I had never heard of Vlambeer or Gamenauts before yesterday. I had never heard of Radical Fishing or Ninja Fishing either. Yet in a single day, both companies and both games came crashing through my browser. Why?
To make a long story short, Vlambeer made a simple little flash game called Radical Fishing. They have a following of supportive and caring fans. They released this and made some money off of it.They decided they wanted to port the game to the iPhone but with improved graphics and gameplay. However they needed money now and made a couple more games browser.
While all this happened, Another game company, Gamenauts, saw a fun game that did not have an iPhone equivalent and decided to bring a game to that market that had those mechanics. This caused an uproar among fans of Vlambeer and their games.
That is the story in a nutshell.
What makes this story interesting is the reaction from gamers and game developers. First we have the reaction from Vlambeer themselves:
We don’t want to discuss cloning and patents, because we think the only thing that matters is that we feel that what Gamenauts did is morally wrong. The worst thing is reading positive reviews complimenting the super original design of the fishing gameplay – by people who have no clue that we even exist.
What we want to do is thank everyone for speaking up without us having to ask for it.
We also have a more in depth thought from one of their partners:
Specifically the “prematurely” part of this announcement. Basically we’re announcing this news before we’re ready to because a quasi-clone of Radical Fishing has been announced for iOS. It’s called Ninja Fishing and it’s a game that appears to play exactly like Radical Fishing but includes a ninja with a sword instead of a fisherman with a gun. When we saw the footage, our hearts sank because we knew we wouldn’t get it done in time to be first-to-market. Now I don’t want to get into the larger debate of patents and all that nonsense. Game design is game design and should influence others and be built upon. I understand that everything is a remix of everything that has come before it and there is no such thing as a purely original idea if you examine it deeply enough.
So my point is not that Gamenauts is doing something illegal or that original creators should be able to lock down design with patents or other nonsense, my point is about common decency and the little guy getting fucked over by a studio that is both creatively and morally bankrupt. This kind of thing is so common today that flash developers, essentially doing R&D for anyone that cares to watch, expect this kind of excrement to rain down on them if they wait too long, furthering the anxiety of making games on your own without a safety net.
So, while both blog posts express disdain for Gamenauts' move, neither are calling for anything bad to happen to them. Nor are they calling for increased protection from law. However, the internet community does not feel the same way.
Here on Gamasutra we have two blog posts specifically talking about this event.
In the first we have Evan Jones talking about how the move was completely unethical. This I can't understand. The entirety of game design's history has been chock full of wholesale copying of mechanics with more often than not only minor changes. To claim that Gamenauts acted unethically is to claim that Square, Blizzard, EA, Activision, Bungie, Sony and countless other big name and smaller name companies acted unethically when they copied game mechanics into their own games and found success.
What Gamenauts did was find a game they liked that was only available on the browser. They saw there was no similar game on the iPhone and no indication that that game was coming to the iPhone. So they used their considerable resources (as determined by a browse through their site) and made it happen. They saw an untapped market and tapped it. That is not unethical. That is good business.
The next article is by Andy Schatz and he calls for greater copyright protection of game mechanics.
I can't back this at all. Copyright is meant to protect the expression of ideas and not the idea itself. We cannot control the idea of "fishing by dragging as many fish as possible, throwing them in the air and shooting them." However, we can own a full game called Radical Fishing that uses that idea.
Can you imagine a world where JRR Tolkien controls the fantasy adventure or where animated animals were owned by Disney or Warner Brothers? I would not want to live in that world.
In a world where game mechanics could be copyrighted, the games industry would have completely stagnated shortly after it started. Our entire industry has thrived on the fact that game mechanics are not covered by copyright.
This is the state of the game industry. There is no reason why it should change. Did a company get beat to a market by a similar game? Yes, but that happens everyday in this industry.
