The Casual Game Clone Wars

Casual games are ever more financially lucrative in the new world of everyday games. With money to be made, clones of successful games can be launched in a very short period of time, resulting in the original title vying for financial success with its johnny-come-lately play-alike. From the article: "But, while PopCap's James Gwertzman comments in a recent interview of Zuma's success in 2004: 'We were all very excited about it, but it's 2005 and there have been a ton of very obvious Zuma clones', we have to ask - how about Mitchell's 1998 title Puzzloop for arcades, also known as Ballistic for PSX in the States? The game's basic design seems identical to Zuma. There was even some talk of Mitchell, which has released a PC version of Puzzloop, taking PopCap to court over the issue, though neither company has ever made public statements about it."

Comments

Re:Just goes to show you

[tepples]

Unless you want to market games on a really unique and proprietary platform

...or even if you are marketing your casual game on a proprietary platform, it'll get cloned. Just look at what happened to Lumines; there's now an accurate GPL'd clone for GBA.

Re: Hey, did you see how black kettle was?

[Thedalek]

I will easily admit that I don't know all games, but while Popcap's games are derivitave, it is usually less so than Zuma.

Bejeweled owes its lineage only to Nintendo's Puzzle League, and it's a tenuous connnection.

Heavy Weapon has some similarities to an 80s PC game which has gone by many names (Parachute and Sabotage being the two I knew of) and which recently appeared on the iPod as a hidden game. However, Heavy Weapon sports significant improvements, and works more as a redevelopment than a ripoff.

Rocket Mania seems to draw some inspiration from both Pipe Dream and Gunpey, but again, is enough different to survive on its own.

Insaniquarium and Feeding Freenzy seem to be completely original games.

Re:It's not just Popcap

[deanj]

Puzzle Bobble