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Zynga accused of cloning hit indie iPhone game Tiny Tower
by Kris Graft [Smartphone/Tablet, Indie, Business]
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January 25, 2012
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San Diego, CA-based independent iPhone game developer Nimblebit is accusing social games giant Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title Tiny Tower.
Zynga last week launched on the Canadian App Store Dream Heights, a free-to-download tower-building game with in-app purchases that has clear similarities to summer 2011's Tiny Tower, which received Apple's 2011 iPhone Game of the Year.
"Clones" of games are a common occurrence on mobile platforms, but the Tiny Tower versus Dream Heights conflict has gained quick notoriety on the web due to the David and Goliath scenario of a massive public company allegedly copying the ideas of a three-person team.
Nimblebit's Ian Marsh got word out about the similarities between Dream Heights and Tiny Tower with an image that's still making the Twitter rounds. The image is made up of screenshots showing how Dream Heights' interface and gameplay mechanics appear strikingly similar to Tiny Tower's.
"We noticed you are about to launch a new iPhone game called Dream Heights! Congratulations!" reads the image, which was addressed to "all 2,789" of Zynga's employees. "We wanted to thank all of you guys for being such big fans of our iPhone game of the year, Tiny Tower!"
The sarcastic statement continues, "Good luck with your game, we are looking forward to inspiring you with our future games! Sincerely, (all 3 of us) -- Nimblebit."
Marsh also said on Twitter that Zynga "did try to go the honest route and try to acquire us first." He added that inside Dream Heights' app binary, the Zynga project "is named 'TowerVille' and its inhabitants are named zitizens" -- Tiny Tower's are called "bitizens."
Nimblebit and Zynga did not immediately reply to Gamasutra's requests for further comment.
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Estimated lost revenue due to competition in the market place: $0
How was that?
Edit: Not that I'd have any good solution, if I were to determine that this was harmful. But at least I'd feel better about disdaining Zynga.
However, what Zynga actually did was not something I find to be wrong. They wanted a tower sim. They tried to buy a company that makes a tower sim. When that failed, they made one of their own. I don't see anything wrong with that.
For more information on my position, you can read this blog post: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EZacharyKnight/20110816/8207/Copying_Mechanics_is
_Not_Theft_Nor_is_it_Infringement.php
Even if they're legally safe, that doesn't mean they aren't game-copying scum.
McDonalds is doing well. I think I'm going to start up a restaurant chain called MacDonnels, use a mime as a mascot, sell Big Mik hamburgers, and use a double golden acute angle as my logo. Totally original idea, right?
Copying some mechanics in a game of the same genre? Definitely not something to get upset about. Making a carbon copy of ALL mechanics and sticking on a new skin? Sounds pretty shady to me.
As for the HD remake, that is something completely different from this. Not sure how you are connecting the two processes.
Knock-off: Same game with different graphics, plus the use of a thesaurus.
It doesn't matter whether it's common or not. Actions being common and being ethical are two very different things.
However, in this case it is a business decision to copy the mechanics. They do this to appeals to the fan base of the competitor's game. If the mechanics were not similar enough, the fans of the other game won't play it. If they are not different enough, the fans of the other game will not play it. So they have to balance it. It is that proper balance of similar/dissimilar that determines if a clone will be successful (unless of course you manage to do some very heavy and successful marketing). None of this is wrong as is part of a healthy industry.
My greater point lies in that game mechanics are much like ideas, they cannot be copyrighted. Just because someone creates a similar game to you does not mean they ripped off your idea. It just means they saw a market they wanted to be in and went for it. That is not unethical.
Instead of 'they wanted a top of the market game'
As if they would have thought such a game had any real market appeal without tiny tower.
That type of thinking isn't anything new in the games industry. For decades now marketing companies at game developers have look at what was popular and then make those kinds of games. Some companies simply clone those games. Others buy the companies that make those games. This is how the games industry and to a large extent creativity work. Why deride one company for doing what the games industry has been doing since the 70s?
This is in bad taste, for sure, but at the end of the day I have no real issue with this. Tiny Tower has already made a load of money.
Competition is fine, but saying they have made enough money is not a logical reason.
"Is there a limit on how much money someone can make before people are allowed to copy their idea (if that is what they did)?"
No, no limit, because you should be allowed - legally - to do it at any point. Raw ideas are not protectable, and should not be protectable. What Zynga did was rude and in poor taste, and reflects poorly on them as a company particularly within the group they need to hire/acquire from. But being stupid and rude and tasteless is not illegal, and probably shouldn't be.