We don't need added protection through copyright or patents. We just need to suck it up and do what we do best and make games.
| Alexei Andreev |
16 Aug 2011 at 5:30 pm PST
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Imagine I wrote a short story and showed it to you. You really liked it, so you decided to submit it into a contest. And you won! Big! The thing is, you put your name on it, not mine. Is that moral/fair/right/legal? I want to say: neither of those.
I think the only disagreement I have with you is what constitutes "too much copying". You seem to think there is no such thing. Personally, I'm not sure when the line is, and wherever it is, it's probably pretty blurry, but I definitely think Ninja Fishing copied too much (or didn't change enough, however you want to look at it). If you add a touch of self-deprecating humor to that game, it would be easily classified as parody (everyone would recognize it as such). Except, the company still makes money off it. Oh, and when it comes to creating stronger copyright protection, I am completely on the same side as you. That would just be shooting ourselves in the foot. I would rather have my game stolen, than have to worry if I can borrow/clone this or that mechanic. |
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| Gerald Belman |
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"Cloning" is not new to game developement. If you are going to make your game extremely simple, you better be ready for it. If you don't release your extremely simple game on multiple platforms within a reasonable amount of time from each other, you are just asking for it.
It's pretty hard to make your game original when you are making games this simple. It's kind of like the three chord riff in music. Nobody has any claim to the G-D-C chord progression. The more complex you make your games and game art. The more you will be protected by copyright/patent law. So don't make shallow games if your worried about being copied. |
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| raigan burns |
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I think you're confusing "legal" and "ethical". How is copying someone else's work ethical? I don't dispute that it's legal, but it's at the very least in poor taste and morally questionable.
Vlambeer sunk R&D time into developing a game concept. Someone else has stolen that R&D effort and used it to bootstrap their own game. That's completely legal, but also completely lame. Just because there wasn't a product in a certain market doesn't make it right to copy someone else's product. I agree that this sort of thing happens all the time, but MUCH less directly -- i.e Killzone and Resistance vs. Halo. Imagine if someone released a PS3 game called Ring that completely copied the aesthetics, gameplay, character types and setting of Halo. Do you really believe Microsoft would take no legal action? The only reason that's not happening here is that the target is too small and defenseless to pose a threat. What's happened is more analogous to a cover version of a song -- they haven't lifted just a chord progression, they've lifted the song structure and melodies (mechanics) as well as the lyrics (setting) and recorded their own version of that. Sadly this is perfectly legal because *unlike* music, there are no IP laws concerning such "covering" of a game. But that doesn't make it any less despicable or socially acceptable. Being driven solely by profit is an inherently anti-social and inhuman -- perhaps sub-human -- mode of behaviour. It's insectile and disgusting. |
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| Giordano Ferreira |
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Previously, I didn't play any of the games.
In my opinion, the ego is the biggest problem in these cases. The people think that they own the ideas they had, but as soon as the ideas leave the mind and are spoken or written somewhere, they belong to everyone. What's wrong if another person liked one game and had an idea to improve the concept of that game, Or want to leave the game to another audience? If the clone is better than the original, players will thank! Nothing and no one prevents the developers of the original concept to improve their idea and launch on the same market of the clone. |
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| Andy Schatz |
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I agree that game mechanics should not be patented. But I don't see why you feel that game mechanics are any less of a creative expression than art or sound or music. I believe they are, and as such should be protected in a similar way to art, sound and music.
That said, my article doesn't call for copying to be impossible at all, I'm just calling for SOME protection being offered in the form of royalties to the original creators if someone wants to rip off an entire game, wholesale. I'm also calling for some protection so that the creator is allowed to be the first to commercially profit from the game. In the case of NF/RF, Radical Fishing was already paid for and publicly available, so their game design was, and should be, fair game for cloners. |
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| raigan burns |
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>In the Radical vs Ninja fishing, only the game play mechanics were copied. Very different.
