these spinoffs are not intended to replace it. We see them as new ways for players to enjoy the world and characters of Palworld from different perspectives.
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