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Copying Trumps Creating For FarmVille Creator Zynga
theodp writes "The good news for Zynga is that it scored the cover of SF Weekly. The bad news is that the FarmVillains cover story starts out by describing the secret to the toast-of-Silicon-Valley company's success thusly: 'Steal someone else's game. Change its name. Make millions. Repeat.' SF Weekly says interviews conducted with several former Zynga workers indicate that the practice of stealing other companies' game ideas — and then using Zynga's market clout to crowd out the games' originators — was business as usual. 'I don't ****ing want innovation,' one ex-employee recalled Pincus saying. 'You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.' Another quipped that 'Zynga's motto is "Do Evil."' Valleywag piles on with an item on the existence of Zynga's underground 'Platinum Purchase Program,' reportedly geared towards making players known as 'whales' part with a minimum of $500 at a time for imaginary credits."
What nice people they turned out to be.
But... but... it's not stealing. It's copyright violation. You can't steal from somebody if they still have the original copy. (close captioning for the sarcasm impaired, that was sarcasm.).
Captain Obvious to the Obviousmobile!
From what I remember, Farm Town had better features than FarmVille (you could actually chat with other players, you could go to other farms, see people there and help harvest their fields). But it was a flakier game, more prone to crashing.
Screw Zynga. People need to immediately stop playing these money-draining pavlovian flash games
Okay, I'm sad to say I've given more of my time then I'd like to Facebook games. I'm also happy to say that I've managed to reform myself. Finally broke myself free (and am in the process of "de-friending" people who I friended just for the player boost).
This shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone. Lots of games in arcades ripped off competitors. The only difference with Zynga is that its much more visible to people.
Heck, between the limited game mechanics available, they actually only have one or two games, with LOTS of reskinning between different flavors of them. Hopefully this will encourage more innovation but the sad fact is, that it will only discourage innovation, since if you DO come up with something fun and innovative, there is the concern that someone like Zynga will come along and just rip it off lock/stock/barrel, so why bother?
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
It's refreshing to hear some honesty in business. Don't pretend your product is revolutionary. Don't try to change the world. Just make money using proven methods. That's good, honest business right there.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I understand them not wanting to go through the hassle of wire transfers for everyone, that's where the ease of credit cards come in. I think it's good of them to offer this fee avoiding method to big time users. They're obviously passing the savings back onto the user in the form of bonus. As for the complaints about wasting money... how much do you pay for cable tv every month? At least these games are social and interactive. I don't play any zynga games myself but do play some free MMO's and pay-to-play MMO's as well and have no problem spending money on things I enjoy. And no.. I do not pay for cable tv, and only use my tv set for netflix and console.
Zynga sounds like an evil name to me. Darth Zynga, Lord Zynga, Master Zynga all sound like good villain names to me.
my wife used to buy the scratch off tickets and once in a while i used to take the winning ones to the store to cash them out. i noticed that they scan the bar code to verify a winning ticket. and most of the people i see buying them scratch them off with hope and dreams.
farmville is not that different than most RPGs except its freemium. most RPG's the game play is very repetitive with minor rewards along the way. farmville is free to start and you pay if you want the rewards faster.
I think this idea started with Napoleon and his practice of giving soldiers ribbons for bravery in battle. people would risk their lives for a colored piece of cloth
It sure works for them!
So they are like Blizzard?
if you're parting with $500 for game 'credits', you most certainly deserve to be put out to pasture.
Zynga's underground 'Platinum Purchase Program,' reportedly geared towards making players known as 'whales' part with a minimum of $500 at a time for imaginary credits.
They sound more like cows to me - prime for the milking.
He seemed like a nice guy back then.
I don't understand the people railing against Facebook-based or other games because of the so-called issue of paying real money for in-game credits. People put in real quarters to play a video games at the arcade, they subscribe to World of Warcraft and other MMORGs.
You're not paying for credits, you're paying for entertainment provided by the game.
