
2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play - J2K
http://mobilemavericks.eu/comment/2048-nihilistic-face-free-play/
======
austinz
What a strange world the author lives in where someone's free labor of love
(which, incidentally, looks and plays very differently than Threes, and was
originally released on a whole different platform) is somehow more of a moral
offense than the sleazy nickel-and-diming Skinner boxes which pass as mobile
games these days.

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brownbat
> What isn’t alright by me is a game that releases for free and makes no
> attempt to make money,

This article is a good candidate for Poe's Law.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law)

For the Onion version, I recommend the headline:

"The very idea that someone would put out any content for free is appalling,"
writes blogger.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I really hope you're right. Still, I don't think anything about it is blatant
enough to read as even an attempt at humor. It seems to me that he's either
sincere or an uncommonly subtle troll.

~~~
sitkack
Bill Gates would have rants about open source that were almost identical. To
paraphrase, "How DARE they release megabytes of code for FREE, and code I
CANNOT USE, SITTING RIGHT THERE but out of reach!!!!"

I believe it is genuine poeslaw, after having witnessed the Flappy Guy bow out
(and of the riches) and seeing a viral phenomenon sweep his daily news scene
while having no products with comparable traction sent the poor fellow over
the edge.

------
wvenable
I feel this is the slippery slope of intellectual property. People, such as
this author, are beginning to believe that carving off different intellectual
ideas into individual monopolies is a moral imperative.

Copyright is insufficient. The mere idea of tile-moving number game must be
protected so the "original" creator gets paid. Regardless of whether the idea
is so trivially simple that a programmer can reproduce it as a hobby and feels
no need to own it.

~~~
sitkack
This is true with movie plots.

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reality_czech
Welcome to the future, where being unselfish is considered evil, consumption
is the only good, and sharing is a crime.

As Franz Kafka wrote, "we live in an age which is so possesed by demons, that
soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy,
as if it were a crime."

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neotek
Ultimately, why should anyone care whether 2048 hurts Threes' sales? Should
developers (or anyone for that matter) have any obligation to consider the
impact of their work on someone else's product's commercial viability?

~~~
TophWells
Yes, if you're selling your stuff on the free market you shouldn't expect that
your competitors will go easy on you. If they do, somebody somewhere is
probably violating an antitrust law.

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thaumasiotes
Well this is sad. I think this sentence sufficiently summarizes the article:

> What isn’t alright by me is a game that releases for free and makes no
> attempt to make money

Are you releasing work for free? You're an evil nihilist.

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nzp
Wow, just wow. I'm not exactly a youngster without life experience about what
kinds of sleaze bags people can be, but I'm still amazed and shocked when I
see the liberties such people allow themselves in what they say or write. That
a grown, sane person has such a lack of morals to allow oneself to drop to
such levels of absurdity and dishonesty to accuse people of _nihilism_ for
giving away something valuable for free to all to use and improve is deeply
troubling. This is sociopathic behaviour, plain and simple.

This is about mere games, and I hate to trivialize serious social events by
comparing them to such mundane things, but these kinds of drivel always remind
me of McCarthy--Welch exchange in the Senate hearings[0]. "Have you no sense
of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"... What
else can you say to such persons... And yet since they don't have any sense of
decency or shame it doesn't bother them when you confront them with their
despicable behaviour.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1eA5bUzVjA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1eA5bUzVjA)

------
blueblob
I must be pure evil and morally deprived because I liked 2048 and even worse,
I use linux, a free operating system that clearly copied ideas from paid
operating systems for the sole purpose of devaluing them

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PhasmaFelis
...Did he just say that he's totally fine with a big corporation stealing
people's ideas to make money, but stealing ideas and making them available for
free really pisses him off?

This is as simultaneously stupid, offensive, and irrelevant as if he'd said
that 2048 was designed by a secret cabal of Jews to devalue the work of honest
white men. Why is this on Hacker News? Are we hosting the ramblings of madmen
now?

------
dognotdog
I have heard of Threes only because of 2048, and by extrapolating wildly, I
can only conclude that there is no factual basis to it hurting Threes' sales.

~~~
devrelm
Especially considering that the 2048 website links to the Threes website.

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nperez
I bought Threes after first hearing about 2048.