I completely disagree. More than just the gameplay was copied: the SETTING (in Japan it's called "scenario") of the game was also directly copied, for no reason other than laziness or ineptitude. Seriously: you could use that same gameplay in so many different ways: maybe you're attracting mice with a piece of cheese on a string? Maybe you're a surgeon in the future trying to clean bad bacteria out of a wound? etc. But because Gamenauts lacked the imagination, intelligence, self-respect, or just plain decency to make their own setting to go with the borrowed gameplay, they just borrowed the setting along with the gameplay. So in effect they added nothing, contributed nothing to the "genre". They just cloned an existing game. It demonstrates a total lack of integrity or pride, or maybe just a sociopathic obsession with cost effectiveness -- after all, developing a new setting would cost more (time and effort) than directly transcribing the setting provided by Vlambeer, which cost nothing for Gamenauts to conceive of and which is known to work with the gameplay. This was the point of my Halo example: they haven't simply copied the gameplay mechanics (FPS), but they've also copied the enemy types, weapon types, setting, etc. I don't understand how you can dispute this. As per my cover-song analogy, they absolutely did not JUST copy the mechanics. The entire concept of the game is duplicated -- they redrew the art, re-recorded the audio and added a stolen bit from another game (fruit ninja). This is entirely analogous to a cover song -- adding nothing to the original, just being a different version of the same thing. (also, copying the Fruit Ninja mechanic cannot reasonably be seen as deviating from a "cover song" mentality -- if I record a song that's half a cover of song A followed by half a cover of song B, this hardly makes it my original creation) There is a *huge* difference between riffing off of something and mechanically duplicating it. It's "Everything is a Remix" vs "Everything is a Carbon Copy". In normal human society, if I appropriate your ideas without due attribution, that's considered at the very least rude, if not fraudulent. Just because this sort of wholesale theft is common doesn't make it any less revolting or stupid or harmful in the long run to games and gamers. I'm all for inspiration and riffing off of tropes, but there is a night and day difference between being inspired or influenced by something and directly reproducing the original word-for-word in your own handwriting. The implied point of my "inhuman" comment is this: all humans have values and beliefs which become the metrics with which they make decisions. These value systems are complex and nuanced and are most importantly socially conditioned to ensure that individuals within society tend to behave in a way that's not detrimental to the society. The point is that there are a plethora of behaviours that are considered rude or vile which are still perfectly legal. Businesses in contrast have but a single sensory organ: the balance of their bank account(s). Similarly they have but a few basic behaviours used to try to increase their wealth -- most of the time this is more or less hill-climbing. This gives them the attributes that one would ascribe to an insect or perhaps reptile, because they behave in ways no human would for fear of shame or humiliation. That's just what happens when you're free to do anything that's not explicitly illegal -- you end up behaving in ways which are disgusting but allowed. Gamenauts have demonstrated this remarkably well: there was money to be made, and they made it. No matter how shameful or abhorrent their behaviour might be to their community -- as long as it generated a net profit, it was worthwhile. |
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| JB Vorderkunz |
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Ephraim,
Given your stance here, what is your take on the classic case of Harlan Ellison vs. James Cameron? By your rubric i'd assume that you see it as a gross miscarriage of justice (after all, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is *wildly* different on many levels than The Terminator). But I will say that your argument contains a technical fallacy: just because a practice has historical precedence has no bearing on the ethical nature of that practice. |
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| Luke Shorts |
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The more I read about this case, the more I find it interesting, because the reaction the community shows is opposite to what it would have had if instead of Vlambeer, the owner of the original game had been - all other items remaining the same - a big name studio.