So let's see if I understand the situation. They are ruthless competitors who make highly popular games and use their strength to push out competitors. Nothing they are doing is illegal, but of course people are whining about it anyway.
Sounds like the system is working as intended.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Robot chickens don't defecate, so you wouldn't have gotten any $hit.
this goes back years. Microsoft used to do the same thing. they would visit a company, see a product, decline to buy it and then it would come up in the next version of WIndows. lately i see that Windows has a lot of third party licensed software. Apple is buying up small companies and last week there was news how Apple stopped doing business with a design firm that showed off an ipad lookalike. apple pays others to design products or parts of them.
big companies with herds of MBA's take years to do anything and then it's so bad no one wants to use it. a few guys in a garage always innovate. look at YouTube, Facebook and all the current big names. AOL had a video service years ago and they used the actor from married with children to advertise it on TV. shockingly it died.
Zygna's business model, as the article says, is to just copy a game and then add a whole lot of "spam your friends" features. Unfortunatly, like AOL disks before them, this works and they've got the largest base of gamers on Facebook. The absolute worst part is that other companies saw the success of the "spam like hell and don't worry about the consequences" business model and immediately followed suit, so that all games on Facebook feel the need to post 4 or 5 messages a day to your wall/friends wall/friends messages/email/sms/friends email/etc...
Even big names like EA got into the game. They bought up Playfish earlier and immediately started adding as many "spam your friends" features as they could think of to all of the PF games. Worse, as Facebook adds features to block (automatically or manually) said spam messages, the companies work as fast as possible to get around the blocks. Right now I have half a dozen posts from some damn fugly animal breeding game or something that make it through because they're posted as pictures in the account or something.
Also, if you want to see what unbridled evil look like, pull up any of those games and check out the "free cash offers", which look like an inbox without a spam filter. "Sign up for an UzbeckBank Credit Card and get 100 fake "real money" coins!". Fill out this fake survey with tons of personal information for 10 coins. etc...
I read the internet for the articles.
And I know nothing about Zynga, I just saw this pattern on similar "farming" games on the iPhone.
This is just the natural growth from Mafia wars and Farmville. These games are simplistic games based on a simple mathematical progression formula, and they are designed to make you want to get into the game as often as you can until you can't stand it any more and move on. Then you end up moving onto another game which is similar but then ends up being the exact same game.
When the iPhone came out, two major companies basically had a formula where they created mafia wars clones, then they decided to clone their own games! They made games based on ninjas, racing, spacefaring, transformers ripoffs, westerns, superheroes, etc, but the game was EXACTLY the same, just different names for the weapons, properties and missions. The business model was simple, offer the games for free, get as many people onto the games, offer them free "points" if they spent money on the game, then have them use those points to make themselves ultra powerful faster than us mere mortals who simply wanted to progress with the game normally. Eventually, script kiddies and low level hackers basically tried to get those points for free, because there was a high incentive to do so and the code was relatively simplistic to hack, and you get major hackers running around in the game killing every honest person and making their life hell so all those people move onto a new game... which was just a version of the old game in a new wrapper. Eventually the rich kiddies would come to dominate that game because they had the money, and the script kiddies would come to "0wn" that game too and ruin it and make everyone move on again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
These types of games are stupid, and are designed to get large payouts from a few stupid rich people who wipe their asses with $100. The games are not meant to be complex, and are meant to be easily copied by the creators, so it's easy for someone else to copy them as well. So it becomes a mad dash for the next shiny means of distracting people and saying "hey if you want to be L337 maybe you should give me $500 for some power pills!" And in order to keep ahead of script kiddies you have to basically perform a refresh of the business model by releasing a new game every now and then that's exactly like the old game but just looks different. So all of this is entirely unsurprising. No one is trying to inject any quality here or distinguish themselves. Doing so would cost more money and this isn't about investment, it's about quick very short term profits. The spammers have branched out and are happy that placed like Facebook and the iPhone have made it so easy to develop and distribute stupid simple games.
