
Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game - gkoberger
http://asherv.com/threes/threemails
======
GuiA
Having a foot in the indie game developer community and another in startups,
it's fascinating to see the HN comments in response to this post.

The indie game developers care about originality, passion, the sweat and hard
months of work, the dedication to the craft. I think the point of Asher's
essay is to show how much love and effort went into it, and that they were
indeed the first to ship a full, polished game with that concept. That's where
their pride and satisfaction comes from.

The startup people care about end user experience, how good the PR is, and
ultimately how numbers matter more than everything else.

I don't think there's a wrong or right vision - it's two very different
communities.

Indie game devs dream of making amazing games with other talented, inspiring
people - and as long as they make enough money to live not too uncomfortably,
they're fine. Their biggest dream is to receive an IGF award and see their
game on Steam. Maybe make enough money to be able to start a studio with a
bunch of their friends, but definitely not to "scale" to EA-size.

Startup people dream of growing their company to Facebook size, making
billions of dollars, scaling, and being on Techcrunch.

It's two very different communities, and it's fun to see the two worlds
collide.

Addendum: if you feel like this post is vindictive, bitter, etc.- remember:
the best way to interpret a view different than yours is to understand that
there is a worldview in which those statements are perfectly coherent,
logical, and meaningful. Asher, Greg, and all the other people mentioned in
this post are successful, highly respected members of the indie game dev
community - not a bunch of guys who are angry for whatever silly reason.

~~~
DanBC
They shipped the first version. They then decide to ise the term "rip offs" \-
even though people developing one of the first very popular rip offs claim to
have never seen Threes!

~~~
MBCook
Are you referring to 2048?

They said they were based on 1024, and 1024 explicitly launched with an app
store description along the lines of "Why waste your money on Threes, we're
free".

EDIT: Found the quote. Surprise surprise it's no longer in their description.

"No need to pay for ThreesGames. This is a simple and fun gift for you, and
it’s free."

~~~
kaliblack
Which 2048 are you referring to? The creator of the one that hit it off on HN
said that they weren't aware of Threes until after it took off [0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373927)

~~~
raldi
The very comment you link to says 2048 was based on 1024. And 1024 was
indisputably based on Threes.

~~~
kaliblack
How does that negate my point?

~~~
zemo
the point is that you cannot download an iOS app without encountering its
description, so to say that you know about 1024 and not Threes is deeply
suspect.

~~~
DanBC
That is incorrect.

Search for a game. The set of games is displayed with an install link and a
screenshot. The description needs some scrolling.

(Edit: bizarrely heavy downvoting in this thread)

------
smacktoward
_> We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it._

I played Threes, and I liked it. And I feel for these guys having to watch
everybody and his brother pile on to the idea they had to work so hard to
tease out into reality.

But here is some hard truth: none of that matters.

Nobody cares how hard you had to work to get from idea to product. All they
care about is _what you have produced_ at the end of all that work. What makes
it better or worse is how it stacks up relative to the competition -- even the
competition that is shamelessly riffing off your core ideas -- not how much
sweat you put into it.

And I gotta say, having played 2048, 1024 and Threes (the Android versions, at
least), I think of the three of them 1024 stands up the best. It takes the
core ideas in Threes and sands them down into a game that is easier to grasp
and plays faster, without becoming so simple (a la 2048) that it becomes a
game a script can beat. Threes makes you swipe-swipe-swipe after every game to
get your score and "sign" it (why do I care about signing it?) before you can
play again; 1024 just moves you straight on to the next game. Mobile games
need to be simple and streamlined, and 1024 understands that imperative better
than Threes does.

I say all this to help others understand why I would point to this essay as an
example of how _not_ to respond to a problem like a barrage of cloners. It's
because this essay sees the world entirely from the developers' perspective --
look how hard we worked! Look how long we labored! Look how subtle our
decisions were! -- which is exactly the wrong angle.

You want your communications to speak from the _customer 's_ perspective, not
from your own. Customers don't give you brownie points for how hard you worked
on something. All they care about is how to get the best product for the best
price. So if you put your heart and soul into something, and then someone
comes along, tweaks your thing and makes it better, the way to respond isn't
to ask people to respect how hard you worked; it's to look closely at the new
thing, _understand why people like it better_ , and then bring that
understanding to your next iteration or your next product.

~~~
Gracana
> Nobody cares how hard you had to work to get from idea to product.

