I found it most useful to diff the two:<p><a href="http://diffchecker.com/pX8qoZsE" rel="nofollow">http://diffchecker.com/pX8qoZsE</a><p>No doubt having watched so many of his game mechanics become a huge hit in someone else's game gives the author a unique perspective. His point in this response may have been sharper if he had re-done the graphics, rewritten more of the content to be more accessible, etc. -- though the more I think about it maybe that's part of his point!
Many of us here have experienced our work getting cloned by others. While I totally get that 'everything is a remix', I still can't help but feel that kick in the gut every time this happens. I am always bothered by how much I care. It took me a while to reconcile this emotional-jerk. Here's how I see it now:<p>John Cleese has a wonderful talk about how each project consists for 'open' and 'close' modes [1]. In one sentence - open mode is playing around with ideas and stumbling upon a gem in the rough, while closed mode is the execution of polishing that gem to perfection.<p>Seen through this framework, I would claim that 'cloning' is the act of jumping in on someone else's open-mode work, and forking a new close-mode.<p>Why do we care when someone does this? I think that as the open-mode is a highly creative process, it is hard to not get emotionally attached to the rough-gems it produces. Some will describe it as nothing shy of birthing an idea. In that sense, the kick-in-the-gut that I feel is probably the sense of loss associated with someone 'snatching my new-born'.<p>I'm not suggesting that cloning is good or bad, but just trying to provide a reasonable explanation to why we feel pain when someone clones our work - even though we know it's OK.<p>[EDIT: there are situations where 'cloning' is in essence thievery. And that's not OK. Where to draw the line deserves its own thread.]<p>[1] John Cleese on creativity <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg</a>
This is going to be a much bigger problem for indies than it will be for AAA devs.<p>Treyarch aren't going to be worried about anybody cloning Call Of Duty, not because the gameplay is hard to copy or especially innovative but simply because they have put up big technical and artistic barriers to making anything close to their game.<p>Pandemic for example looks like something that could be cloned pretty exactly over a week or two by an MBA type with $1000 worth of outsourced developers. This doesn't make the game bad, it's just that some genres don't require much technical sophistication.<p>Having said that , minecraft clones do not seem to have been particularly successful in comparison to the original. Perhaps because minecraft is sophisticated enough that it would be difficult to keep up with the original. It would be interesting to see what the result would be if a AAA developer decided to release a huge budget but shameless minecraft clone.
I authored a Windows shareware game in the early 90's that involved spaceships shooting rocks and flying saucers. It had a number of neat features, including ray-traced sprites, multiplayer, a tournament mode, customizable ships, and so on.<p>This eventually led to a legal setting where I had to answer questions like "is it true that when you shoot a large rock it splits into two medium sized rocks".<p>The answer to the above question is yes, for more than one game.<p>However, if I asked the question "is it true that you press Left and Right to rotate, Thrust to accelerate, Fire to shoot, and Hyperspace to jump to a random position on the screen", the answer would also be yes, for more than one game (Spacewar, 1962 would be one correct answer).<p>It'd be a sad world where my game didn't exist, because there was no one willing to make that exact game for 16-bit Windows in 1991. It would also be a sad world where we never went beyond Spacewar on the PDP-1.<p>This particular sword cuts both ways. As a fan of creating and not a fan of litigating, I'd rather err on the side of more and better games, rather than lock up ideas for decades with copyright law.<p>Pandemic 2.5 seems to have done well and is even going back up the charts. For games, doesn't a rising tide lift all boats?
There's a thick line of acceptable to unacceptable and developers know when they are stepping over it or not.<p>IMO, Angry Birds is fine. Different device, game play taken to the next level, different theme. While I have never played 'Crush the Castle', I imagine the boulders the trebucet threw had different results.<p>As for unacceptable, how about NimbleBit's Tiny Tower vs. Zynga's Dream Heights? Dream Heights isn't in the spirit of the first game, it's the same game with 'better' (I actually prefer Tiny Tower's pixel art) graphics, almost screen for screen[1].<p>[1]] <a href="http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/zynga-releases-tiny-tower-clone-nimblebit-strikes-back" rel="nofollow">http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/zynga-releases-tiny-tower-c...</a>
It took me awhile to figure out what this is. Jeff Wofford has cloned IGN's article and made small but important changes as way of giving IGN some of the medicine they are recommending for others.
I'm surprised the article didn't mention the Tiny Wings/Wavespark thing. It's a great example of how far execution and polish (and for that matter, timing, venue, art style, etc.) can take a relatively simple, but unique idea and mechanic:<p><a href="http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1604550&postcount=606" rel="nofollow">http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1604550&pos...</a>
I completely agree with the article. Are we going to start accusing every modern day author of copying Shakespeare because they share certain themes? What matters is the execution not the idea.
What people call game cloning I call "entering later into a genre" or "reusing a mechanic" or even "reimplementing a game".<p>League of Legends and Champions of Newerth aren't "just" clones<p>Halo isn't "just" a Doom clone.<p>Bach Fugues aren't just clones of Buxtehude or Handel<p>Thunderstone isn't just a Dominion clone<p>Coincidentally, game mechanics ARE patentable. (Monopoly was patented, for instance). If you are that sure you're the owner of your idea, and want to lock of the mechanic from culture, fire away via your lawyers.
Why's he giving free advertising to IGN if he disagrees with their article?<p>I take it the accusation he republishes about his colleagues is true, that they "ripped off" another game to make Crush the Castle?<p><a href="http://www.maxgames.com/game/castle-clout.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.maxgames.com/game/castle-clout.html</a>
Well, there now seems to be case law on the topic: <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/20/tetris-clone-ruling" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/20/tetris-clone-...</a><p>This could be interesting given the sheer number of clones on the app store. I wonder how many game developers actually have trade dress protection on their game?