Far be it from me to stop these evil people from stealing from the rich, but for the rest of us, to paraphrase WOPR, the only way to win these games is by not playing.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Pioneers get killed.
Univac, IMSA, MITS, Digital Research, Visicorp, DEC, Control Data.....
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
have been playing too much Mafia Wars
Doesn't it sound pretty close to following the Microsoft business techniques?
This has been happening every since Video Games were invented.
Just take a look at the number of copies of popular games. Pac Man is probably THE most copied game in existence.
Bootleg games in the Arcade Industry was this exact model, except they went a little further and tried to make the copy of the game as close to the original as possible.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
You know there is nothing original in Star Wars, or in Avatar? It's all recycled material lifted from earlier, less rich&famous sources.
It's the same for inventions, the guy who ends up with the patent isn't necessarily the guy who innovated.
You can't take the sky from me...
Zynga was actually the tipping point for me closing my Facebook account. The privacy issues didn't harm me since I didn't put in any information you couldn't find in a phonebook, but the endless stream of "Alice reamed Bob's mafia in AssWars!" messages killed it for me.
You can patent a game, or get a design patent for the distinctive board design.
Unlike copyright, you have to apply for patent before the infringement. Unlike copyright registration, which costs about $40, patent registration costs a non-trivial sum of money. And unlike copyright, a patent will expire.
Except that they ripped off the "FarmTown" game
As if FarmTown didn't copy Harvest Moon in the first place.
I'm not sure how it isn't a total copyright violation
From US Copyright Office publication FL108: "Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form."
I'm all for abolishing the copyright, and this isn't even violating the copyright.
If your idea is good, it should be adopted and spread. You shouldn't get money or even recognition for the idea, just the satisfaction that the world is a slightly better place because of your contribution.
There is a difference between:
To use an example from a more standard game (which I don't play at all mind you), how much fun would poker be if you got dealt 5 cards, but if you wanted to pay $15 more you could get a 6th card that other players didn't have? It would unbalance the game, and everyone who wanted to compete would be forced to also buy extra cards to keep the balance up. Only the rich would play and the real winner would be the house, selling off the extra cards. That is the model many MMO game companies want us to accept. Sadly there are a lot of players who see the fact that they have cash on hand as justification for their lack of sportsmanship and willingness to get ahead of other players who are better, by buying the edge required.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Hundreds of thousands of people hunched in front of glowing monitors, clicking their mice and banging their keyboards. Not one of them actually talking to each other, just posting game-generated messages about game progress, wishlists, and canned in-game requests.
Where is the "social" aspect of such games? Even FPS games with voice headsets are more "social" because they allow/encourage the players to yell at each other!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Doesn't it sound pretty close to following the Microsoft business techniques?
It should. It's called being a second mover. Being first to market with something sometimes provides a market advantage but often being second is more valuable because you can learn from the mistakes of the other guy. Furthermore you don't have the risk and expense of discovering or establishing a marketplace for the product. It's basically a part of the free rider problem. Being a second mover carries risks (you might not be able to follow fast or well enough) but it is a time tested and successful business strategy.
I agree that this is a weird/annoying feature, but it's existed in other games too, and doesn't seem to offend people (including me) as much there. For example, Magic: The Gathering has exactly that property where you can spend money to buy better cards. Is it that they've balanced it better, so the proportional effect of card-buying is less (you can't purely buy yourself victory)? I do think they've moved in that direction with the current set of rules, which is probably a good thing, but back in the days I played (mid-90s, mostly Revised/3rd Ed), there was a quite big effect to be had from buying a handful of powerful/rare/expensive cards, and people didn't seem to think that ruined the game.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
But the games I've seen that use this model aren't particularly competitive games. Someone having different crops or larger fields in Farmville doesn't do much to inhibit someone else's enjoyment of the game. There isn't really a concept of winning or losing, just progress, and one person's progress in mostly unaffected by the progress of others.