I like 2048 better but they are very different.

~~~
doorhammer
I'm wondering what three's sales trajectory looked like after 2048 came out.
It'd be interesting if it

I just bought it because of reading this article, not because I felt bad or
like it was right, but because I've been really interested in the various
plays on this mechanic.

K. Played it for a few minutes and I'm definitely going to give it more time,
but so far I agree that they're really different games.

One thing the 2048 clones have made me realize is how a minor tweak, or a
minor miss in the recreation can dramatically alter the tone or fun of the
game.

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protomyth
Are we sure this is not a weird "funny" site? The other articles are kind of
odd. Also, Threes and 2048 play very different, so I would say the are in the
same genre but not a ripoff.

------
rabbyte
I would have most likely never purchased and played Three's if it weren't for
2048. I almost never download mobile games, even more rarely do I browse for
mobile games. This underscores the importance of giving fair attribution to
your inspirations as was done in the case of many 2048 games with a credit to
Three's. Having said that, I thought Three's was terrible and regretted my
purchase. Maybe someone can write an article about how paid games are evil for
that reason or just not make wild assumptions like these in the first place.

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LoganCale
So by this logic is all free and open source software "nihilistic"?

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caspianm
If the author had a reason for why they didn't like non-monetised free clones,
it wasn't clear to me, so I'm going to make up some possible reasons, so
there's something substantive to discuss.

Monetised free clones still support the market for game developers (i.e. they
can have and pay employees).

Monetised free clones provide a model other for-profit developers to copy,
whereas non-monetised clones can destroy a business model without suggesting
an alternative one.

Monetised free clones have a motive that he can relate to more, and developers
supporting themselves is more worthwhile than whatever motivates developers of
non-monetised games.

Monetised free clones can have more resources and incentive for creating good
games.

Monetised free clones do not devalue the game as much as non-monetised free
clones, as there's still a cost, if not so direct.

Competition from free clones in general harms the original developers, but
for-profit clone makers are likely to be harder to persuade to stop, let alone
by using moral arguments, so its only worth arguing against people who do it
for admiration or because it makes them happy, both of which can be reduced by
criticising them publicly.

That's pretty cynical and I've probably got some strawman arguments there, so
I don't want to attribute them all directly to the author.

------
kefka
Instead of complaining about 2048, how about complaining about this:
[http://threesjs.com/](http://threesjs.com/)

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peterhajas
> But it’s also, unfortunately, a low quality knock off of a mobile game
> called Threes.

I recall an HN thread where the author of 2048 claimed to have _never heard_
of Threes until 2048 got popular. His was a clone of
[1024]([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224?mt=8)).

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sheetjs
It's not entirely obvious how many people playing 2048 would pay to play it,
accept an ad-riddled page, or would pay for another game like Threes.

I suspect a large part of the popularity stems from the easily hackable JS
codebase (which is related to the explosion of 2048 variants)

------
fallinghawks
So creative exploration in programming, having fun, and open source are not
only worthless, but damaging, unless monetized? George lives in a sad, sad
world.

------
megablast
> It’s like a Beatles cover band in 1965 somehow becoming globally famous and
> deciding that, not only are they going to screw over John, Paul Ringo and
> George, they’re not fussed about making money and playing to whole stadiums
> for me.

So, it would be better to be a Beatles cover band, and charge. The real
offensive act is giving it away for free.

Never mind that 2048 is clearly different enough to three to be considered
different.

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lotsofmangos
_The problem is that with a game like 2048 around and completely for free,
chances are Threes is going to suffer as a result._

The _game_ appears to be making and playing bizzare iterative clones of 2048
and chances are doesn't sound like very good research. People are going out of
their way to play all variations of 2048, so if anything I'd expect any
similarity in this situation to drive sales.

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51Cards
Open source vs. Paid product. Classic argument. Is throwing it out there for
free unfair to the people who are making a living off of the same product.

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scotty79
Was 2048 actually inspired by threes? OP seems to be pretty sure of that.

~~~
stevewilhelm
"Created by Gabriele Cirulli. Based on 1024 by Veewo Studio and conceptually
similar to Threes by Asher Vollmer." \- from footer of
[http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/](http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/)

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ww520
Is Threes really better? I thought 2048 is much more fun.

------
mattknox
how long after threes came out did 2048 appear?

~~~
mbrubeck
About a month. Threes! came out on February 6 [1], while 2048's git repository
started on March 5 [2] and the game was first published about a week after
that.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/6/5361708/threes-ipad-
iphone-...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/6/5361708/threes-ipad-iphone-
puzzle-game)

[2]
[https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/2048/commit/f4d95b66723cd...](https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/2048/commit/f4d95b66723cd2a3f3bc9db6956320a8db4703df)

------
michaelochurch
This is unfair to 2048.

First, Threes might sell more because of 2048. Also, the games are different
in many core ways. I think people will be inclined to download Threes after
they get bored of 2048.

Also, casual games aren't about mechanics but presentation. (There are plenty
of successful games that are shameless knock-offs.) 2048 went viral because of
aesthetic intangibles. I would call its aesthetic "Spartan", but that actually
works for a game where you have to think (at least, superficially) about
powers of 2.

Finally, the fact that 2048 is free-to-play is not a major threat to the
integrity of the game industry or the quality of what is produced. The game
industry is shitty because most corporate executives are useless, bikeshedding
idiots who subtract more value than one could add in several lifetimes, and
the game industry is not particularly worse or better than any other in that
regard.

It's not 2048's fault and, besides, I doubt that 2048 hurt Threes in the long
run.

