[casual_games] Copycats -- What Can Be Done?

[Peter Nicolai]

OK, I can't stand it any more - My apologies to anyone else I may be
presuming to speak for...

Diner Dash was not patterned after Betty's Beer Bar.  If anything we
were relieved that the games were as different as they were, and so
could (hopefully) coexist happily.  They are both Tapper-style games,
of course, but neither is a clone of Tapper or each other any more
than Cake Mania or Wild West Wendy are clones of any of them.  There
were even a few other games, Flash gamelets etc. around at the time
that were actually much more similar in certain ways, at least on the
surface, but why wouldn't they be?  They're all about serving
customers/waiting on tables.  Beyond that though, they all obviously
have different gameplay features and therefore aren't clones.

What surprises me is that people say they find it difficult to make a
distinction between games that are clones and games that are "inspired
by" other games (however heavily) when there are obvious, direct
clones out there that pretty much work exactly the same and literally
copy the entire game down to the last ridiculous detail, including
actual levels and help text from the original game, while
intentionally including no new or different gameplay features. 
Regardless of one's opinion of either, they seem like two pretty
distinct categories to me.



On 4/29/06, Gabriel Gambetta <mystml at adinet.com.uy> wrote:
>         * was Cake Mania a clone of Wild West Wendy or Diner Dash or ...
>         * what if Wild West Wendy seemed like a Diner Dash clone because
>         it came out after but they really started development first
>         * could the two simply be coincidence?
>         * Diner Dash clearly spawned a new flurry of games but didn't it
>         borrow from Betty's Beer Bar or the arcade classic (Root Beer)
>         Tapper.
>
> Some people may think Wild West Wendy is a DD clone because it was
> released later, but as you said, we didn't know gameLab was making DD
> and they [almost certainly] didn't know we were making WWW. Of course
> both WWW and DD came over a year after Betty's Beer Bar so I'm still
> proud to consider our Betty started the
> build-your-restaurant-franchise-with-a-strong-female-lead craze :)
>
> Betty itself was vaguely inspired by Tapper, but it also introduced many
> elements that later "inspired games" have been copying - the premise
> (serve customers), the theme (drinks/food), the female lead, even the
> wacky looking characters lately (Cake Mania).
>
> I'm not angry though. Good ideas get copied and hopefully improved upon,
> that "standing on the shoulders of giants" stuff, that's how human
> knowledge usually advances. What does bother me somewhat is when people
> claim their game is "innovative", "unique" and "groundbreaking" when it
> clearly isn't. It's marketing, sure, but it's still not true.
>
>         --Gabriel
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Gabriel Gambetta
> Mystery Studio - http://www.mysterystudio.com
> Gabriel on Graphics - http://gabrielongraphics.blogspot.com
>
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