There may be some games that use this monetization model with a win/lose paradigm, but I imagine they'd have a hard time keeping people who are unwilling to put up real money.
Of course, Magic as written (if not necessarily as actually played) had the ante mechanic to balance that out -- so, sure, your deck of awesome expensive cards could probably beat my bargain basement deck most of the time, but when you won, you won one of my worthless cards, whereas when I won, I won a valuable card.
But there is no competition in Farmville... Buying credits gives you no "leg up" on your friends.
I have a bad feeling about this...
Wait, that would make a good game!
Zynga's already playing it in real life.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181984/
Ever speculate that "Zynga" and "RICO" would make for some snappy headlines together...?
Civilization II has its core rules as a clearly-formatted plaintext file. Might be able to monkey with that to achieve similar results. (So far, about all I've done is 'skin' it with different names and tweak AI leader personalities, but I'm going to try more-extensive changes eventually.)
Their savegame files require a hex editor; I've never tried that.
Different from applying cheatcodes in-game I suppose.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Lots of games go through this balancing process, and most settle on something that lets you save time through purchases, without conferring an unfair advantage in competition. Offering level 80 characters for purchase advantages no one. Offering the +9000 Vorpal Sword to paying users is the kind of unfairness you're talking about. And few games do the latter anymore, because there is a long list of games that died out in response to this practice.
... for the reassurance that I am not missing a bloody thing by NOT being on Facebook.
It is entirely possible for people to cynically copy and use high production standards to create something flashy. But it is impossible to replicate that exciting quantity which only comes when a creator is truly jazzed about the work. Of course, creators working with old ideas, if there is genuine creative excitement involved, will inflate those copied ideas so that they become their own fresh entities. But that doesn't happen very often, which is why so often polished media is boring and lackluster.
Being able to tell the difference is variously called, "Having Taste", or "Snobbery". I also like to call it, "Not wanting to be seen as merely a consumer to be manipulated into buying something."
I want to share in the experience of genuine creative acts! When that energy isn't present, all you have is a bit of polished, flashy media with no soul. Yawn.
Souls recognize souls.
-FL
you beat me to it.
Anyway, the second mover can often come in with variations that happen to be seen as an improvement, and the first mover has to follow up. Think business Darwinism here?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
irony.
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
There's a difference between making a game influenced by another game and purposely ripping off a popular game in detail just to make money off it's success.
In short: Fuck Zynga.
So are you for or against the inclusion of Quadrapassel in GNOME?
You'd think if people were going to waste money on a game, they'd at least pick a good game, and one which capped how much they could spend. Or at least pick a gambling game where there was *some* chance of a return on their money. Zynga really is an evil company and for the life of me I do not understand why Google or anybody else would have anything to do with them. Zynga are not the only provider of these godawful titles, and even if they were, social networking sites would probably be better off without these parasites.
Played a few browser-based MMOs obsessively for years and had finally had enough of that, so I walked out after the end of the round of one of them. I disengaged gradually from that one, but at least I knew not to start with new rounds and/or new games.
And then I almost immediately find a new habit. aargh!
That reminds me, some copiers are better than others, because of the amount of originality they mix in, and combining multiple influences. Zynga fails in that department, it seems.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
worked for me
You'll notice similar trends in other "Americanized" martial arts diciplins.
Typically "Americanized" systems will have
10 Belts...Black ... 5 Ranks of Black
Whereas more traditional systems will have.
5 Belts...Black ... 10 Ranks of Black
This makes comparing belt colors kind of usless between systems (individual teachers are very different in some systems making them even harder to compare)
Many Dojo's treat Martial Arts as a business, and they realize that
-People like things where they are more frequently rewarded
-Kids are your big profit center
and adapt their training methods to suit.
I have no inclination to play games where having a lot of cash can buy you substantial benefits that other players can't. However, I understand that there are some people out there, to whom $500 is like $1 to me. If Zynga can convince them to drop that kind of cash on their games, I say more power to 'em. If someone is dropping $500 and they don't really *have* the money, that person needs some help, in much the same way that anyone else with an addiction and possible other psychological problems, needs help.
