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?"
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.
Saints Row 2 (haven't tried the first) is actually much better and IMO more in line with the GTA philosophy than GTA IV. I was surprised how good it was. Bring on the clones. We don't have to play the crappy ones.
which is totally what she said
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.
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.
Not Warhammer Online... Games Workshop put out the original Warhammer, a tabletop miniatures strategy game, back in 1983. Warcraft: Orcs and Humans came out in 1994 and completely ripped off the style as well as many of the gameplay concepts. The way the orcs talk, the races in the game, the art style, it's all blatantly copied from Warhammer. And now some people have the gall to call Warhammer Online's art style a "ripoff" of World Of Warcraft.
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.
Sorry, I don't give a damn about originality. I care about what matches my needs. Obviously a straight 1 to 1 feature clone isn't terribly interesting, but once you're there, you're probably going to want to differentiate your clone somehow, so you'll have to add improvements somewhere. That's where it gets interesting.
It fosters innovation by the virtue of competition. For instance, you make a text editor and have the idea of adding syntax highlighting. Somebody else goes and makes their own editor, also with syntax highlighting. Now you need to do something new to be a better choice, so you add code folding. Then do too, and add a spell checker. And so on. There's your fostering of innovation.
If you had the only editor in existence you wouldn't have a lot of motivation to make it better, you could just keep selling 10 year old code. But that wouldn't be very innovative.
If you're so worried about somebody else copying your idea, get off your ass and improve your.
"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.
GIMP is one
Last I checked the GIMP developers were trying to be innovative, but all the users were screaming "No! Everything must work exactly the same way it does in photoshop!" :-P
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
There's a difference between "never gets bored" and "easily amused".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually Warcraft was originally a licensed Warhammer game, but it got cancelled. Then Blizzard decided to change it just enough to avoid infringement and released it anyway.
Which is why it's so ironic that Warhammer online is accused of being a copy of Warcraft.
Cloning is what caused the videogame crash of 1983. The popular console of the time, Atari VCS/2600, was an open platform with ~25 million users so everyone was trying to create quick clones of previously-created Atari and Activision games. For example: Coconuts is an obvious clone of Kaboom with near-identical play mechanic, but nowhere near as good.
What then happened was a major overload of games, most of which were not worth buying, and consumers got feed up and simply stopped buying. Sales fell-off during 1983, game prices plummeted from $30 to $5, and after Christmas many companies went bankrupt.
I think we're going to see the same thing happen now. There are too many games flying around on Facebook, iPhone, and other net-connected services, people will burn-out, and sales will plummet.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I think that, paradoxically, the tool we have that is inundating us with information (the Internet) is also the greatest weapon against this happening. With the way information is processed, it becomes trivial to sort through all the crap out there and skim the sweet delicious cream from the top of the Intarwebz (ewwww....)
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
When you copy from a small group of well-known identifiable individuals who are still living (or in existence, for corporations), that's "rip off". When you copy from a large group of relatively obscure individuals who are not only dead, but may be unknown and whose descendants don't even know who they are, that's "research".
No, he can't. It's a widespread internet rumor that no one actually can provide real evidence for.