One of Palworld’s ace devs was scouted at 20 years old with 0 industry experience 

The story about how PocketPair, the developer of Palworld, scouted one of their  “ace” team members has been garnering attention among users. Apparently, the young gun-motion expert was invited to work on the project via X (Twitter at the time), at which point they were only 20 years old with no prior industry experience whatsoever. 

PocketPair’s note.com entry about Palword’s development describes various fascinating episodes, struggles and “miracles” that occurred during the process. The first of these “miracles” is that an inexperienced 20-year-old ended up becoming the team’s ace. 

According to the entry, PocketPair had been having trouble finding new employees, and a particularly needed (and difficult to find) human resource was a Japanese-speaking TPF/FPS specialist who would take charge of one of Palword’s most important elements – guns. 

Having exhausted other options, PocketPair’s CEO Takuro Mizobe apparently went searching on Twitter, where he stumbled upon an account posting numerous high-quality gun reloading animation clips. The poster seemed to be highly knowledgeable about guns and animation. Upon contacting them, they found out that the person had no experience in the game industry, and was in fact a middle school graduate working a convenience store part-time job. 

Despite that, the young ace was able to give intricate and detailed critique on Palworld’s gun motions, advising ways to make more accurate bullet trajectories, life-like aim, natural gun grips and more. They had apparently been completely self-taught on the subjects of animation, tools and guns. 

After working together remotely for a while, PocketPair decided to make the young prodigy a full-time employee, helping him relocate to Tokyo. Mizobe notes that the employee ended up making invaluable contributions to Palworld’s animation, art, camera work, sound effects, Blue Prints and gun mechanics. 

This episode from Palworld’s development, documented through screenshots of correspondence, has been making the rounds on social media, with users loving the way it’s reminiscent of success stories “from back in the day.” Many describe the unemployed middle school graduate’s sudden “rise to a protagonist” as something out of a light-novel’s plot.