Mostly, I view such games the same way I view high-stakes games of poker or other casino games - I simply can't afford to play, so I won't. For those who can afford to play, it might be a foolish way to lose their money, but hey, it's their money to lose, and I bet that whoever gets the money (the house/Zynga) will likely spend that money more responsibly. Or, you can look at it like a Rolex or luxury yacht. Some rich businessman or celebrity spends big money on a luxury good. You might think, well that money could have fed and clothed a lot of people. Well, even when people spend a lot of money on 'stupid' things, the money they spend provides jobs (often a lot of well-paid jobs) to a lot of other people, so they *are* feeding and clothing lots of people even as they 'waste' their money.
When someone buys a $30 Million yacht, for example, they provide jobs to the skilled craftsmen (and unskilled assembly workers) who work on building the boat, the engineers who designed the boat, the accountants and marketers and salesmen and managers who work for the boat company, plus the boat company buys materials, parts, services, advertising from *other* companies, so that money provides further jobs at the 'upstream' providers that the boat companies pays. Also, it will typically cause the person buying the luxury item to pay a large amount of tax (although, sometimes they find creative ways to avoid taxes), plus the taxes paid by the boat company, employees of the boat companies, any suppliers for the boat company and their employees, etc).
So, in the end, if Zynga can convince some fool to part with $500 on their 'free-to-play' games, I have no problem with that - as long as there's no fraud going on (e.g. charging players who weren't expecting/didn't agree to charges, etc). Although, if other players are unaware that such a program exists which might be advantaging the people paying $500 against the people not paying, and not aware that the program exists, then that does seem a little shady - if people knowingly get into that situation, I don't blame Zynga, but if Zynga hides these deals, it's a bit like rigging a sporting event for bribes. If everyone *knows* the rigging is going on, but they still enjoy the game, well then, that's up to them.
So all that time I spent playing with my NES Advantage controller with the joystick and turbo buttons was actually me demonstrating my lack of sportsmanship? I feel like such a cad.
How is that different from an athlete buying better (or any!) shoes or better golf clubs etc.?
There was also a 4 of a kind rule to limit how many of those cards you could put into your deck. Sure you could own 5000 copies but you can only put 4 in to play with. And even with the minimum amount of 60 cards thats 1/15. Plus the cards are balanced so there is no instant win. If you actually look at more recent sets, the rares are now BIGGER in terms of power difference compared to older cards. Most people playing tournaments in MTG tend to be able to afford 4ofs whatever they need anyways. Its not a pay to win situation as there are very strict limits as to the cards.
Zynga is totally different. its directly proportional to how much money you spend. MTG once you get 4 of every card, its pointless buying more. You could buy the MINIMUM $500 package from zynga a couple times and you could still buy more.
insert funny sig here
The solution to this is to design the game so that it's possible for other players to cause mr. moneybags over there to lose his investment. EvE Online is a great example of this, because while there are sanctioned ways for you to turn real money into in-game money and then use that to buy a superpowerful ship, it is entirely possible for other players to go and blow up your fancy ship. Advantage over, all you're left with is an embarrassing killmail.
Not only does the game company get to make some extra money, but there is a huge potential for laughs when some kid borrows his parents' credit card, spends a hundred bucks on a big ship, and loses it twenty minutes later.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
What is it that determines whether a jerk sticks around long enough to succeed and become someone at the top that others excuse and follow or is fired with a "do not rehire" mark on his HR record?
Perhaps the gameplay of FarmVille offers a lesson: you'll put up with shit if you get a little candy now and then, with a promise of a big payout later. Guys like Pincus have a knack for showing just enough promising results (cash profit) to whet the appetite while exploiting the "compulsion loop" of the people they work with. Nice work, if you can stand yourself.