That was my initial reaction to that statement as well, but upon reading on I
realized that's not the point they're trying to make. They're not saying
"respect our efforts," they're saying "we spent a year on designing this to be
challenging and replayable," and they go on to provide evidence for their
claims of superiority.

~~~
gkoberger
It's almost a shame they spent so much time talking about 2048; it takes away
from the point I gleaned: to make something simple and "obvious" takes a ton
of work. I've spent months on designs, and felt bad because the end design was
so _obvious_. "Why didn't I think of that in the first place?"

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Very true. It's easy to look at something someone else has done and say, "not
a big deal." You don't see the sweat or the design process.

It's actually a big compliment, too. It signifies the design is conceptually
sound and as small as it could be.

------
steven2012
I have a friend who works at a successful mobile gaming company (not Zynga).
He freely admits that what they do is rip off whatever games are most popular.
Period. End of Story.

They even have a SWAT team that will go out and build prototypes in days and
launch them on the App store as quickly as possible to get some users. They've
even launched games with the exact same name as the popular game in hopes of
tricking people into using their version of the game.

The entire thing is despicable to me, but I guess that's just the nature of
the gaming industry these days. Most companies are ripping off each other, so
true innovation is hard to come by, and isn't really appreciated anymore.

The funny thing is that he also admitted that they have run out of successful
games to rip off, so they might actually have to build their own games.

~~~
ssully
I dont think mobile games are entirely indicative of what the gaming industry
is. The rampant cloning and wild west nature is kind of a characteristic
unique to mobile. Cloning and stuff still happens in other gaming mediums, but
it has never seemed to be as bad as it is on mobile.

~~~
ctz
Rampant cloning and 'wild west' exactly describes home computer game
development in the eighties. I don't think it's unique to mobile, or a modern
phenomena.

------
gkoberger
Threes is the original game that 2048 (and its clones) are based on. This site
starts off a bit slow (talking about 2048), however the hundreds of emails /
screenshots showing the progress is insanely awesome. It's a great look into
what it's like to build something from scratch.

Spoiler alert: at one point it was a game about argyle socks and monsters
(Argoyle).

------
mgiannopoulos
Having seen their games ripped off and cloned dozens of times within a few
weeks, the developers of popular iOS/Android game Threes could be responding
with lawsuits and anger.

Instead, they are expressing grief (having been accused of cloning the...
clones), understanding of how ideas evolve and an awesome release of 45,000
words of internal discussions, sketches, prototype designs of their work of 14
months to get to release.

If you're interested in game design, this is pure gold.

~~~
boiler_up800
Putting aside my feelings on the morality of it all, this really is a
fascinating look into the design process that goes into these games and
software in general. These posts also show the human side of the design
process; how the team responds when one member leaves or returns, what happens
to the product, etc. In my short time working on software (and especially UI)
with others, I've had many of these same conversations and issues come up.

------
honksillet
This is a great read.

As someone who pooped out a low quality clone of Threes for the purpose of
teaching myself d3 ( [http://www.kongregate.com/games/honkskillet/menage-a-
threes](http://www.kongregate.com/games/honkskillet/menage-a-threes) ), I can
say that there is a mile of difference between the polish of Threes vs 2048.

Also, I agree with the 3's creator when he says that 2048 is essentially
broken. I had played 3s before playing 2048. I got 1024 on my first play
through, and the middle part of the game was so tedious I resorted to the
alternating up, left strategy just so I could advance the game. It's a little
weird that a clone of a clone got so much attention.

~~~
ijk
I think the tipping point was that 2048 was open-source, on github, and had
some low-hanging fruit in terms of improvements or variations. Once the simple
changes had been exhausted, the momentum was there to sustain attention for
more elaborate but mostly still incremental changes. If everyone had to code
it from scratch, we would have seen far fewer versions.

I think it's an interesting study in the possibility space of a design, a
breadth-first search by the masses vs. the depth-first search by the Threes
developers.

------
austinz
I built a decently polished open-source clone of 2048 for iOS over a weekend,
and from HN's front page it's obvious many could (and did) do the same for a
variety of platforms and languages. It's popular to talk about how ideas are
cheap and plentiful, and implementation is what really matters. But maybe
Threes is an example where the opposite is true: implementation is
straightforward, but the ideas, thought, and polish that goes into making the
product truly spectacular are the distinguishing factor.

------
huhtenberg
They are in a tight spot.

This is one of the most simple, elegant and original game _ideas_ of recent
times. One of those that make you wonder how has no one managed to stumble on
it before. It is inevitable it got copied.

The reason why it got copied and why 1024/2048 got really popular is that they
have overdone the original. The interface is just too funky, there's fluff,
fluff and decoration. Rubbery UI makes you feel like you are fighting with the
app every time you use it. There are also those smileys on tiles too. So what
you have is an idea that looks more complicated than needed (with 1s and 2s
being special) and the execution that looks cluttered. That's just asking for
a simpler clone - exactly what they got in 1024 and 2048.

Now they have an unenviable task of trying to convince players that added
complexity in their version is by design. That or try and slim down the game
for faster pace (and perhaps add "basic" mode that mimics clones' simpler
mechanics).

------
paulgerhardt
Threes is a significantly deeper game than 2048 - see for instance this thread
on reverse engineering the gameplay mechanics:
[http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3133680&postcou...](http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3133680&postcount=451)

This is something the developers are known for. Greg's earlier game,
Ridiculous Fishing, not only had it's own internal Twitter app ("Byrdr") with
it's own ARG mini-game - including a fake website with SQL injection
vulnerabilities and a voicemail hacking sidequest.

