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I don't know who the author is chastising- the maker of three's or the maker or 2048, or the clones of 2048. I don't really sympathize with the maker of three'

by dkrich 13y ago

I don't know who the author is chastising- the maker of three's or the maker or 2048, or the clones of 2048. I don't really sympathize with the maker of three's. In the business world, one of the key metrics for determining the lasting value of a business are the barriers to entry in that market. If you make a video game for a smartphone, you must realize that you are entering a wildly-competitive marketplace with few-to-zero barriers to entry, at least monetarily. I guess I can understand the frustration of the makers of threes when seeing clones being played instead of theirs but if it is so easy for other programmers to make successful clones, the game that they produced couldn't have been that special. Otherwise people would still be playing it.

masswerk 13y ago
Hum, if I got the initial post right, that was the very point made here. If we would want to have developers to invest in original ideas in a market that has so little barriers, it's probably up to the customers (and their long term strategy) to care for this. Otherwise, it wouldn't be wise for anyone to invest in this market place at all, which would probably effect in a total lack of originality in the goods traded there. Edit: Please note that it is in the very nature of a game (being it a mobile game or a board game) to have quite simple mechanics and a limited set of rules, in a sense of "simple to learn, impossible to master" (as mentioned by the authors of Threes!). So it's in the very essence of a good game to allow copies with an effort that is in no relation with the effort that has to be invested to come up with the rules and mechanics in the first place.