Slashdot Mirror
Treading the Fuzzy Line Between Game Cloning and Theft
eldavojohn writes "Ars analyzes some knockoffs and near-knockoffs in the gaming world that led to problems with the original developers. Jenova Chen, creator of Flower and flOw, discusses how he feels about the clones made of his games. Chen reveals his true feelings about the takedown of Aquatica (a flOw knockoff): 'What bothers me the most is that because of my own overreaction, I might have created a lot of inconvenience to the creator of Aquatica and interrupted his game-making. He is clearly talented, and certainly a fan of flOw. I hope he can continue creating video games, but with his own design.' The article also notes the apparent similarities between Zynga's Cafe World and Playfish's Restaurant City (the two most popular Facebook games). Is that cloning or theft? Should clones be welcomed or abhorred?"
One of the world's most popular computer game franchises is a clone of Games Workshop's tabletop/pen & paper games. That seems to work OK.
(captcha = helmets)
Starcraft is one example. I would rather play Starcraft than C&C.
at its finest. "This is plagiarism!!" No it's not, you tool, it's conversation. Your attitude is exactly what is wrong with the world copyright has built. You don't own that idea, it belongs to the ages.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I, for one, welcome our clone overlords.
Bark less. Wag more.
First, there's no theft. There could possibly be copyright infringement if somebody is using somebody else's graphics.
Second, there doesn't seem to be any copyright infringement, since as far as I can tell nothing is being copied. Copyright only applies to copies of the original material. Making your own graphics that look a lot like something else is not copyright infringement.
There could possibly be trademark infringement, but that's most definitely not theft.
And what's the big deal, anyway? For every successful game, there have always been a few clones.
Totally not cloned.
Collect 7 magic crystals and save Princess Tobotnik.
If you, an intelligent Slashdot reader, can no longer distinguish between a genuine creative influence and copying something wholesale, then the notion of authorship is fucked, and it's all commodity.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why did someone write Linux when Unix was already out there? Why was Mario created when there were already other platform games out there? It's going to get harder and harder to come out with original ideas, e.g. look at any game released in the last 10 years, you can count truly innovative ones on both hands. But yet there's still games that come out, using a tried and tested formula, that are better than the rest. If there was no cloning, we'd have very few new games coming out ever.
I think 2010 will be the year of the Great Pet War. Zynga just launched Petville, a Pet Society (Playfish) clone, and although it's arguably better looking, much of its content it's also embarrassingly familiar. http://petsocietyanonymous.com/2009/12/06/petville-vs-pet-society/
Is it me or does this look exactly like the first part of Spore.
When you copy a game right down to it's unique visual style, it's pretty obvious what side of the line you are on. If the developer of Aquatica had created his own graphical style from scratch, but kept the same gameplay rules, it would have been a lot murkier. And I think he would even have been left alone.
Devil Kings and 99 Nights were very clearly clones of Dynasty Warriors, but they brought their own visual styles, characters and plots to the table. The engine behind them is pretty much the same. No reasonable people called it theft.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The reason is that no clone brings any innovation or evolution. Another problem is developers who confuse cloning and inspiration, thinking both equate the other. There are some who view any game inspired by theirs as a clone, but far more common are developers who straight off clone/plagiarize something and then claim it's inspired by as well as innovation blah blah, and it's not just game developers who are guilty of that. In fact, just look at development in various open source areas, and you'll see that they are more busy plagiarizing functionality and then spouting off some PR about innovation rather than actually engage in innovation. GIMP is one, the Linux project has a fair amount of it too. The various BSD's have also done this, but to a lesser extent.
The FSF may claim that it somehow fosters innovation, but that's disingenious at best. Innovation is, when you get down to the root of it, to say "Who cares if others think I'm wasting my time, I'll do this completely new thing". Plagiarization fosters laziness and incompetence.
First, it's copyright infringement, not theft. And no one can "steal" your idea because ideas cannot be owned.
Second, it's infringement if he infringed on your code, art work, or music. If not, it's not infringement.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Wow, did Farmville become 3rd place in only 4 days?
Is imposible to make videogames on "The void", so all games have ideas from all other games. From the menu system, the way to reward or inform the player, to how to store the textures/extra files, how to distribute, how to sells, develop and some share code, but most share ideas, all share ideas. And the first one, was a "tennis" like clone.
Also, even the worst games ( PACMAN clones ) try to add something to the table.
We don't say that Warcraft 3 is a clone of dune 2, or thief, we say Warcraft 3 is a RTS.
-Woof woof woof!
wow, both examples look a lot like the first part of Spore.... neither look like new ideals..