~~~
gagege
Ridiculous fishing is a piece of video game art. It's really blows all of it's
clones out of the water (pardon the pun). You can't clone talent and polish.

------
bobbles
I love Threes, and I understand where they're coming from.

But this line "Others rifled off that they thought 2048 was a better game than
Threes. That all stung pretty bad. We know Threes is a better game, we spent
over a year on it. "

The fact that someone spent less time on a game, and based it on your game,
does not make it a WORSE game. It's just unfortunate for you.

~~~
Tiktaalik
Though they explain why Threes is better in the next line. 2048 is "broken"
and easy to beat whereas Threes is a deeper, more challenging game. I think
they were trying to get across that they know that Threes is a better game
because they spent over a year working out the design and ensuring that they
didn't make a "broken" game like 2048.

~~~
smacktoward
But this exposes an underlying assumption in their thinking, which is that a
_deeper_ game is automatically a _better_ game. I would argue that this
assumption is mistaken, especially on mobile, where people tend to gravitate
towards games they can play in short bursts during downtime. In that context
"deeper" just means "harder to pick up and get into."

That's an arguable point, of course, but I just mean that it's not as
axiomatic as they make it sound that Threes is better just because it's
deeper.

~~~
rjvin
They mention that. "But why is Threes better? It’s better for us, for our
goals." and then later: "that’s what’s better to us as game designers. We
worked really hard to create a simple game system with interesting complexity
that you can play forever."

------
Pxl_Buzzard
What a good look into the process of game design. Tons of communication with
team members, lots of pictures and scribbles to explain ideas, and the ever-
growing list of tasks that take a prototype to a shipped game. It's amazing to
think about the scope and scale of games that AAA studios can deliver at given
that all of this has to happen between scores of developers.

------
prezjordan
I felt the same sentiment when 2048 first landed. I was _shocked_ at how no
one had really heard of Threes!

Then the developer put "Gameplay similar to Threes" or something like that on
the page. I thought it was a nice gesture.

But, overall, I felt for the Threes developers. I'm glad to see this posted to
HN.

~~~
DanBC
I had heard of Threes! but only I was only vaguely aware of it as "a good
game".

1024 and 2048 and the others caused me to buy Threes! so the clones get them
at least one sale.

~~~
shdon
Same here. Although the games do operate on similar concepts, the differences
are enough to make the gameplay quite distinct. Threes is undoubtably the
better game. And getting hooked on 2048 made me buy Threes. The people who are
amenable to buying paid apps won't be deterred by having a free, inferior,
alternative and if the knowledge is out there, it could actually increase
sales.

------
madsushi
I have been playing Threes for quite some time, so it came as a surprise to me
when several commenters on HN assumed that 2048 was the original and Threes
was the derivative.

------
hoilogoi
I just looked at 1024 on Google Play, and I have to say it would really sting
to work on Threes for a year then read that "If you played 2048 in Hacker
News, That [sic] you should know this is the original one."

~~~
MBCook
Have you seen the original description for 1024 on the app store? I see
they've updated it to be less tasteless, but luckily the internet never
forgets:

"No need to pay for ThreesGames. This is a simple and fun gift for you, and
it’s free."

------
Yacoby
Their comment that no one has yet to "beat" threes is in my opinion part of
the problem. I get a kick out of beating something, having reached some goal
(often in competition with someone else). So maybe 2048 is broken. Doesn't
detract from my enjoyment of it.

