I'm a (non-practicing) lawyer, and I'd really like to see on what grounds Nintendo is suing Pocketpair before making judgments on how slimy this is, or the merits of Nintendo's case.
My general sentiment with Nintendo's legal team is that the devil tends to be in the details. Even if they're suing Pocketpair on the basis of some sort of game mechanic, I'm 90% certain that they wouldn't have gone after Palworld if the character designs weren't so blatantly copped from Pokemon designs. The monster collecting genre has existed for decades and I'm not aware of any sort of lawsuits Nintendo has filed against Digimon, Monster Rancher, Nexomon, SMT, etc.
@burninmylight I mean, neither one of us knows each other. I'm sure your life experience informs why its easier for you to feel empathy for some groups of people and not others. I definitely know that's the case with me. Like I said in my initial post, there's plenty of situations where I've been apprehensive to play a game or support a studio because of something that was said that hits close to home. However, I do think there's a meaningful distinction between "I'm not sure I want to support this guy" and publicly posting "it's obvious that this guy is a racist, sexist, ableist POS" based on a series of 6-year-old screengrabs that the guy has tried to distance himself from. One is an understandable personal stance, the other is a broad indictment on a person's character. I don't think you're a bad person or morally wrong for not wanting to buy Pizza Tower; I'm just uncomfortable with calling out a person I know very little about based on screengrabs curated by someone who had to go a ways back to find anything.
Regarding Tales of Kenzera - I don't remember hearing about that instance specifically (I had to look up that game to remember what it was, specifically), but sure, if you want me to hand over the keys to my other social media profiles, I could provide you with examples of me calling out harassment and other bad behavior. I literally created this account yesterday to comment on this thread specifically because it seemed like otherwise-reasonable people were being extremely quick to judge and I wanted there to be a counterpoint in the comments that went beyond "lol get rekt sjw." I generally don't feel the urge to comment on bad-faith trolls and hateful idiots in comment sections because I don't see the point. They get off on the attention, and anybody who can't see that their rhetoric is empty and hateful isn't going to be persuaded by anything I have to say.
I'm not sure what status quo that personally benefits me that you're referring to. I'm not trying to prop up the patriarchy or promote white supremacy, and I really feel like you're reading these comments like I'm coming from somewhere that I'm not.
@burninmylight To be clear, I'm really only commenting on this specific instance. There are plenty of situations where a creator has done something more egregious or with a more obvious level of scienter that would make me want to stay away from a game. I've always liked Jeremy Soule's compositions, but I would stay away from any future game he's involved in. Any sort of knee-jerk dismissal of all criticism of a creator as "SJW behavior" is reductive and lame.
I understand that as a society, we've set a legal and cultural standard that if you're 18, you're an adult, but there are a lot of people in their 20s who do unimaginably stupid things before they mature into well-adjusted people. The human brain doesn't stop developing until we hit our mid-to-late 20s. A lot of us spend our pre-adult years in pretty sheltered circumstances that don't really allow us to cultivate a sense of understanding and empathy for others. I've lived through my 20s and I can vouch that, at least for me, there's a big difference between 21 and 29.
As for your suggestion that I'm defending this guy because I "see a bit of myself in him"...I mean, yeah? Thankfully I'm old enough that there isn't a hard copy of every stupid thing I said when I was hanging out with my friends in college, but I know I probably said some edgelord stuff that I'm not aligned with anymore. I'd like to think that it mostly came from a place of ignorance and I've matured past that, and I generally try to give others the benefit of the doubt that they're capable of doing the same.
@burninmylight I don't think that creators should be fully exempt from consequences for actions or words from their personal life, but I think everybody's level of what they will or won't tolerate varies.
I don't like what McPig said in those Discord screenshots and would certainly call a friend out if they said something like that to me, but these are 6-year old comments from a dude in his 20s, in a forum where there was probably an expectation to be "funny" and provocative. Personally, I grew up quite a bit over that course of my life and I'd like to extend the same benefit of the doubt to others. I don't really see how I'm making the world a worse place by buying this game - there's no evidence that my money's going to get funneled into regressive social causes or anything like that. Inversely, I don't really see how I'm advancing the cause of social justice or equity by declining to play this game.
Trust me, there are a lot of games I don't play for reasons that are convoluted and probably only make sense to me. I'm never going to judge somebody for not wanting to play a game for personal reasons unrelated to the game. But some of this rhetoric is overheated and (IMO) doesn't really fit the crime here.
Comments 5
Re: Nintendo And Pokémon File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer Pocketpair
@Zeldawakening I doubt Nintendo actually wants this to go to court - they're probably angling for a settlement.
