
Crush the Castle developer's response to IGN's "In Defense of Game Clones" - pertinhower
http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=989
======
j_s
I found it most useful to diff the two:

<http://diffchecker.com/pX8qoZsE>

No doubt having watched so many of his game mechanics become a huge hit in
someone else's game gives the author a unique perspective. His point in this
response may have been sharper if he had re-done the graphics, rewritten more
of the content to be more accessible, etc. -- though the more I think about it
maybe that's part of his point!

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apitaru
Many of us here have experienced our work getting cloned by others. While I
totally get that 'everything is a remix', I still can't help but feel that
kick in the gut every time this happens. I am always bothered by how much I
care. It took me a while to reconcile this emotional-jerk. Here's how I see it
now:

John Cleese has a wonderful talk about how each project consists for 'open'
and 'close' modes [1]. In one sentence - open mode is playing around with
ideas and stumbling upon a gem in the rough, while closed mode is the
execution of polishing that gem to perfection.

Seen through this framework, I would claim that 'cloning' is the act of
jumping in on someone else's open-mode work, and forking a new close-mode.

Why do we care when someone does this? I think that as the open-mode is a
highly creative process, it is hard to not get emotionally attached to the
rough-gems it produces. Some will describe it as nothing shy of birthing an
idea. In that sense, the kick-in-the-gut that I feel is probably the sense of
loss associated with someone 'snatching my new-born'.

I'm not suggesting that cloning is good or bad, but just trying to provide a
reasonable explanation to why we feel pain when someone clones our work - even
though we know it's OK.

[EDIT: there are situations where 'cloning' is in essence thievery. And that's
not OK. Where to draw the line deserves its own thread.]

[1] John Cleese on creativity <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg>

~~~
codehotter
I do not feel the kick in the gut when somebody imitates my work. I suspect
the feeling is in large part due to how you are socialized.

This is pure speculation - but it is probably important to our social status
that we are recognized for our contributions. If others can shamelessly take
credit for all our brilliant ideas, they will increase in social status, while
we seem not to contribute anything. Thus it makes sense that we would have a
deeply seated, hardwired resentment for other people taking credit for our
hard work.

Even if somebody copies you and then attributes the work to you, some of the
credit for the idea still goes to that person rather than to you. Attributions
are often overlooked by 'the public' and the social status often still goes to
the person they got it from.

The power of this kick in the gut may lessen the more comfortable you are with
your position, and how well esteemed you feel by the people around you. You
may be less opposed to having your work copied if you feel, on a deep,
emotional level, that you are still in general highly respected for your
contributions even if you 'lose' a few to other people copying them and taking
credit.

Which reminds me of this comic by Jessica Hagy: [http://thisisindexed.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/card2752...](http://thisisindexed.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/card2752.jpg)

~~~
apitaru
You make a valid point but I think other factors are at play in my case.

For starters, the comic you've linked to suggests that I don't come up with
many new ideas, but a glance at my HN profile might reveal otherwise.

I think it has more to do with how long I spend in open-mode. I suspect longer
than others. I like to marinate on my ideas. I try to give myself a lot of
time to solve a problem. The result is a certain level of depth that I might
feel extra ownership over. This is a side-effect and an unintentional one at
that.

I'm now working hard on optimizing my work-flow to counter this issue. Some of
it has to do with releasing things sooner than later (thus feeling less
invested in them at that point).

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jiggy2011
This is going to be a much bigger problem for indies than it will be for AAA
devs.

Treyarch aren't going to be worried about anybody cloning Call Of Duty, not
because the gameplay is hard to copy or especially innovative but simply
because they have put up big technical and artistic barriers to making
anything close to their game.

Pandemic for example looks like something that could be cloned pretty exactly
over a week or two by an MBA type with $1000 worth of outsourced developers.
This doesn't make the game bad, it's just that some genres don't require much
technical sophistication.

Having said that , minecraft clones do not seem to have been particularly
successful in comparison to the original. Perhaps because minecraft is
sophisticated enough that it would be difficult to keep up with the original.
It would be interesting to see what the result would be if a AAA developer
decided to release a huge budget but shameless minecraft clone.

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sehugg
I authored a Windows shareware game in the early 90's that involved spaceships
shooting rocks and flying saucers. It had a number of neat features, including
ray-traced sprites, multiplayer, a tournament mode, customizable ships, and so
on.