First of all, I' d like to say that I agree (to the spirit, if not to the letter) with the closing sentence of the article ("We don't need added protection through copyright or patents. We just need to suck it up and do what we do best and make games"), and also with the positions expressed in the two reaction cited. However, while this is a legitimate opinion (and it would be even if I did not agree with it :P), the assessment that game mechanics can and should be copied because that's what the industry assumes you to do ("The entirety of game design's history has been chock full of wholesale copying of mechanics with more often than not only minor changes.[...] Square, Blizzard, EA, Activision, Bungie, Sony and countless other big name and smaller name companies [...] copied game mechanics into their own games and found success") is a generalization of the RF/NF case that ends up being misleading. "Copying mechanics is not theft", yes, it's likely it wouldn't be considered as such - at least in the US - even if they copied the whole game and sold the copies (see USSC decision "Dowling vs United States"), "nor it is infringement", so no reason to worry, right? Wrong. You can get sued for that, if the game mechanics has been patented... famous example: US6200138 ("A game display method for displaying a game in which a movable object is moved in a virtual space, comprising the steps of: setting a dangerous area around the movable object; and when a character enters the dangerous area, moving the character in a direction in which the character is moved away from the movable object"). Before anyone tells me that "infringement" above means actually "copyright infringement", let me answer that I don't believe any company in its right state of mind would make a business decision on a product on the grounds: "Oh yes, no problems with copyright... we end up infringing a couple of patents, but who cares!" In the example above, some points are worth noting: 1. The patent was filed in 1998, so if they paid the fees until 2018 there's no way of using that mechanics in the US for free 2. Patents are not about copying: even if you innovate a product (i.e, add new and inventive stuff), as long as the features of the claim can be found in your product, you are still infringing 3. There has been an actual lawsuit (settled out of court) based on this patent. I could check if there's more on it, but I'm lazy... in any case, even if it had been invalidated in further proceedings, it wouldn't really matter. Take a tour of US patent classes 463 (such as 463/3, 463/23) and have fun. Focusing on copyright infringement, it may happen with far less than wholesale copying. It's true that copying of game mechanics as such won't get you in trouble (if nothing else because it's supposed to be protected by another IP right), and it's also true that in the RF/NF case the game is so simple that there's not much left on which an argument can be built. Still, copyright protects also against partial copies and derivative work, so I wouldn't be surprised if at some point the argument "same mechanics" popped up to support a copyright violation claim, since the way game assets are used contributes to the overall "artistic impression" generated by a game. TL; DR: RF/NF arose from a lack of entrepreneurial vision and/or resources on part of the original game dev. Since in this story Vlambeer plays the part of the underdog, the outcome doesn't sit well with some people, who have the gut feeling that a "wrong" has been committed and they'd like a legal remedy for it. The irony in all this is that such remedy exists, but it is used mostly by big companies, who are accused (sometimes even by the same people) of "killing innovation" when they use it. I believe, pretty much like Ephriam Knight, that the outcome of this story shouldn't generate a call to arms for more protection of game mechanics; I don't think however that such an outcome is a natural consequence of the way the gaming industry operates or that the specifics of it can be used to draw conclusions about IP rights and the gaming industry at large. |
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| Lars Doucet |
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Answer me this:
At what point is it "okay" to clone a game? Nobody would accuse someone of being "immoral" or "unethical" for cloning Mario or Final Fantasy at this point, now that those games have turned into established genres. Is it only immoral when you borrow a novel idea from a small indie developer? |
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| Damian Connolly |
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Lets take two stories posted on Edge a few days apart. The first is from the Gamenaut/Radical Fishing story: "Another indie curio finds itself cloned before it can get itself to market" (http://www.next-gen.biz/features/friday-game-radical-fishing), the second a story about Fortress Craft: "The Minecraft homage, the work of Projector Games, has grossed a million dollars in six months, the developer has announced." (http://www.next-gen.biz/news/xbox-indie-game-fortresscraft-grosse
s-1-million) From what I can see, Fortress Craft is pretty much a carbon copy of the building aspect of Minecraft, just with better graphics, yet it's seen as a "homage", not a "rip-off". Are you only morally bankrupt if you're richer than the person you're cloning? If you bring it to a new console/device (there was also an Android Minecraft clone if I remember right) before them? Hands up if you thought about making a Canabalt clone. An Angry Birds clone (which took it's mechanics from other flash games btw). A Tiny Wings clone (which possibly took it's mechanics from a one week game demo - http://nmccoy.net/2011/02/24/on-the-whole-wavespark-tiny-wings-th ing/). A pacman clone. Should I keep going? As raigan mentioned, they added in a dash of Fruit Ninja for good measure. But isn't that how we start with ideas? "It's like X but with Y". If you're trying to make an iOS game, you look at what works (Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds) and you try and see how to differentiate yourself ("Hey, I played this great flash game a while back..."). Is it just because it's a bigger company. If it was just another guy, on his tod, that released this, would there be the same outcry? Would there be the same problem if this was the fifth type of game like this, or is it just because Vlambeer managed to get something addictive and original? Gamenauts copied mechanics. Just like every single one of us. |
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| Lars Doucet |
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And Jesus turned to them and said, "Let he who hath never copied a game mechanic throw the first stone."