Yes, but plagiarism is a third word, which means taking ideas without giving credit. Of course, plagiarism has no legal status, since plagiarism cannot be judged in court. We nevertheless seek to take plagiarism extremely seriously and punish the most clear cases. Punishments for plagiarism are intentionally fairly mind but highly embarrassing.
Aquatica is very clearly a flOw knock off, so Aquatica is plagiarism if and only if the author did not explain that flOw inspired him. If the author cited flOw, then Chen should be happy for the free advertising, and get on with life. If the author did not cite flOw, then Chen should complain to the authors employer or university about the incident of plagiarism, which should slow the authors for promotion or possibly institute academic dishonesty proceedings.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Halo was a clone of every shooter that came before it. The basic mechanics haven't changed much since I first took up hmm... Hexen may have been my first shooter experience. Everything has been incremental technological improvements.
If the clone doesn't offer real value, people will play the original.
"Is that cloning or theft? Should clones be welcomed or abhorred?"
Easy. Clones should be welcomed.
1) They put innovation pressure on the original, benefiting everybody.
2) They put price pressure on the original, benefiting everybody.
3) They may create a better platform, a better product than the original, benefiting everybody.
Everybody wins. Except when you look at the motivation to create original products in the first place. Will the clones lower the reward and make it less beneficial to be original?
Hardly.
1) A truly original and inovative product will take some time to clone -- there will be a lead, in which user base/fan base/multiplayer communities should create critical mass.
2) Playing it right, the original *will* have goodwill. In other words, all things being fairly equal, people will likely stay with the original.
3) Originality is a scale, not a binary concept. Games are more or less original. Per (2) above, clones will need to compete in originality just like their inspiration did. When each clone out of many tries to be a little more original than the next, they may arrive at a quite original game, per Darwin. This could happen even though they started off at a lower plateau of originality than the concept originator. Think StarCraft.
4) In this sense, everyone is (or must be) original to be relevant. Originality is not at risk.
I hope that didn't sound too confusing :-)
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Because all they did was copy the world of Games Workshop (i.e. Warhammer) and the gameplay of C&C to create Warcraft. Cloning at its finest.
Sonic's concept of "cartoon character with an attitude, of an animal species known in mythology for being fast" has been cloned left and right: look at Bubsy and the rest of the me-too games. In fact, Sonic himself appears to be in part a clone of Warner's Speedy Gonzales, so much that someone made a mod of a Speedy Gonzales game for Super NES to replace Speedy with Sonic.
Why was Mario created when there were already other platform games out there?
In the early 1980s, there weren't other scrolling platform games. As far as I can tell, SMB1 was the first game to use scrolling instead of a Donkey Kong-style single screen or Pitfall!-style page flipping.
Define "another's work". When I read it, I see the legal definition: "a work whose copyright is owned by someone else". If you mean something else, please be specific.
Of course, plagiarism has no legal status, since plagiarism cannot be judged in court.
Really? As I understand it, in a copyright case involving a fair use defense, giving due credit to sources can count toward the defendant's good faith.
Aquatica is very clearly a flOw knock off, so Aquatica is plagiarism if and only if the author did not explain that flOw inspired him.
One of the promotional pages for Blockbox, a game with the same rules as Tetris, stated: "Tetris? No, I like this better." Therefore Blockbox isn't plagiarism. Am I following your logic right?
A truly original and inovative product will take some time to clone
But it won't really matter if the original publisher plans a staggered release. For example, Lumines was out in the United States in March 2005, giving one developer several months to get a GPL'd clone going before the European release six months later. And Tetris still isn't on the PSP, but the homebrew clones are.
In many ways you owe most of your creative efforts to the society that formed you. Ideas are usually not absolutely original. And have an original basis or inspiration. Clones are usually poor clones. if you don't like competition, find a new line of work.
Also there is plenty of great software out there that are just clones:
* Microsoft Excel is just a clone of Lotus123 which is a clone of VisiCalc.
* Linux is a clone of Unix.
I'm tired and can't think of other examples. I'm not convinced that a person deserves protection but if they can't execute on a successful business and only has ideas and "designs". I realize that people work hard to design cool things, and they *feel* cheated when someone just hops in and makes a clone that is almost as good as theirs. But the important thing to remember is that it is a feeling. Where you actually cheated? I don't think so. Is it fair? Maybe. Is life fair? No way.
Also, it is hard for me to accept that a person owns an idea after they showed it to world. By then the idea is in my brain, and frankly nobody owns anything that is in my brain but me.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
As long as you write your own code and make your own graphics you should be allowed to create whatever you want. In this case, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" fits perfectly. Copying someone elses work also increases competition which is good for everyone, especially the gamers.