A similar disparity has happened with USFA ratings (fencing you insensitive clod). You get rating for winning tournaments, with the size of the tournament and the value of others' ratings in the tourney determining what rating you get. On the east coast, where fencing is more popular and there are more tournaments, it's easier to get a rating because, well, everyone has a rating. In the midwest, if I want a 'C' rating, I'll pretty much have to beat out David Bell, the ex-marine who is my nemesis. Nice guy though. Only guy I've met who dodges up. Literally, vertically upwards.
Ewwww
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
"Do no evil" + "Do evil" = kaboom? Scary...
I'm not sure how you define a traditional system, but out of the five Japanese martial arts disciplines that I have practiced none that I can recall had 5 kyu (colored blets). I would say 6 kyu is the most common, but 10 kyu systems also exist. But you could be right about american dojos treating martial arts as a business rather than an art. In Europe, and as far as I know, Japan, trainers are almost always teaching without any compensation at all. And this includes even the most proficient masters. You teach because it means doing a service to the art -- some even travel to other countries for a few years to establish dojos and try to spread the art. Such efforts are often considered, apart from mental and physical skill, when handing out the higher ranked black belts.
Open source software clones other software constantly. You even have the classic taskbar, start menu, "File Edit View Window Help" menus, and more. Why is it wrong for Zynga to do this?
To be honest, that might be an interesting variant of poker. People could buy a more cards, but the money goes into the pot. I'd hope i was dealt a good hand in my original 5 and watch those suckers chasing flushes and straights as they franticly bought more cards. In fact that sounds a lot like texas hold-em. Either way it comes down to a battle of wills. Blackjack is a more common game that allows you to pay more to get more cards. You can play multiple hands if you want, though that really doesn't increase your odds, just the payout potential, or you can double down.
as far as the only winner being the house goes, that's exactly the way it is. You have a chance to win, but you probably won't. The house, however, stands to come out ahead every day. People still like gambling, and they aren't even getting anything at all. not even the images of a fake little farm.
Farmville isn't really a zero sum competition either. The funds of the loser aren't given to the winner (unless you see the users as the losers and zynga as the winner). I don't think you can steal someone's farm. It's more of a pissing contenst as far as i can tell. people want a big farm like people want to hop up their cars. Both seem like a silly thing to spend a lot of money on, but people do. Why begrudge them the chance to pursue their goals (lame as they may be)?
You've never doubled down on blackjack I take it?
"pay more if you think it will be towards your advantage" is pretty standard.
Your analogy isn't the same because poker is a game you're playing against other players, whereas most of the free-to-play games like farmville and over MMORPGs don't require you to compete directly with others for enjoyment in the game. Even so, pretty much every game has a system where you could buy better stuff to get ahead of the competition. With basketball, you couple spend a couple hundred bucks on shoes to gain some advantage. In paintball, billiards, golf, tennis, bowling, skateboarding, etc, you could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on premium equipment that is a lot better than the stuff you rent if you're just a weekend player instead of having a serious hobby or playing professionally. Same goes with farmville. If you want to just play for fun, go for it... if you want to take it seriously (although I don't know why you would), you could pay a bit more money.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I know for karate origonally there were only two belts, white, for learner and black for master. The master had a black belt because it was unlucky to wash your belt and by the time you got to be master it was black from dirt.
If it is a software game that software can be copyrighted.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I used to be an M:tG addict a few years ago (12 to be specific), and I think on the tournament scene, the best most competitive and interesting games weren't the ones you played with pre-built decks (unless there were ceiling rules like say, only uncommon and common cards) but the games that involved everyone buying a set of packs and either: making a deck from those (which, while fun did involve more luck) or doing a booster draft competition.
Even more fun is getting together with some of your friends or the in-store gang and doing a "pass the trash" tourney (similar to booster draft) which re-used the spare cards that no one really needed anymore but were still fun to play with.
