The interesting thing about the Zynga approach is not the copying but the hypocrisy<p>From the memo<p>"A few of you have asked how our approach to genres relates to the situation we faced with Vostu. There are rules of engagement in our industry. Companies have to respect each other’s legal and IP ownership rights in the form of copyrights and trademarks. In the case of Vostu, you can see for yourself that Vostu crossed the line and chose to use our copyrighted IP and artwork. That’s different than competing to build the best product or out-innovate us in the City category."<p>So copying others artwork is ok when Zynga does it to others, but not when others do it to them.<p>See "Zynga stole everything they are suing us for Says Vostu" <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/vostu-zynga-stole-everything-its-suing-us-for-2011-7" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/vostu-zynga-stole-everything-...</a>
This is sure to be down voted but here I go anyway...
Doesn't this just indicate that having distribution is the most important element of the gaming market? It isn't enough to have a great game or design if you can't win at distribution.
Zynga's strategy is probably not sustainable. Hear me out:<p>The company that made the original game normally has enough time on the market to accumulate most of the users that are worth accumulating via open-market advertisements. It is likely that they hit "market saturation" prior to Zynga being able to clone the game.<p>Zynga has a massive existing userbase. When they clone an existing title, they're able to cheaply migrate some portion of their existing users over to the new title through cross-promotion. This is an effective way to retain users, but there is a significant problem: The original company (probably) already hit market saturation. The result, for Zynga, is that they can't really use this cloned game to grow their existing userbase. They can only use it to retain some users.<p>Fortunately for the original company, they aren't hurt all that much by Zynga's strategy - as long as they had enough time on the market before their game was cloned, the net effect of Zynga cloning their game isn't all that negative. The users that play Zynga's version tend to already have been Zynga users, and would only ever have played the Zynga game.<p>Unfortunately for Zynga, if this is their company vision, they will never grow their userbase. They will only ever struggle to keep hold of their existing users. They need to take risks and build unique, interesting games or they will face a slow death.
Horseshit.<p>The similarity between SimTower/YootTower (same developer/designer!) and TinyTower is that they both have towers; the differences is basically everything else. Zynga's game is basically identically TinyTower with no other elements or changes.
This reminds me of the whole Curebit debacle from this weekend. Is outright copying of design/creative/game mechanics illegal? Maybe, maybe not. Is it wrong? Hell yes!<p>What makes me really sad is thinking about how many talented engineers and designers there are working at companies like Zynga, doing a kick-ass job of building clones for companies with no values.
There are tons of comments saying that copying these games is wrong and imoral, but no one is explaining why it is so wrong and imoral.<p>Please explain to me why, because I literally don't get why it is so wrong and imoral.<p>Disclaimer: I don't work for Zynga, but I <i>do</i> copy the shit out of stuff.
I'm still not sure when this forum switched to thinking that infringing on IP (in this case, not even illegally) is immoral. If I didn't have better things to do I'd love to cross-check all these comments and see how many people previously said that copying bits is the natural order of things and should just be embraced.
Disclaimer: I don't use any Zynga products nor have I ever.<p>With regard to the situation, I don't think Zynga gets nearly enough credit for its success. It is not that easy to copy software and get the same degree of success. Yet Zynga routinely copies and gets greater success. There is something there that deserves attention.<p>Zynga has operational chops that should not be underestimated. Whatever it is doing is cutting edge and enough of an advantage Zynga can even flourish doing nothing but blatantly derivative designs.<p>Eventually, those operational practices will spread to other game studios that do original designs and it will be harder for Zynga to do as well. But much like McDonalds, Zynga could enjoy its market superiority for a long time to come as long as it continues to innovate operationally even if it lags creatively.
As a small business owner ( 3 peoples) working our asses of trying to publish a game for tablets, I can't help but hate Zynga for having unlimited resources and no regards for those that actually make an effort. Here's to their stock plummeting and that douche living in a box.
Isn't this a case of the small app developers not iterating quickly enough? If you look at the side by side screen shots the Zynga graphics DO look significantly better than the original game. Isn't the lesson here that if you do somehow manage to make a hit game you better reinvest as much as you can as quickly as you can back into future versions of the game to keep it as fresh and good looking as possible?<p>How many updates has angry birds made since their first release? They're always releasing new levels and updates.<p>I'm not defending what Zynga does in any way, but success brings copycats and first to market does not guarantee dominance of that market by any means.
Interesting story! Too bad the comments are full of unadorned, witless vitrol. I don't even mind if you hate Zynga and its employees -- could you just not tell me? It's not very interesting.
What is sad is that developers who make Android/iOS/Flash/Whatever games see how Zynga is making money and is copying other people's games, and they start to justify this and eventually start doing it too.
It must be nice for companies to Google and Facebook to always have one company to top them all in the category of unrepentant corporate spawns of Satan.
Zynga is knowingly spewing BS about their products. They know full well they're stealing and we all think they suck for it. Personally, I'd be a cheerleader for them if they were just honest about their business model. It's their attempt to even try to deny the obvious that I think is creating such animosity toward them even more than their douchebagery
There's a simple solution since this will be a freemium game. Have every Tiny Tower player download the Zynga junk and rate it 1 star. That'll send a clear message to any players and give a nice middle finger to Zynga. We can call the process go daddying an app. A more amusing tactic would be for Nimblebit to offer tower bucks to do the deed. That would be a lot of 1-star reviews...