The entire Open source movement is based on creating clones of previously successful proprietary software..
Seems to work for them :)
+5, Flamebait.
That's copyright infringement, not plagiarism. They are two seperate issues: one moral, one legal.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Zynga's Cafe World and Playfish's Restaurant City (the two most popular Facebook games).
This article would beg to differ that they are the two most popular. However, the top two (FarmVille and Cafe World) do have clones (Farm Town and Restaurant City) at 8th and 9th places.
But can you blame them? FarmVille had 65.6 million active users in one month, I think a lot of devs would be just fine with only 1% of that, and a clone might be a simple way to get it.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
I remember great giana sisters being more playable (and far faster) than the original mario bros - I was glad that came out as Nintendo would never have made an Amiga version of Mario. In this case the clone was banned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Giana_Sisters
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But as I understand it, there comes a point where things are OK to use with no citation due to age and/or de minimis use. For example, if I write a story about a flood disaster, I don't have to cite the stories of Noah and Gilgamesh. And I don't think Carlo Collodi explicitly cited the story of Jonah when putting the chapter about Geppetto getting swallowed by a Terrible Dogfish into The Adventures of Pinocchio. Otherwise, any moderately complex novel would have more footnotes per page than a featured article on Wikipedia.
I'm fairly certain that anyone who played and enjoyed both will vouch for the obvious influence the former had on the latter. I loved them both and if X-Com hadn't taken much of its ideas from Squad, then I wouldn't have gotten to enjoy such a great game. Settings and graphics were changed, but the core - squad based tactical combat, focused on individual units in a small team using turns, opportunity attacks and movement points - remained the same.
Stealing someone's setting completely, the setting and storyline, the code, the graphics, the music: those are all bad ideas. However, taking a broad concept such as turn-based, squad tactical combat and refining it with a great setting and story, that just benefits all gamers.
"Treading the Fuzzy Line Between Game Homage and Copyright Infringement"?
All games are clones of ro-sham-bo so they should all shut their pie holes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors
I haven't seen this mentioned yet - Ketara, the makers of Aquatica, have credited Jason Chen, creator of flOw, with the concept. On their website, they explain that they intended no disrespect, and have apologized for it. They viewed Aquatica as a fan remake.
Because of the controversy it caused, they have removed Aquatica from the app store - it is no longer available.
http://www.ketara.ca/aqua.html
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
Given the same problem and a proof stating that there is _a_ solution, most people would not know even where to begin.
Only because most people don't know about Curry-Howard. A sufficiently rigorous mathematical proof that something exists is isomorphic to a computer program to construct that something. If you're taking the "proof" to be a black box, it's also the case that most people just don't know any programming languages.
platformer = Mario
adventure = Zelda
RPG = Final Fantasy (1) [yes i know the stat system in FF goes back to old pen and paper games but i'm limiting my self to digital here]
FPS = wolf 3D
TBS = Civilization
RTS = Command and Conquer
puzzle = tetris (implied or implicit time limit and no control over what piece you get next)
make a game that takes no elements from these or any other previous then you can complain about game clones
Hint (illustrative only not saying the following don't include their own ideas):
metroid = zelda adventure mechanic + mario platforming
american RPGs = zelda adventure mechanic + FPS view + FF style EXP based level system
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. There are no new ideas. Only clever repackaging of old ones.
Who cares whether it's "plagiarism"? Plagiarism isn't illegal, and in many contexts, it isn't even wrong. Plagiarism is an academic concept, not a legal or business concept. Ever major computer company has "plagiarized" in their products, i.e., taken ideas from others without acknowledging the source, and that's OK. In fact, this game case is probably not even plagiarism, since plagiarism means using material without acknowledging the source, and they may well have done so. On the other hand, a lot of legally infringing activity is not plagiarism at all, so not plagiarizing does not protect you from legal claims.
In business, what matters is copyrights, patents, trademarks, and contracts. The game could be taken down because Apple controls their app store and can do whatever they want. If Aquatica were sold outside the app store, the flOw developer would have had to go to court and claim copyright, patent, or trademark infringement.
Is that cloning or theft?
It's theft when there is a law against it. Did the game infringe copyrights, patents, trademarks, or did it break contracts? If so, it's "theft". If not, it's not "theft" in the usual legal sense, although it may still be plagiarism.
Given the similarity, I suspect that the Aquatica developer did commit copyright infringement, but that's really for a judge and jury to decide.
of these Facebook games are just rip-offs of old BBS games like Trade Wars.
Its pretty damn hard to be innovative now days.