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| Luke Shorts |
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The more I read about this case, the more I find it interesting, because the reaction the community shows is opposite to what it would have had if instead of Vlambeer, the owner of the original game had been - all other items remaining the same - a big name studio.
First of all, I' d like to say that I agree (to the spirit, if not to the letter) with the closing sentence of the article ("We don't need added protection through copyright or patents. We just need to suck it up and do what we do best and make games"), and also with the positions expressed in the two reaction cited. However, while this is a legitimate opinion (and it would be even if I did not agree with it :P), the assessment that game mechanics can and should be copied because that's what the industry assumes you to do ("The entirety of game design's history has been chock full of wholesale copying of mechanics with more often than not only minor changes.[...] Square, Blizzard, EA, Activision, Bungie, Sony and countless other big name and smaller name companies [...] copied game mechanics into their own games and found success") is a generalization of the RF/NF case that ends up being misleading. "Copying mechanics is not theft", yes, it's likely it wouldn't be considered as such - at least in the US - even if they copied the whole game and sold the copies (see USSC decision "Dowling vs United States"), "nor it is infringement", so no reason to worry, right? Wrong. You can get sued for that, if the game mechanics has been patented... famous example: US6200138 ("A game display method for displaying a game in which a movable object is moved in a virtual space, comprising the steps of: setting a dangerous area around the movable object; and when a character enters the dangerous area, moving the character in a direction in which the character is moved away from the movable object"). Before anyone tells me that "infringement" above means actually "copyright infringement", let me answer that I don't believe any company in its right state of mind would make a business decision on a product on the grounds: "Oh yes, no problems with copyright... we end up infringing a couple of patents, but who cares!" In the example above, some points are worth noting: 1. The patent was filed in 1998, so if they paid the fees until 2018 there's no way of using that mechanics in |
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| Jake Birkett |
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Why does everyone assume Gamenauts is a big company? It's not, it's one guy (an indie who has been in casual games for quite a few years) who outsources various elements of making the games - like many of us.
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| Adam Sullivan |
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In light of this thread, I'm curious about people's thoughts on DOTA, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, Rise of Immortals and DOTA2.
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| Eric Spain |
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You say that many game companies have copied mechanics with minor changes. Gamenauts did it with zero changes. It's exactly the same gameplay. If they had improved it in some way, change the concept slightly, or added to it, then while it would still be contentious, at least they could say it's not exact. This isn't the case here, the gameplay in both is exactly the same, without even minor changes.