Rather I think Steven's point is that things are working as intended. Tiny Tower made a lot of money on a small investment. Dream Heights? Probably not going to make as much money, and probably a much larger investment.
And when we're talking timeframes that long, my guess/hope is that either SOPA 3.0 has passed or we're on the road to a much more reasonable world where people realize both execution and ideas matter and innovation is rightly rewarded without copyright crackdowns from any side. (Like I said, I think we're halfway there already - Zynga's not coming out on top of this one.)
I think mechanical licensing for other games' source would be a really interesting idea but I don't think most people would agree to it.
Go listen to "When Patents Attack!" by This American Life. It ain't that easy when the patent office lets anything get by.
There becomes a point in the costs vs. revenue equation where any level of creativity seems like too much to risk.
... oh, man.
*Suddenly depressed*
If Dream Heights really is a re-skinned copy of Tiny Tower then I'd be a bit irked. Zynga recently got done suing Vostu over similar issues (granted, Vostu was an even more blatant copy).
On another note... how many FPS games are basically the same? How many RTS's are the same with different units. Game developers borrow ideas for almost every game made.
Zynga: where creativity goes to die.
Zynga's enormous wealth means they can have several games in the pipeline at the same time so that one bomb won't shut the studio down. They cut their losses even more by eliminating the need for creative R&D; they take successful games, slap some new art on it, and call it their own. They have several hundred times the marketing resources that NimbleBit has, "out-marketed" doesn't even begin to describe it.
No. They are supposed to service their fans with the games their fans expect from them.
Sean,
Yes, Zynga does have vast resources at its disposal. But it is lacking something that NimbleBit has in droves, humanity. Zynga can churn out clone after clone all they want, but real fans are made when the developers are honest and open with the community.
For a small developer it is hard to build up the multi-basket approach, but it is not impossible. It requires a lot more work, but if you focus more on your fans, you can succeed. It comes down to a difference in approach to success.
With Zynga, success is pushing out a game and making more money than it cost to develop and market the game. For a small developer success should be in building up a fan base that sticks with you through thick and thin. Those are the eggs of a small developer.
500 year old sea monster map
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carta_Marina
From what I can see Zynga took tiny tower, which is a great game and added onto it. Tiny tower has minimal social features where as Dream Heights actually has quite a few things going for it with the skybridge.
"As you build your tower, you'll be given a Skybridge automatically (Floor 6), bringing in one of the only truly new features to the game. While Tiny Tower allows you to visit and view your friends' towers, here you'll be able to sign in with Facebook Connect or use individual Tower Codes to add friends. You can't view your friends' towers, as of this writing, but you can "shop" at them, earning Hearts and collectibles, which is another original feature. You'll earn items at random, and can then turn those in for large amounts of cash, giving your tower the chance to grow even faster (of course, floors become more expensive as you go along)." - http://blog.games.com/2012/01/24/zyngas-dream-heights-iphone-preview/
Funny that Zynga managed to copy all the good and add the turds that most of us hate in these kinds of games.
As for Zynga, if their lawsuits against other studios "infringing" on their games were won, I hope that Nimblebits uses the same practice and sues the pants off of Zynga. That's pretty despicable if you ask me.
This Kotaku post from last night kindly reminded me that (as game developers) we borrow a lot from the games we've played before:
http://kotaku.com/5879441/tiny-tower-rips-off-a-flash-gameand-simtowe r
Some people are making a big deal out of nothing here. What is truly despicable is how those people get carried away with it.
tHIS kOTAKU POST FROM LAST NIGHT KINDLY REMINDED ME THAT (AS GAME DEVELOPERS) WE BORROW A LOT FROM THE GAMES WE'VE PLAYED BEFORE:
http://kotaku.com/5879441/tiny-tower-rips-off-a-flash-gameand-simtowe r
(blatant copying and changing the look = wrong)
. . . . . . . . .
I do agree that we borrow alot of mechanics from the games that we have played before, as Alternate Procellous pointed out with the article:
http://kotaku.com/5879441/tiny-tower-rips-off-a-flash-gameand-simtowe r.
(reusing the same material in a different way = acceptable)
Look, I don't disagree that it would suck to be an indie with Zynga as a direct competitor. They have a very clear advantage in terms of the resources available to them. My point is that there is really very little or nothing at all about Zynga's behavior that is questionable in a legal sense at this time. We can all sit here and cry about it or learn to compete against what I think is pretty predictable behavior. If you can anticipate an opponent's next move, you can plan a response or avoid the situation that leads to that move in the first place.
Now to build a game like this still takes a lot of work even with cocos2d but I do find it a little funny that Zynga indirectly built part of Tiny Tower.