

Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights' - fcoury
http://toucharcade.com/2012/01/24/zynga-shamelessly-rips-off-tiny-tower-with-canadian-release-of-dream-heights/

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amored
This is business as usual for Zynga.

"They would sit and look at competitive products and write down all the
features and make it obvious to us," the designer says. One contractor says he
was offered freelance work from Zynga, related to mimicking a competitor's
application, with explicit instructions: "Copy that game."
[http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/09/zynga_pincus_cop...](http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/09/zynga_pincus_copy_games.php)

Pincus was heard yelling at employees, "I don't fucking want innovation.
You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it
until you get their numbers."
<http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/>

More examples: [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-zynga-is-just-like-
micros...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-zynga-is-just-like-
microsoft-2010-1)

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wdewind
Honestly, this isn't really even that bad. There are a ton of games ripped off
of Zynga that are MUCH closer to the Zynga assets.

You could argue Tiny Tower ripped off Sim Tower etc.

The whole thing is stupid. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, even other
giants.

~~~
tensor
Standing on the shoulders of giants generally means you evolve or build upon
your predecessor. I haven't played either game, but this looks to be a plain
reimplementation of the game right down to the mechanics with little or no
change.

Based on other similar news stories in the past, it seems like this is Zynga's
general business plan. While it appears profitable and is legal, it's hardly a
laudable practice.

~~~
teej
I could do a screen-for-screen comparison of Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare
3 and you would have a hard time telling them apart. Each actually has
distinct gameplay that sets it apart. I think it's a stretch to say there's
clearly "little or no change" from 4 cherry-picked screenshots.

Zynga has actually had an improving track record in the last 6 months with
Adventure World, Hidden Chronicles and Dream Zoo. They're still sticking to
"hit" genres, but they have been pushing out of cloneville and taking more
risks.

~~~
mbrzuzy
I see where you're coming from but I'd have to disagree. Battlefield and Call
of Duty are both in a pretty much generic first person shooter genre.

The game made by Nimblebit looks like a fairly specific and deliberate Sim
type game designed in a specific way for mobile devices. I think the
screenshots chosen are good enough to come to the conclusion that it's a
clone.

~~~
teej
I'm not denying that it's a clone. I'm saying that Zynga's "ripoffs" have gone
from literal feature-for-feature clones to progressively more "innovative"
titles in the last 5 years. Back in 2007, my game was the second game Zynga
ever copied. I've been there, I know what it feels like. It sucks.

What I'm saying is that Zynga is aware of their past and is moving towards
less copy and more creativity. I think their _actually released products_ in
the last 6 months are a testament to that. Dream Zoo is a great example of
coming into a genre, "Zyngafying" it, and coming out with a hit product that's
better than the competition. They even built new tech that they've open
sourced and shared with the Cocos2d community. But no one talks about that
because it's easier to hate Zynga than it is to make a reasoned discussion
about them.

~~~
darkxanthos
Upvoted for getting screwed and still remaining objective.

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kevinh
I find it truly bizarre just _how many_ employees Zynga has, considering the
number of products they produce. Mobile development has shown us time and time
again that a game like Farmville can be easily made with 5 employees. There
must be a gigantic bureaucratic they have to fight in order to get anything
done with that gigantic mass of employees.

~~~
smackfu
Focusing on number of employees is pretty pointless, since outsourcing
randomly makes departments internal or external. Zynga has an accounting
department and HR and janitors and receptionists, which 3-person companies
just do not have. Heck, the guys who make Tiny Tower don't even have someone
to do music since they licensed it.

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jason_slack
I can see NimbleBits being miffed a bit, but they have not released an update
in a very long time. I tweeted @eeen and he said there is no update anytime
soon.

My wife cannot play Tiny Tower anymore, she has every floor possible (153), 12
vacant floors (waiting for more floor types to build), 30 million coins and
250 bux.

Is this what an "iPhone Game Of The Year" acts like?

It seems to me that Tiny Tower was a great fad.

~~~
smackfu
Well, the other half of having 3 employees is that you move on to the next
game, and the old one is left as-is.

~~~
jason_slack
indeed. I get that for sure and the game was free.

I still sort of wonder how much work it would be to release an update that i
just new floors, not other new functionality.

I imagine it is work..still sort of want it!

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ww520
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. As long as Zynga is not directly
using digital materials from Tiny Tower, I don't see the problem.