Often gameplay is interesting and complex enough that time was taken to develop it. Vlambeer spent time and energy getting the gameplay *just* right and it's this effort that should be protected. In the same way that it takes time to create art, or scribe literature, gameplay takes time and effort to develop. I don't think individually gameplay elements deserve to get protection, nor individual mechanics. That would cause a huge mess, like with the current patents situations. Nor do I think clones that change/improve on the original count, as the gameplay should be altered enough that a reasonable person would say "Yes, there's a difference between the games." The entirety of the gameplay should be subject to copyright, in the same way as other creative works. You shouldn't be able to copyright a jumping or collecting mechanic or even something like the first person aspect of an FPS, for example, because it would be like trying to copyright a music phrase or a sentence. But if you take the gameplay as a whole, just like a book or a song, there's a certain amount of change required. Clones that are close, but not quite the same, fall into this category. Where songs have lyrics, melody and harmonic progression, and books have plot, characters and setting, just copying one of those completely would set you up for copyright infringement. You don't even have to copy the whole book/song if the part you took was a direct copy. In this fashion, games are made of art, audio and gameplay. If you took the lyrics from a song and set it to a new beat, you'd be in trouble. If you took the characters and entered them in a new story to be published, that would be infringement as well. Yes, this does make fan-fic infringing. The same should apply to gameplay. That said, what Gamenauts did is a 'dick move', which is what makes it unethical. If everyone copied gameplay exactly without improving it, all the games would be the same, just with different skins. Even the variety of modern day combat shooters differ in how they play in regards to health reaction, cover mechanics and gun use. The games industry is already suffering from a lack of creative exploration, so the less encouragement given to copiers like Gamenauts, the better. |
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| Jonathan Jou |
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Good article, Ephriam! This is definitely one of those topics that can and should be debated until consensus is found. On the other hand, while it's one thing to point out that game mechanics are a dime a dozen and one good mechanic doesn't define the makings of a good game designer, it's kind of important to take into account how and why this happened; there are lessons to be learned, some kind and some less comforting.
From what I've read, Gamenauts contacted Vlambeer to ask if it could give credit for being "inspired" by Vlambeer's flash game, and Vlambeer asked for enough time to get its own game to market. This means that Gamenauts was faced with what was pretty clearly an ethical decision: release an eerily similar version of a game and benefit by beating its originators to market, or let Vlambeer get the fame and fortune it would earn if, instead of a simple flash game, it was porting an IP which was much harder to clone. Has this happened before? It's the definition of why copyright and patents exist. Whether or not applying it to game design would help or devastate the industry is certainly important to think about, but in this case it's a little too obvious that Gamenauts wasn't releasing a better version, a later version, or even at least some sort of homage to the original. In the decision to respect Vlambeer's wishes, or to choose to profit at Vlambeer's expense, Gamenauts has chosen, and the results are clear. So the lesson here is that game mechanics are like business proposals: "if someone can steal it from you, they will, so make sure they don't find out they can until it's too late." Vlambeer's wish to develop in secrecy in many ways cost it its game, and had they announced it once the flash game took off this probably would have played out differently. In games, calling dibs is sometimes all you can hope to do. Of course, this isn't the end for Vlambeer. One of the most important things I've noticed is that people who come up with good ideas are the best ones to improve upon their designs, or even come up with new ones entirely. Blizzard has made a living by simply being the best in any genre it deigns to step into, and that's certainly got to do with its honest release schedules, but also speaks to the amazing culture of quality and talent it possesses. I'm pretty sure that Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing could and should beat its imitators if he accepts that the novelty value is lost, but also recognizes that Gamenauts is never going to be able to improve upon the original game vision any better than Neversoft could make a true Guitar Hero game. Ideally, I'd like the world to be one in which an original game mechanic gets its creator the credit it deserves. I'd like it if Rovio had credited Box2D for its physics engine at the outset. Whether or not law and licenses get involved takes a matter of being a decent human being and tangles it in the web of patent trolls and suchlike. In this case, it's pretty obvious that Gamenauts gave Vlambeer a rather big and brazen screw you instead of doing unto others as he would have them do unto him. Of course, I could be wrong about that. Maybe we should go give all of his games freemium(er) face lifts because we can. |