Also knowing other people had "beaten" 2048 initially helped to made it more
addictive.

~~~
hebleb
I don't see Threes as a game that has to be beaten. I'm picturing the more
classic arcade games like Donkey Kong or Tetris where you want to one up your
friends by getting a higher score, and getting addicted until you get that
high score

------
nicpottier
What the wha?

Give me a break, this same diatribe could be spouted by anybody who has built
anything of significance. Yes, if you build something great, people will copy
it, just as your precious snowflake was inspired by others as well. This isn't
anything unique to gaming, it isn't anything unique to 3s, it is an immovable
fact of life.

Are people copying the product we've poured the last 18 months into? Damn
right they are, and if we don't do a better job of executing then we will
rightfully get buried.

The gaming industry in general is incredibly derivative, it is the modus
operandi. I ran a gaming studio for a while and you bet we did our share of
"being inspired" as well as our share of "inspiring others". It is just a fact
of life.

I think the thing that gets my goat here is the waxing on that 2048 is a worse
game because it is easier and all the people who played that just don't "get"
the careful 14 months of planning that went into 3s.

Let's get something straight here, 3s is a great mobile game, but it is just
that, a mobile game for playing at bus stops. And the one and only measure of
success there is how much fun people have playing it.

Flappy Bird is stupid, but it is also entertaining for no real reason. Chess
on the other hand, is rather smart, and also entertaining. Both have their
place. And yes, we can cry about how society is going down the drain and only
appreciates dumbed down games, but 3s is pretty simple so let's not throw
stones shall we?

Phew, ok, who needs a coffee?

~~~
evan_
Not sure if you've ever played it- it sounds like you maybe have not- but
Flappy Bird is punishingly difficult, a fact which is commonly cited as part
of its appeal.

~~~
nicpottier
No, I have played it far too much, high score of 111.

My point was just that the dynamic is simple, stupidly simple, but that
doesn't make it unfun.

------
notoes
PopCap have a good approach to cloning. It's basically, we love seeing clones
because we enjoy seeing good games made, it increases the market size and the
bad ones will sink anyway. They're confident in their ability to make really
game games that will sell. They're sitting on one of the most cloned games of
all time, but still manage to make good games and make money.

People seem to get stuck on the idea that a good game is good because of it's
mechanic. Therefore if someone uses your mechanic, you're stuffed. A mechanic
is only part of what makes a game really good. It's a similar mistake to
having a feature focus in a product company.

It has been fun to see all the riffing off the Threes concept over the past
couple of weeks. And I'm sure Asher Vollmer and team will benefit from it all.
There is more interest in all the games, they'll have extra ideas from the
clones that come out, they find out for free some ideas that don't work. It
will help them raise the bar on Threes and make it a better, more successful
game.

------
baddox
> We wanted players to be able to play Threes over many months, if not years.
> We both beat 2048 on our first tries.

I was addicted to Threes when I first got it. I played dozens of games per
session, and multiple sessions per day. So it was definitely addictive. But,
as it turned out, I only played Threes for about as many days. The flame that
burns brightest burns out the soonest, I suppose.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I play Threes less often now too, but when I want to play something (eg
waiting at the bus stop), I crack open Threes.

It's a super well polished game that you can play with 1 hand.

~~~
MBCook
My play has gone down too, but for me it's because I seem to have hit a
plateau. I managed to get a 768 once a few weeks ago, but haven't been close.
Most of my recent scores have been 8-9k when my highscore is over 20k. It's
kind of discouraging that I can't get near my score again.

