Treading the Fuzzy Line Between Game Cloning and Theft

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 9, 2009 @11:24PM from the welcome-to-the-world-of-policeactioncraft dept.

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?"

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SMB1 may have been the first by tepples · 2009-12-10 01:07 · Score: 0, Troll

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.