Money was always an issue, but compared to other activities like skiing, skateboarding, etc, this was not that expensive if you didn't get sucked into the whole trading aspect. Plus you could sell off your unused/unwanted cards... they were still physical items.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Sorry but FOSS games are almost all direct rip-offs of NES games. How many FOSS games go on to achieve mainstream popularity? It seems to go the other way where mainstream popularity inspires a FOSS clone.
but they also added a lot of new components to their gameplay. Just look at how many Diablo clones there are.
ripping off indy developers is not.
I fning hate facebook users. I really hate the recent trend where people assume that everyone is on facebook and expect you to find out about important dates by visiting their god awful mess of pictures and comments. People often think I am screwing with them when I say that I program for a living and don't use facebook or myspace. They think I am joking or don't want to give them access.
I dunno about where you're from in the US, but in Hawaii, Oregon and Washington it's always been 10 kyu 10 dan. If you don't understand the basics about the kyu system and you can't make the recognition that an orange belt in one dojo and a yellow belt with a stripe are both 7 kyu... well, the one with the problem might be you, not the martial arts.
I don't know where you got this "5 ranks of black" thing because most martial arts, even americanized ones, still go through the organization in their home country. For example, Taekwondo, wherever I've gone in the US, has sent their black belt application to the Kukkiwon federation in South Korea for review. It's how you get your certification as a black belt, and it comes with a license card.
Maybe you think there's 5 ranks of black because your instructor or your kid's instructor was a 6th degree black belt and couldn't promote any of his students higher than that? Like I said, Washington/Oregon/Hawaii, the places I've lived in the US, all have GREAT martial arts (I've trained in taekwondo, goju-ryu karate, muay thai, wing chun, jujitsu, judo, aikido, and traditional boxing over the past 16 years, in different places in America and abroad--I'm currently at a K1 gym in South Korea). Who knows, though, I could have just got really lucky. But pretty much everyone sticks to the 10 kyu 10 dan system because their reputation among the other schools will be shit if they don't, and reputation means a lot when your business is based on parents enrolling their children in your class.
At the end of the day, who gives a fuck about the belts, though. I teach little kids taekwondo when I travel back to Hawaii for extended periods of time and it's more about the confidence and discipline my school imparts to them than it is their belt color. Give a kid a black belt, for all I care, if it helps him become a successful, confident young man or woman. Teach them how to stand straight, look people in the eye, punch hard, kick to the chest and not to start fights, but be able to end them in one way or another, and yeah, I'd give that kid a black belt. It makes him happy and gives him a sense of accomplishment and encourages him to work hard towards his goals.
If he's not the best fighter, who cares? Some people complain that it gives kids a false sense of confidence, but one of the core parts of the martial arts is to respect other people, and that includes their ability to win against you in a fight, regardless of belt color or training or anything. If they disregard that teaching, well, they might learn the lesson I tried to teach them by getting their ass kicked. If they're that type of kid, I probably won't promote them--but if they're that type of kid, they would have been in that situation with or without a belt.
Hard-working, intelligent, nice young kids, though? I'll give them a black belt any day if they work for it. It's not like people have a great impression of classical arts anyway. I'm not gonna deny a kid that worked hard and has a strong mind a black belt because he can't beat someone in a fight. But they WILL work hard for it. Believe that.
-People like things where they are more frequently rewarded
Good observation. I play NTW and have recently been awarded the Conquistador's medal within STEAM. Don't know why, something with doing something I hadn't done before. Do I care? No.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Regardless of the detailed mechanism, the end result is the same: entertainment.
While you're at it, why not chastise people for spending money at Baskin & Robbins? After all, ice cream is not as nutritious as fresh fruit.
Before there was Wolf3D, before there were even textures on the walls, there was MIDI-Maze, possibly the first LAN FPS.
Is a rip-off of your own software a copyvio or even a patent violation?
Depending on the publishing terms, it might be a contract violation or a copyvio. It has happened to John Fogerty.
Poker isn't a game designed for that extra card to be in play. A lot of newer MMOs are. I'm not saying you are wrong here, but you're pushing the kind of agenda that clogs the forums of many games I play - people whining because they want everything cheap - be that cheap in time or cheap in money.