Most everyone keeps bringing up legalities like theft, copyright, trademark, plagiarism, etc.but not really evaluating the ethical issues for why these laws exist. I think what is important to look at here is intent. Is the intent to make an homage to a pre-existing work or to simply steal all the hard work and pass it off as your own? Is the intent to improve on the work already done or to simply copy it? D&D ripped off a lot of Tolkein, but it created a new universe and placed it in a new environment (the RPG). Paladium Fantasy rips off a lot of D&D, but puts it in Paladium's own universe with their own RPG system. Warcraft rips off D&D as well, but again, new universe, new environment (video games). I don't consider these "clones." The intent of these games were to take pre-existing content and improve upon it and creatively make it their own.
It's an entirely different story when we're looking back at the old days of Atari / NES. How many Gradius clones were there, for instance? Did these games really improve upon the content of Gradius, or simply take the same gameplay the same concepts and simply change how a few things functioned to make a "different" game? Castlevania clones, SMB clones, Defender clones, they all abounded in the land of 8-bit, because it was easy to do it. We don't see as many clones these days unless we're looking at the mod community, and the majority of those modders are attempting to make an homage to their favorite games within another of their favorite games, with no intent of ever making money off it.
I think modding should be encouraged, as it leads to new and better games. I think using inspired content to branch out into new universes and new genres should also be encouraged. It is the actual lazy turn-a-buck copypasta clone games which should be despised --
-- but without them, we wouldn't have many games on our cell phones...
http://bohemian-geek.blogspot.com
And that is what is hurting GIMP and most other OSS projects from actually become more than just a clone.
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted," Henry Ford said, "they would have said a faster horse."
The industries most adamant about copyright are also the ones that crank out the most knock-offs and me-toos. Of course, the game industry is not yet as bad as the movie industry. In the movie industry, they have the process of creating knock-offs and me-toos so refined that the copy frequently gets released BEFORE the original. Of course, often enough, even the "original" is actually yet another movie about X.
The RIAA is at the same time more subtle and more blatant. They don't clone songs, they clone "artists" to the point that they're practically interchangable.
We should think about the reason why developers clone someone elses product. It can cut down amount of work by half, if you just look how someone else combined the elements required for a game, and then implement exactly those modules that were present in the original. It reduces creativity to do so, and thus cuts down the state space that needs to be managed to get it fully working. Most professional developers can immediately see from existing software product what software modules were required to implement it. This makes it attractive for those that want to create something bigger than what they have resources to do.
Games take huge amount of effort to build. With 2 years of work, you cannot expect to get a very popular game. Clones of games are mostly useful for implementing the same game for more than one platform by the original developer, or his publisher. In fact I've seen publishers buy original games from their developers, and then build clones of it for different platforms to build a better product to sell on the market. The fact is that a game will not be successful if it is not available via multiple channels which provide network effects.
If you build an exact clone of someone elses product, you should have a permission from original author. Otherwise you'll end up in trouble. Just because original author has not decided to utilize some platform or market area, does not mean that you can fill that market with your custom clone. My understanding is that these issues are mostly important for commercial publishers of products. But in the end, the developers will get burned if they decide to build a clone, since no publisher is able to sell a clone against wishes of original authors.
Exclusive copyright contracts between publishers and authors makes the situation a little strange. The original author is unable to improve the product and resell it via different channel or platform -- only the publisher can build a clone or improved versions of it. So many platforms will never see a version of the product and developers are prevented from making their work available in multiple market areas. Publishers need a permission from original author, but they often insist on exclusive contracts. In a big world like ours and universal copyability of software, restricting products to just one market area where that single publisher is present seems a little waste. If you're a developer and have used several years of your time to build a software product, and then all the work is wasted because of exclusive contract between publisher and developer, it does not seem very efficient use of resources.
But probably there was a good reason why this system works like this. I just don't know what that reason is. But I trust the government to fix the system once they see there is a problem. Not just follow the advice of those that shout loudest, but also think the system as a whole. Every player is contributing something important to the process of producing digital works. They all have a role in it, and we developers don't need to understand it fully to be part of it.
I've been playing a small Capture the Flag game on and off for many years now called ARC (Attack Retrieve Capture). Throughout the years its changed many hands going from TEN to WON to Sierra and eventually Sierra decided that it would never be profitable to run the game and decided to shut it down. They refused to turn the game over to the fan base to allow them to continue using the game. Luckily for the ARC community someone had spent the time to create a very good clone of the game called Spark. If it hadn't been for game cloning a small but dedicated community of players would have been destroyed.
Try it out yourself: www.spark-hq.net
At what point do clones represent a genre? Reference Material: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25003