This eventually led to a legal setting where I had to answer questions like
"is it true that when you shoot a large rock it splits into two medium sized
rocks".

The answer to the above question is yes, for more than one game.

However, if I asked the question "is it true that you press Left and Right to
rotate, Thrust to accelerate, Fire to shoot, and Hyperspace to jump to a
random position on the screen", the answer would also be yes, for more than
one game (Spacewar, 1962 would be one correct answer).

It'd be a sad world where my game didn't exist, because there was no one
willing to make that exact game for 16-bit Windows in 1991. It would also be a
sad world where we never went beyond Spacewar on the PDP-1.

This particular sword cuts both ways. As a fan of creating and not a fan of
litigating, I'd rather err on the side of more and better games, rather than
lock up ideas for decades with copyright law.

Pandemic 2.5 seems to have done well and is even going back up the charts. For
games, doesn't a rising tide lift all boats?

------
Zimahl
There's a thick line of acceptable to unacceptable and developers know when
they are stepping over it or not.

IMO, Angry Birds is fine. Different device, game play taken to the next level,
different theme. While I have never played 'Crush the Castle', I imagine the
boulders the trebucet threw had different results.

As for unacceptable, how about NimbleBit's Tiny Tower vs. Zynga's Dream
Heights? Dream Heights isn't in the spirit of the first game, it's the same
game with 'better' (I actually prefer Tiny Tower's pixel art) graphics, almost
screen for screen[1].

[1]] [http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/zynga-releases-tiny-
tower-c...](http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/zynga-releases-tiny-tower-clone-
nimblebit-strikes-back)

~~~
Androsynth
Thats not true at all. The article made a pretty good case that it is _not_ a
thick line.

As for Zynga, everyone hates them, therefore using them in an argument
instantly poisons the argument. Its a variant of Godwins law.

------
Oxryly
It took me awhile to figure out what this is. Jeff Wofford has cloned IGN's
article and made small but important changes as way of giving IGN some of the
medicine they are recommending for others.

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mgcross
I'm surprised the article didn't mention the Tiny Wings/Wavespark thing. It's
a great example of how far execution and polish (and for that matter, timing,
venue, art style, etc.) can take a relatively simple, but unique idea and
mechanic:

[http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1604550&pos...](http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1604550&postcount=606)

------
moistgorilla
I completely agree with the article. Are we going to start accusing every
modern day author of copying Shakespeare because they share certain themes?
What matters is the execution not the idea.

~~~
samineru
I think if you fully commit to that idea we sacrifice the creatives to the
engineers. I'd prefer a strict but short term of copyright, giving the
creatives the incentives to innovate in the short and engineers the freedom to
optimize over the rest of time.

~~~
Shoomz
While the idea sounds appealing, look what it's done to the medical industry.
I'd hate for gaming to get into such a slog of expensive/long/only big
company's can play industry.

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gte910h
What people call game cloning I call "entering later into a genre" or "reusing
a mechanic" or even "reimplementing a game".

League of Legends and Champions of Newerth aren't "just" clones

Halo isn't "just" a Doom clone.

Bach Fugues aren't just clones of Buxtehude or Handel

Thunderstone isn't just a Dominion clone

Coincidentally, game mechanics ARE patentable. (Monopoly was patented, for
instance). If you are that sure you're the owner of your idea, and want to
lock of the mechanic from culture, fire away via your lawyers.

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ZeroGravitas
Why's he giving free advertising to IGN if he disagrees with their article?

I take it the accusation he republishes about his colleagues is true, that
they "ripped off" another game to make Crush the Castle?

<http://www.maxgames.com/game/castle-clout.html>

~~~
Retric
This raises a great point, is it OK to clone a bad game and make it fun? I
would argue that the mechanics that make a game fun are more important than
the idea so copying the 'fun' parts is probably worse than just copying the
idea. It's also more obvious that your making a significant change.

Edit: The article suggests that angry birds differs because of the mechanics
of a slingshot being more inviting. However an arbitrary score to advance vs.
# of projectiles and targets killed makes is IMO a more important advance even
if it seems trivial it makes a vary different game.

------
jmvoodoo
Well, there now seems to be case law on the topic:
[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/20/tetris-
clone-...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/20/tetris-clone-ruling)

This could be interesting given the sheer number of clones on the app store. I
wonder how many game developers actually have trade dress protection on their
game?

