4 ms·

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. Pe

by steven2012 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
vacri 13y ago
Whether or not it's the company your friend is at, King games do the same thing (the Candy Crush stuff). All of the games of theirs I've seen are tweaks of puzzler games that are 20 years old. Throw on lots of shiny graphics and transitions, tweak the edges of the gameplay, and viola! New market killer.
- livepreview 13y ago
  No offense, but it seems to me that researching and subsequently ripping off 20 year-old games is somewhat different than ripping off days-old games already designed for the same interface.
  - vacri 13y ago
    A fair point in terms of ethics. I guess I was talking about originality.
    - hnal943 13y ago
      I think the true originality is pretty hard to come by. There's nothing new under the sun.
      - gress 13y ago
        Unless, like the creators of Threes, you spend months on painstaking design.
MBCook 13y ago
I was actually rather surprised that it took almost 3 weeks for Threes clones to start showing up. It's not like the app came out of nowhere, it was discussed on Mac and iOS game blogs before release and was featured in the App store almost instantly.

ssully 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

vacri 13y ago

Whether or not it's the company your friend is at, King games do the same thing (the Candy Crush stuff). All of the games of theirs I've seen are tweaks of puzzler games that are 20 years old. Throw on lots of shiny graphics and transitions, tweak the edges of the gameplay, and viola! New market killer.

livepreview 13y ago
No offense, but it seems to me that researching and subsequently ripping off 20 year-old games is somewhat different than ripping off days-old games already designed for the same interface.
- vacri 13y ago
  A fair point in terms of ethics. I guess I was talking about originality.
  - hnal943 13y ago
    I think the true originality is pretty hard to come by. There's nothing new under the sun.
    - gress 13y ago
      Unless, like the creators of Threes, you spend months on painstaking design.

MBCook 13y ago

I was actually rather surprised that it took almost 3 weeks for Threes clones to start showing up. It's not like the app came out of nowhere, it was discussed on Mac and iOS game blogs before release and was featured in the App store almost instantly.