------
petercooper
Lots of discussion already but I wanted to throw "patents" out there as that's
what it made me think of first. You can patent game mechanics to protect them
(to a certain extent). Is it possible to be against patents (as many geeks
seem to be) while also being against people ripping off game mechanics? If so,
how?

~~~
RogerL
I came in here post this point. I recognize HN isn't a single human, but the
popular positions are somewhat incoherent.

It is exactly this that the patent system is designed to solve. You spend all
your hard work, time, and money developing something, and somebody swoops in
and appropriates it. If you don't want to be able to protect ideas, this sort
of thing is going to happen. It's a tradeoff.

------
ajpiano
I think it's worth noting the timing of this post, which is that it came out a
day after this article on the LA Times tech blog:
[http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-
tn-2048-hit...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-2048-hit-
game-creator-gabriele-cirulli-20140327,0,3285397.story#axzz2xH2mmVCq)

The article, without even so much as mentioning Threes, credited Cirulli with
designing 2048 over a weekend, which rather blatantly missed the point that it
was only possible to put together 2048 in a weekend in a world where Threes
and then 1024 already existed. The article has since been corrected/updated,
but I saw Asher tweet about it, and I imagine that their choice to put
together this essay is meant to provide a comprehensive counterpoint to that
school of thought.

------
dgreensp
My instinct is to side with the Threes devs on this, but someone has to say
it: It sounds like they spent a year on the cute little faces. Original Tetris
didn't do that. Also, I'm pretty sure Tetris _was_ cloned immediately, at
least privately, by pretty much any programmer with spare time who played it
(because it's fun and easy to implement, like the Threes mechanic).

Is it a good thing that Threes is so hard it's like pushing a rock uphill,
until you inevitably can't keep it up and it comes crashing down on you? If
someone invented the 15 Puzzle today (the one where you slide the tiles around
in a 4x4 grid), for example, but dressed it up and tweaked it so you couldn't
beat it, people would probably start having fun with the possible version on
the side.

------
ghshephard
I loved threes, Played it for close to 20-30 hours during winter break. As
soon as 2048 came out, I managed to get to 2048 on my second try based on my
experience with threes. I play 2048 in my browser whenever I have a spare 5
minutes, and when I'm on the Bus, I still frequently hop into a quick game of
Threes.

The mechanics of the two games are very similar, and obviously 2048 is a
direct descendent of threes - but I wouldn't go so far to say that one is
better than the other.

Threes has claim to originality, and first publication, so significant credit
does need to go to Asher Vollmer, Greg Wohlwend and composer Jimmy Hinson of
Sirvo for their original invention.

But, Threes does have some "issue" \- one is really poor startup times. It's
slow enough that I am more likely to play 2048 in my browser, than bother
firing up Threes on my iPhone. The piece assignment in threes, is also
somewhat less pleasing to my experience than in 2048, for whatever reason.

Also - sometimes you are looking for nice quick fun - I get a nice rush of
(finger mashing) 2048 to the 512 stage, and then very, very quickly racing to
2048 instinctively (plus the crush of defeat if I make a flickering mistake
and get my pieces out of place).

Threes requires a lot more attention - I can't really play it at full-key-
flick-speed - Not every game has to be chess.

If you read through the emails, and design history on the "making of" \- it
really, really emphasizes how damn hard it is to build that original kernel of
genius. And then the piling on of all the clones/knockoffs/descendants shows
how trivial it is for others to stand on the shoulders of genius.

One challenge of the AppStore (and obviously the Android stores, and simply by
definition the Web) - is that there is no real way to "reward" the original
developers for their many months of hard work, when others can simply clone,
tweak the artwork and mechanics (or in the case of Zynga, just the artwork) -
and release and market their own duplicate of a game after someone else has
done all the hard work.

But, sometimes this opportunity to reinvent is good - I've tried a _lot_ of
podcast apps - because I listen to podcasts for about 4-6 hours/day, and,
while "Cast" is my current preferred App, I'm looking forward to what Marco
does with Overcast. I would have hated it if we couldn't have lots of
diversity in that marketplace. (And I would have shot myself if I had to use
Apple's (original, horrible) "reel-reel" podcast player).

Another approach though are apps like Vesper - It's "another" notepad app -
but the developers (Q Branch's John Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus),
took months and months to polish and refine till it creates a totally
different notepad experience (and, in my opinion, the best one on the iPhone)
- isn't it good that they had the opportunity to build something in the
notepad category, in a different way?

All in all though, I hope that Sirvo's Asher Vollmer, Greg Wohlwend and Jimmy
Hinson get the credit they deserve for building the "first of".

~~~
MBCook
> But, Threes does have some "issue" \- one is really poor startup times. It's
> slow enough that I am more likely to play 2048 in my browser, than bother
> firing up Threes on my iPhone. The piece assignment in threes, is also
> somewhat less pleasing to my experience than in 2048, for whatever reason.

I'll admit that still puzzles me. I'm not sure what Threes is doing but it
does seem to take an inordinately long amount of time.

Adding a 'loading' spinner just emphasized that I was being forced to wait.