The game industry is a massive fest of copying each other. How many Doom
clones are out there? Or the Pacman variety? Or the Breakouts? Space Invaders?

~~~
gurkendoktor
I can't bring myself to feel bad for Tiny Tower specifically. But if Zynga
were to stomp on all small teams that released a popular game, it is easy to
see how that would harm innovation.

I am in the process of saving private $$$ for a game project that _I think_
will break even in the long run. If there was a good chance of being cloned
before that happens, I wouldn't bother.

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catshirt
this is sad. zynga is sad. specifically, this habitual rip-offery. i won't
call them _shady_ , which i think is a popular opinion. not because i don't
think they are, but just because i don't want to have to defend that position.
i will however defend that it is sad.

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Macsenour
I've been doing this 30 years and I've never seen a title that didn't have
some connection or another to some hit title. Some have it stronger than
others.

I always say, when asked sage game design advice, that a hit game is like the
center point of a circle. The closer YOUR game is to the center the more
likely it's a clone. If it's far OUTSIDE the circle that it's just to far from
what people know to be a hit.

The goal is to hit the line of the circle, which makes the circle move to
include your game and maybe make it the new center point.

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marknutter
replace Zynga with Epic and Tiny Tower and Dream Heights with Quake III Arena
and Unreal Tournament.

Video game companies copy each other. It's up to the consumer to decide which
version is worth their money. I for one welcome some competition to Tiny
Tower, especially after the game was ruined for me when I found out that
setting the iPhone clock ahead allowed you to cheat the game..

~~~
rfvtgb
>replace Zynga with Epic and Tiny Tower and Dream Heights with Quake III Arena
and Unreal Tournament.

Bad example. UT and Q3A were released withing 10 days of each other. The
development time for an FPS such as Q3 doesn't leave much time for it to copy
UT. On the other hand, Tiny Tower has been around for about half a year,
plenty of time for Zynga to imitate as it pleases.

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jdfreefly
If they don't like Zynga re-implementing their idea, they should keep adding
features and innovating so their game is better.

You can't be against the patent game the big guys play but for protection
against this kind of behavior.

edit to add: If I worked on the blatant copy, I wouldn't exactly be proud of
that work.

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fletchowns
_You can't be against the patent game the big guys play but for protection
against this kind of behavior._

Clearly you have no idea what concerns many people here about patents,
otherwise you wouldn't be making a comparison like that.

~~~
jdfreefly
Care to elaborate?

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binarycrusader
And tiny tower is arguably just a tweaked version of sim tower. Whoopie doo.

But seriously, the whole time I played tiny tower, all I could think about was
where was the rage over copying yoot saito?

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avolcano
Sim Tower is basically an elevator management simulator with some very basic
tower management that's similar to something like Sim City. Tiny Tower is a
very simple game about building floors putting people in the right floors.
There's no comparison beyond the fact that they both take place in towers.

~~~
binarycrusader
I disagree; I've played both and they share many of the same game mechanics.

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akeck
It seems to me that the reasoning in the Temple Island Collections case could
apply to these situations (with respect to UK law), depending on how closely
the second game copies the first, but IANAB.

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markokocic
It is funny that some of the same people that claim that using and sharing
other people work is ok and that copyrights and IP are evil also think that
what Zynga did in this case is "stealing", "rip off" or immoral, at best.

Why would it be ok to just copy other people work and enjoy it, while creating
something similar to something else is not ok?

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feralchimp
Fuck Zynga, including whoever put together those admittedly tasty graphics.

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brianobush
game mechanics cannot be copyrighted. some of the best games out there are
blatant copies of other games. still I feel for the team that made tiny tower.

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wavephorm
Zynga is a bullshit company, they know it, we know it, but in the real world
the people playing their games really don't give a shit as long as they can
earn one banana per click. So they keep clicking, over and over. Welcome to
the real world of internet marketing.

~~~
potatolicious
Except we have good reason to believe that Zynga has peaked. They haven't been
able to replicate the success of Farmville, their active user base is
shrinking, and customer acquisition is becoming prohibitively expensive.

All in all it certainly looks like the "glorified slot machine" formula of
"social gaming" is dying, and that is immensely gratifying to me.

~~~
wavephorm
That's exactly the same thing as saying the number of people who fall prey to
email marketing has peaked.

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potatolicious
How so?

I want to make sure I'm reading your comment correctly: are you trying to say
that people are too stupid to figure out they're being played, and that
they'll run on the Zynga treadmill for as long as Zynga pleases?

I think data presents a reality less cynical than yours.

~~~
eric-hu
It sounds like he's saying that Zynga's business model will plateau, with 'the
new suckers born every minute' replacing their fed-up customers that leave.

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startupcto
FYI Nimblebit ripped off others before they had Tinytowers.

~~~
avolcano
Really? Scoops, Sky Burger, and Pocket Frogs don't seem ripped off in any way.
Care to elaborate?

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kinnth
This is terrible. Shameless and unsettling about their morals.

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bhodi
Just one more nail in the hopefully soon to be completed zynga coffin...