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| Michael Joseph |
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From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense
----------------------------------------------------------- Gameplay Before tower defense games existed, ASCII released a game in 1983 that is today described as a "reverse tower defense" game, Bokosuka Wars, wherein the player must storm an enemy castle, avoiding towers built to shoot at them as they pass, rather than defend it.[6] Tower defense games properly began in 1990 when Atari Games released Rampart.[7] Another early example of a tower defense game was Final Fantasy VII's Fort Condor minigame in 1997.[8] By 2000, maps for StarCraft, Age of Empires II, and Warcraft III were following suit.[9] The first standalone tower defense game for PC was Master of Defense, released on November 7th of 2005. Eventually, independent game developers began using Adobe Flash to make stand-alone tower defense browser games,[10] which led to the release of Flash Element Tower Defense in January 2007[11] and then Desktop Tower Defense in March of the same year.[12][13][14] Desktop Tower Defense became immensely popular and earned an Independent Games Festival award,[15] and its success led to a version created for the mobile phone by a different developer.[16] Several other tower defense computer games achieved a level of fame, including Protector,[14] Immortal Defense,[17] GemCraft,[18] and Plants vs. Zombies.[19] By 2008, the genre's success led to tower defense games on video game consoles such as Defense Grid: The Awakening on the PC and Xbox 360,[20] and PixelJunk Monsters and Savage Moon for the PlayStation 3.[9] Tower defense games have also appeared on handheld game consoles such as Lock's Quest and Ninjatown on the Nintendo DS,[21] and there are dozens of games for the iPhone/iPod Touch and Android. In November 2010, the genre was first brought to the blind gaming community with the release of Aprone's Towers of War.[22] USPTO - Trademark On June 3, 2008 - COM2US Corporation was awarded the trademark for the term "Tower Defense", filed on June 13, 2007 - serial number 3442002. The corporation has been reported to start enforcing the trademark;[23] specifically on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform as a number of small or independent developers are now receiving messages from Apple citing trademark violation: Additionally, your application appears to contain features, namely a trademark name, that appears to infringe on rights owned by Com2us corporations, specifically TowerDefense. Please remember that pursuant to your agreement with Apple, you represent and warrant that your application does not infringe the rights of another party, and that you are responsible for any liability to Apple because of a claim that your application infringes another party's rights. Moreover, we may reject or remove your application for any reason, in our sole discretion. Upon resubmission of your application, please provide documentary evidence that you have the rights to use this content to ensure compliance with the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement at the time you resubmit your new binary to iTunes Connect. ------------ "This is the state of the game industry. There is no reason why it should change. Did a company get beat to a market by a similar game? Yes, but that happens everyday in this industry." Indeed. |
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| Michael Joseph |
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Somewhat related, but This American Life recently aired a show where they talked briefly about these Vietnamese restaurants in Brooklyn copying each other's menus... like... litterally copying the menu down to the same font. Thought it was funny
can listen to it here... that part is right at the beginning and only a few minutes long http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/millio n-dollar-idea |
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| Kepa Auwae |
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The support that Vlambeer is mostly because they're well-liked, to be honest. That and possibly their entire gameplay loop being copied (down to most of their upgrade store), rather than just elements. With how the App Store works (first popular game wins), I'd be extremely surprised if their upcoming Ridiculous Fishing game made much money, at this point.