It's actually effected my playing. If I go to open Threes and it pops straight
up (it was still in memory) I'll play a quick game. But often if I get that
'startup screen' I'll immediately exit the app and do something else like
check Twitter or Safari.

~~~
mdorazio
From the post, it looks like they used Unity to build the game, which as an
engine is rather overkill for a 2d puzzler. The loading times are probably
tied to this.

------
mxfh
How _original_ can a game be? The first thing I thought back when I first
heard of _threes_ was that it looks and plays like a radically streamlined-
for-mobile-adult-market version of _Triple Town_. While partly understand the
proud and grief those devs have, I consider those guys comparably well off, at
least almost everyone is giving them credit and 1024 et al. are still nowhere
in blatant rip-off territory as for example the myriad of _Flappy Bird_
clones.

------
javajosh
I rarely buy apps, but I bought Threes. I would hope that anyone who's played
and enjoyed 1024, 2048 or the myriad knock-offs would at least go and buy a
copy of the app. It's a great little game and totally worth $2 (indeed, I'd
say it's on par with the quality and playability of the early Nintendo "Game
Watch" devices, and that's very high praise BTW. IIRC they retailed for around
$25 in the 80's, so Threes is actually underpriced.)

Threes invented a wonderful game mechanic, and I'm reminded of the amazing
indie games particularly on Kongregate. It's really something special to see
all the creativity and joy that a great computer game can create.

My advice to the Threes inventors would be: rise above the imitators. Indeed,
see them for what they are, gestures of respect (with the exception of 1024,
who's makers are just assholes). One concrete step I'd take if I were you is
to request that the web knock-offs in particular at the very least mention
and/or link back to Threes (perhaps an iTunes link[1]).

[1]
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/threes!/id779157948?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/threes!/id779157948?mt=8)

------
clarky07
Rip-offs are sad, but the fact that you spent 14 months doesn't make it a
better game. It means you took too long to make it. Threes is a great game
that has done well, but the vast vast majority of mobile apps don't make
enough money to justify spending 14 months on. I really hope that wasn't full
time work.

Also, time/effort/money spent developing a game does not make it better or
worse than other games. Some dead simple things are awesome, and some things
that took forever aren't. Again, I have and like Threes quite a bit, but the
time it took to make doesn't make it better than anything else. I haven't
played the knockoffs, but if they are doing well I suspect they are decent
games in their own right.

~~~
srik1234
Inventing a new game is a creative exercise. I see it like writing a book.
iPhone development took years. This reminds me of all the evidence that is
pouring from Apple these days on the conference rooms, sketches, mockups etc.

~~~
clarky07
I agree, but comparing an app to the iPhone seems a bit silly to me. This
"ripoff" was apparently done in a few weeks and is currently #1 free app in
the store. While obviously the original is going to take longer, I'm not sure
it has to take 30x longer. And if it really does have to take 30x longer,
that's probably a good sign that it's a terrible business model and you should
only do this in your spare time as a hobby.

Frankly, the ripoffs are getting the original more exposure, and are probably
helping their sales.

------
RaphiePS
Does anyone have any stats on Threes' sales? I wonder if 2048 has
significantly boosted them.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
I bought threes after hearing about it in the comments of a thread about 2048,
I'm sure other people did too

~~~
aubergene
Me too, and it's probably only the third app I've ever paid for

------
zachinglis
The original devs really care and that's lovely. I've always felt guilty about
playing 2048 despite having bought Threes twice (once on Android and once on
iOS.)

I don't know what I'd do in their position; feeling disheartened is definitely
one. It's a great game - granted I'm not a fan of the sound design so get
frustrated sometimes - the game itself is fun and addictive.

I don't think this post will convince as many people as they think to switch
to the original, but I hope it does them some good.

------
frade33
I do not recall being addictive to any iOS game, except for Threes.

------
david_otoole
Don't slave for months producing easily replicable ideas in a market that is
mobbed with people who replicate anything successful within days.

------
baxrob
I may be alone on this, but I have difficulty distinguishing OP's argument
from [http://www.amazon.com/The-Quickening-Todays-Trends-
Tomorrows...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Quickening-Todays-Trends-
Tomorrows/dp/1879706709)

------
mistercow
>When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every
hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken.

Except that it won't beat the game. You're lucky to get to a 256 block with
that strategy.

------
erikb
This is my very personal opinion on the matter:

It really pisses me off always I read from somebody how he got burned by a
rip-off. If you do it right 2048 will make YOU famous and all future products
of you will automatically get more attention, even if you don't make any money
on Threes (which is a way worse name than 2048 in the eyes of hackers, btw).
Talk to blogs, Youtube reviewers and to us HN users and show us how awesome
your product is and if it is really better than 2048 then you will
automatically win the crowd. Think about how much attention (and money) PSY
now gets for everything he does, although he didn't get as much money directly
from Gangnam Style as he could have gotten.