Re: Nintendo And Pokémon File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer Pocketpair
I'm a (non-practicing) lawyer, and I'd really like to see on what grounds Nintendo is suing Pocketpair before making judgments on how slimy this is, or the merits of Nintendo's case.
My general sentiment with Nintendo's legal team is that the devil tends to be in the details. Even if they're suing Pocketpair on the basis of some sort of game mechanic, I'm 90% certain that they wouldn't have gone after Palworld if the character designs weren't so blatantly copped from Pokemon designs. The monster collecting genre has existed for decades and I'm not aware of any sort of lawsuits Nintendo has filed against Digimon, Monster Rancher, Nexomon, SMT, etc.
Re: Pizza Tower Finally Dashes Onto Switch Today
@burninmylight I mean, neither one of us knows each other. I'm sure your life experience informs why its easier for you to feel empathy for some groups of people and not others. I definitely know that's the case with me. Like I said in my initial post, there's plenty of situations where I've been apprehensive to play a game or support a studio because of something that was said that hits close to home. However, I do think there's a meaningful distinction between "I'm not sure I want to support this guy" and publicly posting "it's obvious that this guy is a racist, sexist, ableist POS" based on a series of 6-year-old screengrabs that the guy has tried to distance himself from. One is an understandable personal stance, the other is a broad indictment on a person's character. I don't think you're a bad person or morally wrong for not wanting to buy Pizza Tower; I'm just uncomfortable with calling out a person I know very little about based on screengrabs curated by someone who had to go a ways back to find anything.
Regarding Tales of Kenzera - I don't remember hearing about that instance specifically (I had to look up that game to remember what it was, specifically), but sure, if you want me to hand over the keys to my other social media profiles, I could provide you with examples of me calling out harassment and other bad behavior. I literally created this account yesterday to comment on this thread specifically because it seemed like otherwise-reasonable people were being extremely quick to judge and I wanted there to be a counterpoint in the comments that went beyond "lol get rekt sjw." I generally don't feel the urge to comment on bad-faith trolls and hateful idiots in comment sections because I don't see the point. They get off on the attention, and anybody who can't see that their rhetoric is empty and hateful isn't going to be persuaded by anything I have to say.
I'm not sure what status quo that personally benefits me that you're referring to. I'm not trying to prop up the patriarchy or promote white supremacy, and I really feel like you're reading these comments like I'm coming from somewhere that I'm not.
Re: Pizza Tower Finally Dashes Onto Switch Today
@burninmylight To be clear, I'm really only commenting on this specific instance. There are plenty of situations where a creator has done something more egregious or with a more obvious level of scienter that would make me want to stay away from a game. I've always liked Jeremy Soule's compositions, but I would stay away from any future game he's involved in. Any sort of knee-jerk dismissal of all criticism of a creator as "SJW behavior" is reductive and lame.
I understand that as a society, we've set a legal and cultural standard that if you're 18, you're an adult, but there are a lot of people in their 20s who do unimaginably stupid things before they mature into well-adjusted people. The human brain doesn't stop developing until we hit our mid-to-late 20s. A lot of us spend our pre-adult years in pretty sheltered circumstances that don't really allow us to cultivate a sense of understanding and empathy for others. I've lived through my 20s and I can vouch that, at least for me, there's a big difference between 21 and 29.
As for your suggestion that I'm defending this guy because I "see a bit of myself in him"...I mean, yeah? Thankfully I'm old enough that there isn't a hard copy of every stupid thing I said when I was hanging out with my friends in college, but I know I probably said some edgelord stuff that I'm not aligned with anymore. I'd like to think that it mostly came from a place of ignorance and I've matured past that, and I generally try to give others the benefit of the doubt that they're capable of doing the same.
Re: Pizza Tower Finally Dashes Onto Switch Today
@burninmylight I don't think that creators should be fully exempt from consequences for actions or words from their personal life, but I think everybody's level of what they will or won't tolerate varies.
I don't like what McPig said in those Discord screenshots and would certainly call a friend out if they said something like that to me, but these are 6-year old comments from a dude in his 20s, in a forum where there was probably an expectation to be "funny" and provocative. Personally, I grew up quite a bit over that course of my life and I'd like to extend the same benefit of the doubt to others. I don't really see how I'm making the world a worse place by buying this game - there's no evidence that my money's going to get funneled into regressive social causes or anything like that. Inversely, I don't really see how I'm advancing the cause of social justice or equity by declining to play this game.
Trust me, there are a lot of games I don't play for reasons that are convoluted and probably only make sense to me. I'm never going to judge somebody for not wanting to play a game for personal reasons unrelated to the game. But some of this rhetoric is overheated and (IMO) doesn't really fit the crime here.