Pinball works much the same way, might as well just tape two or three extra zeros to the right of the scoreboard for all the good it does. So does software version numbering: it's meaningless, there's no international standard for "martial arts beltification" and you shouldn't worry about it.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Arcade games do this, though not all of them obviously, one of my favourite cabs that somehow I suddenly can't remember the name of was a two/4 player sit down racing game set in monaco and you could pay £1 to play, selecting your cars, or pay £2 and get to choose the super duper car.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
You'll notice similar trends in other "Americanized" martial arts diciplins.
Typically "Americanized" systems will have
10 Belts...Black ... 5 Ranks of Black
Whereas more traditional systems will have.
5 Belts...Black ... 10 Ranks of Black
This makes comparing belt colors kind of usless between systems (individual teachers are very different in some systems making them even harder to compare)
Many Dojo's treat Martial Arts as a business, and they realize that
-People like things where they are more frequently rewarded -Kids are your big profit center
and adapt their training methods to suit.
Actually, a Kung-Fu school that I was in for a while had 2 belts. White, and then black. Yes, there were intermediate ranks, but it was always funny when friends heard i was doing martial arts and asked what belt I had, and the answer was always white.
It's that Japanese mania for grading and evaluating. None of that stuff existed in the old days in Okinawa. Nor did it exist in China, where some of the roots of Karate originated. Which is not to say the ranking system is bad.
I see it as part of the cultural genius of Japan to study and systematize. I've read a fair amount of Japanese literature (in translation), and you can see it in their poetry which becomes crystalized with convention over the centuries, then shoots off new creative buds.
Having studied in a no-rankings Chinese kwoon for many years, I can see advantages and disadvantages to the Japanese belt system. The greatest advantage is that it ensures consistent training, that everyone gets the full curriculum and the senior students continue to work on the basic curriculum. The biggest drawback is that people read too much into the ranking system, particularly the black belt rank, which becomes a goal in itself. That's good and bad. Black belt level should really the beginning of serious study, but it is often the point where people stop learning and drop out.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
True, but you pay for arcade games for the chance to play through the entire game. You pay for farmville to finish the game quicker, that's like putting 4x more coins in a machine so you can play a condensed version of the game or start with invulnerability
Since no one ever seems to mention it...
FarmVille seems to (I've never played, just watched) rip off of Harvest Moon rather heavily. The main difference is that FarmVille is goal-oriented while Harvest Moon is more Sims-like with little to no pre-defined goals.
Farmville really can't be compared to poker. In poker you play against other players. In Farmville you are really just playing aginst yourself. There are some elements that say "You have surpassed so and so" but the outcome is that you get to share an egg or bee or whatever is being collected with everyone else. So the more everyone surpasses each other the better for everyone.
It can actually be good. I have a friend in Europe that was in a depression for years and just couldn't get it together. Started playing Farmville and has started working on his website again. Really likes checking to see who is on even it he doesn't actually talk to them. Differ3ent time zones and all.
The problem lies in that it is slow. I call it click and wait, click and wait. It should only take about 15 minutes to do everything on your farm but in reality takes about 45 minutes to an hour. And you multiply that time by the number of farms a person has. Yes there are those that have multiple farms.
At least you get a choice. It's actually very democratic. You can pay or not pay. If you want all the "special" things and get your rewards immediately then you pay. If you don't want the "special" items and don't mind waiting for your rewards then you don't pay.
Yes, the contrast between the systematic, sometimes almost mechanical, way of seeing things in Japanese budo tradition as opposed to the more organic and paradigm based Chinese approach is quite interesting, and very obvious if you ever come into contact with both cultures. Not only in the ranking system (or lack thereof).
Where a Chinese would perhaps tell you to, let's say, move your arm like a serpent, a Japanese instructor would deconstruct the motion into steps and tell you the how many degrees you should bend you elbow at certain points.