Just complaining and hoping that people will support you because it would be
fair is cheap, sad, and it won't happen anyway.

------
diziet
The problem (for the developers) with Threes is that it cost $1.99 to buy. If
they made the app free and monetized with ads/iaps (ie, how all major apps
monetize), they would have a much more successful app.

------
nicolethenerd
Threes shouldn't be knocking their 'rip-offs', they generated a ton of
publicity for the original game. Without playing 2048, I probably never would
have heard of Threes.

------
powera
From the very end - these guys sound _REALLY_ bitter:

"""If you read this whole thing. Thank you. Wow. If you scrolled down here and
skimmed it or just wanted to see if there was a prize at the end, well, you're
here. It's about the journey, man.

Hopefully this post points to what we're getting at when we say that making
these tiny games is littered with hard and painful times that are full of
uncertainty and self-doubt. You never know if something is really going to
work. It's not easy. But cloning or ripping off a design in a week, that's a
bit different isn't it?"""

~~~
MBCook
Things weren't that bad this time, but they've been seriously bitten in the
past. As (one of them) got close to releasing their game Ridiculous Fishing
last year, a competitor quickly cloned it and _beat them to the app store_ and
got a high ranking. They nearly canned the game because of a ripoff.

Truth is, the app store is a pretty scummy market.

~~~
bagels
How did it get cloned before it was on the app store?

~~~
MBCook
I went to look it up and saw I was missing a part of the story. They first
released the game as a flash mini-game called Radical Fishing. The whole
strange story is here:

[http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/5/3461458/cloning-case-
files-...](http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/5/3461458/cloning-case-files-
vlambeer)

~~~
pawelkomarnicki
That was a lesson on how NOT to launch idea you want to monetise — why anybody
would want to pay fro something they have already for free? :)

~~~
MBCook
They may not have realized how successful a concept it was until they had
released the flash version.

------
drewry
It's not all bad for them, I found out about threes because of 2048 and came
to the conclusion myself that threes was a better game and decided to pay for
it.

------
abimaelmartell
I made this list with some of the variants of 2048

[http://abimaelmartell.com/2048-showcase/](http://abimaelmartell.com/2048-showcase/)

------
wudf
I probably would have purchased Threes if it weren't for the clones. Loved the
process documentation. All I can say is keep up the good work. Fuck the
haters.

------
cintiapersona
There is even an Atari 2600 port of the 2048 game!

[http://javatari.org/games/2048](http://javatari.org/games/2048)

Amazing...

------
pawelkomarnicki
I tried to install Threes on Android, no ART support => I don't care anymore,
playing 2048 and the clones :)

------
voltagex_
On Android, 2048 is 0.7mb. Threes is nearly 30! Surely that factors into some
people's decisions.

~~~
MBCook
Do you normally check the size of games?

I wouldn't even think to check that. At 30mb, Threes isn't that big (Retina
assets and all). I would certainly understand your point if it was 300, but
that doesn't seem excessive.

I can only think of a single game I've run into on my iPhone that surprised me
with it's size. I'm not sure what it was (maybe an old version of Scrabble?),
but it was a word game that was hundred of megs and didn't have much in the
way of graphics.

~~~
wtracy
Well, my device has just over 40Mb of internal storage. So, unless the app
allows you to install to an SD card, it matters a lot!

------
nvader
> Like it’s not ok to feel the way we do some of the time. But we do.

With that in mind, and with all fairness to the creators of Threes for their
hard work, as evidenced in the article, I feel put off by their choice of the
word 'rip-off'.

I say this as someone who has never played Threes, and never would have, but
enjoyed many of the different forks and iterations of 2048.

------
aye
Who's the "Johnny" mentioned in a couple of the emails? Another game
developer?

------
tylerritchie
This is interesting, I don't particularly like the tone, but I would love to
see a graph of (even relative) app downloads with the release of 1024 and
announcement of 2048 (and all the various forks) on it.

I bet there's an effect there.

I bet it's in Three's favor.

And I bet any freshman-level stats student could rigorously show it.

------
Quaro
That was a lot more article than I expected from the title. Wow.

------
jbverschoor
I had tried threes.. But I didn't like it. I do like 2048

------
babesh
Anyone notice parallels to the software patents debate?

------
brianmtully
Original Game? Ever play Triple Town?

------
WildUtah
This is a shamefully non-responsive web page design for a company that builds
mobile apps. The sidebar is set to cover the main text even with my page width
set to almost 1000 px wide. Even worse, the sidebar is a fixed position and on
top element that I can't scroll away from or out from under.

I expect better web design from the team behind Threes, which I bought and
liked.

------
nashashmi
Okay, Okay. I get the crying from the threes developers and all, but there is
a key difference between why 2048 did phenomenally well and threes didn't.

2048 is a game that was HACKED together and displayed on HACKER news and made
open source for the sole purpose of independent HACKING, and indie creativity.

In fact, 2048 has got to be the best case study of how HACKING went viral, not
so much about how the game went viral, even if that is what theoretically
happened.

From that perspective, the THREEs game is just collateral damage and not
really what matters here. The Threes game's developers in effect are all
crying about how people are misusing their ideas, copying all the wrong
details, and not copying what is the true flattery of the game in the first
place. And they wrote a blog post to brag about it all! But little do they
understand that people (hackers) take what they like and leave the rest.