I'm curious, though, is there any limit at which you consider a clone too close to the original? For example, Domi Games doing nothing but taking existing games, their mechanics, levels, and art, but changing the art style just slightly. Is this ok? If it is ok, is there any reason to NOT do that? We could all belt out a huge number of game releases if we'd just take flash games, swap some art around, and release them as iOS games. Seems like there's only upsides to this, no downsides. Even if the original flash game in this hypothetical was a 40% clone of another game, making a 98% similar clone of a clone is much faster and easier. All the guesswork is removed. With how the iOS store works, being first to market is a huge boon, and being the first *popular* game of a type on iOS is basically an unassailable position. The only disadvantage to this process would just be some public disapproval, which you're apparently saying shouldn't be done, either. So I guess my question is, to anyone that cares to answer it, is why bother making games at all if you can just copy others note for note? If there's no reason to, then I will personally just start making Domi Games style clones. Also, I wish there were different words for different degrees of cloning. It seems kind of ridiculous to call "any FPS after Doom" a clone, yet call the Domi Games version "Tiny Hawk" a clone. Calling two wildly disparate examples by the same word makes any discussion about cloning difficult, but maybe it's just me. |
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| Berend Gorkom |
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(never read the last post, but I agree, same point)
Here is an interesting thought: If I would start my own company and focus on making money, is that unethical? If my company business model would be to copy games from others, is that unethical? Appearantly it's not, based on the reactions here. So if I WERE to start purely cloning games for massive profit, reaching the top sale lists, would you guys praise my fortune and ask me to keep doing this? Because to me it kinda looks like this IS a good business strategy. So please, my dear indie developers, keep making new games, you get my thanks and I get your profit. |
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| Sven Bergstrom |
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I find this post sad, that is my opinion.
Oh, but congratulations on getting those extra thousands of views and comments you were looking for, it worked! You can now feel better about your day. Figured I would link some more clone articles for the readers sake : http://northwaygames.com/?p=459 http://www.andymoore.ca/2011/08/the-third-cloning-of-steambirds/ |
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| Kyle Nau |
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The Steam Birds developer crying about cloners is interesting considering it's been alleged that he "stole" the entire game mechanic from Sean O'Conner's "Firefight" (although Andy insists he came up with it on his own). It shows that anyone can be accused of cloning, even if they haven't.
I'm reminded of the post that went around after the last E3 showing screenshots from 4 different mainstream FPSes that all looked *exactly identical* to one another. As Gerald Belman mentioned earlier it comes down to the simplicity of your design. Games that rely on a single mechanic are easily clone-able. It's like piracy, you have to suck it up, ignore it and keep working or else you'll waste all your time, energy and creativity worrying about it. |
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| Tom F |
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"Mechanic" is such an unspecific word and concept. The problem is that more than a mechanic has been stolen. Both the premise (not just fishing, but unconventional fishing) and the mechanic (I have not played the game, but it seems like it was copied) were taken.
I would not be upset with a developer who decided to make an unconventional fishing game. But that fishing game needs a unique mechanic. By the same token, as was said before, the same mechanic can be used in different premises (eg. doctor). Using both the same mechanic and the same premise is not illegal, but I cannot see how anyone can try to defend that lazy game development. It's not copying to make a tower defense game, but if all the towers are exactly like another game's towers, then you have a problem. And in this case, that is what I see. |
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| Adam Summerville |
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So, I posted my thoughts at my blog (here: http://www.circlecatgames.com/2011/08/25/cloning-mk2/), but the TL; DR is this:
1. Copying mechanics isn't unethical, but cloning a game is. 2. The line between copying mechanics and cloning a game is whether there are any substantive differences in the game play. Dune 2 and Warcraft are in the same genre, but play out differently. 3. I don't think that Ninja Fishing is a clone of Radical Fishing. The addition of Fruit Ninja-esque mechanics is the type of riffing on a genre (admittedly, a young and unformed genre) that should be encouraged. 4. Don't release your game until you are happy with your monetization/marketing. Getting in the market first is important in this day and age. Don't do someone else's homework for them and make your own job harder at the same time. 5. Cloning of simple to grok games is always going to happen. Try to make the underlying structures of your game harder to guess, and therefore your game will be harder to clone. |
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| Greg Wohlwend |
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Slippery Slope is slippery.
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| Erik R |
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In my opinion, while this is and should remain legal. Mostly, because the problem is one of thoughts and intentions, which you cannot make laws about.
If the intentions of the copying company were to make a new game based upon another game, only better/more in their vision, that's fine. If their intentions were to rip off an existing game to make quick money, that would be a bad thing. But since we can't know for sure, we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise things would get REALLY bad. |
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