~~~
weixiyen
2048 was free. Threes wasn't. That's literally the only reason it has more
downloads. Threes was #1 on top paid for a long time.

~~~
Aldo_MX
This is literally the point that makes me get upset: Cloning a game, because
specific people doesn't agree with decisions taken by the developers
(features, pricing, etc.).

Is it really that hard to let indie projects have a chance?

------
thought_alarm
The worst part about this is that neither the 1024 or 2048 developers do so
much as acknowledge Threes as the original inspiration. It's really pathetic.
Just some losers pretending to be something they're not. Common shithead
piracy.

~~~
simoncion
You've let your vitriol get in the way of fact-checking.

Found at the bottom of
[http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/](http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/)
:

"Created by <a
href=[http://gabrielecirulli.com/>Gabriele](http://gabrielecirulli.com/>Gabriele)
Cirulli.</a> Based on <a
href=[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224>1024](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224>1024)
by Veewo Studio</a> and conceptually similar to <a
href=[http://asherv.com/threes/>Threes](http://asherv.com/threes/>Threes) by
Asher Vollmer.</a>"

[Please ignore the idiot URLifier.]

~~~
thought_alarm
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140310210707/http://gabrieleci...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140310210707/http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/)

~~~
simoncion
That's cool. Four days later, there's a shout-out to Threes:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140314133031/http://gabrieleci...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140314133031/http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/)

It looks like the guy credited Threes within four days of his game's release,
and has yet to remove that credit. It's entirely possible that he was only
aware of 1024 at the time that he made is game.

Please get angry about something that matters. We _need_ people to not waste
their anger on unimportant things. :)

------
devanti
nice, but simplicity is the key to mainstream

------
chubot
I saw 2048 on HN, but downloaded 1024 because I wanted to play on an iPad
rather than a desktop. I like 1024 better than 2048 because it has a little
more richness.

Yesterday, I tried to pay and download Threes, but it said it requires iOS 6.
I never upgrade my iOS devices after too many screwups from Apple. So not sure
if I will ever play Threes.

I don't know much about iOS development, but I wonder why a game which is
basically a 4x4 grid doesn't work on every single version of iOS. 1024 works
just fine.

~~~
jankins
> I wonder why a game which is basically a 4x4 grid doesn't work on every
> single version of iOS. 1024 works just fine.

It's pretty much an effort vs. payoff thing; the dev environment get nicer
each iteration, and iOS < 6 is in a fractional minority.

~~~
MBCook
Yep. iOS 6 has some nice APIs, iOS 7 is even better.

According to a company called Mixpanel Trends [1], iOS 7.x is currently on 89%
of all Apple devices. iOS 6 is just under 10% and iOS 5 and before is under
1.5%.

Since you can't downgrade and devices ship with the latest version, that means
that anyone running iOS 5 or iOS 6 is also running an older device with lower
performance. If you're doing a resource heavy game it may not even run well on
those devices even if you did work to support them.

1\.
[https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_7](https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_7)

~~~
chubot
Sure, but my point is that this doesn't qualify as a "resource heavy game" at
all.

~~~
MBCook
Threes certainly wouldn't no. But the ease of development and small size of
the lost market makes it a pretty easy choice for many developers.

Even finding a way to test software on iOS 5 or 6 is a _huge_ pain. Apple
makes it very difficult to test on anything other than the latest version
unless you happen to have a device with that OS laying around.

