Popular Heavily Inspired Games

[SirEverard]

Popular Heavily Inspired Games

Okay, so following the growing trend and recent outburst in the forum of users complaining that Game Dev Tycoon (Greenheart Games) and Game Dev Story (Kairosoft) were too similar, I have decided to write this article.

This article is not aimed at * “Fan Boys/Girls” * for either company it is purely an observation.

I beg you to read my observations and draw your own conclusions.

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Crush the Castle

Developer: Joey Betz and Chris “ConArtist” Condon
Platform: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android
Release: 2009

Angry Birds

Developer: Rovio Entertainment
Platform: iOS, Android
Release: 2009

You’ve probably never heard of Crush the Castle but instead of angry short winged birds you are hurling rocks at kings, queens, knights and the like. You may also not know that Crush the Castle came out a good 6 months before Angry Birds, so what would you rather play the original or the “rip off” that has many colourful themed iterations, expanded features, a cult following, merchandise strands, many spin off games and books… But clearly we better hate on Angry Birds cause they totally ripped off those Armour Games developers.

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Infiniminer

Developer: Zachary Barth
Platform: Win
Release: N/A

Minecraft

Developer: Mojang, 4J Studios
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Xbox 360/One, Raspberry Pi, PS3/4/Vita, practically anything that can run java… i.e. almost everything…
Release: 2009 (Official 2011)

Total Miner

Developer: Greenstone Games
Platform: Xbox 360
Release: 2011

CastleMiner(s)

Developer: DigitalDNA Games
Platform: Xbox 360/Windows
Release: 2011

FortressCraft

Developer: ProjectorGames
Platform: Xbox 360
Release: 2011

Among the varying graphical styles and UI we have some extremely similar games here. Procedurally generated block based adventure games with some elements of crafting, resource gathering and/or construction involved in gameplay.
These games and also have some roots in Dwarf Fortress, a cult classic in many circles.

The victor of these games is clear to any casual gamer, Minecraft. It is worth mentioning that Minecraft isn’t the first iteration to be created nor is it the last. It is simply the game in best overall quality and that’s not to mention the Bukkit and Forge which have provided amateur and professional developers alike grounds to expand and mold the game in their own image.

Really goes to show, people won’t play the game the way you want it to be played, they’ll take it and play the game the way they want to play it.

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Guitar Hero

Developer: Harmonix/Neversoft/Budcat Creations/Vicarious Visions
Platform: PS2/3, Xbox360, Wii, Windows, Mac, DS, mobile
Release: 2005

Rock Band

Developer: Harmonix/Pi Studios
Platform: Xbox360, PS2/3, Wii
Release: 2007

What isn’t mention here is the publishers who were calling the shots regarding the studios developing the games. Both games over each iteration - Guitar Hero having one on almost every platform capable - were touched upon by Harmonix (a team with experience in audio-gaming technologies), despite this Harmonix when working on rock band had as much “legal right” as any other studio would have should they be working on the game in place of them.
Harmonix were bought and put on this project by purely because they made the original and the new publishers wanted a “clone”.

These games look and play almost identical for all intensive purposes. There are some features that one has had other but speaking abstractly these are two very popular games that

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Game Dev Story

Developer: Kairosoft
Platform: iOS, Android
Release: 2010

Game Dev Tycoon

Developer: Greenheart Games
Platform: Windows/RT, Mac, Linux
Release: 2012

Yes there are some clear similarities here but what Greenheart Games - like the aforementioned - and created their own version of the game, expanded on the foundations of the original. Most players would never have heard of Game Dev Story - mobile platform based - if Game Dev Tycoon had not been released on PC operating systems. Lest we forget mod support… When was the last time you played Game Dev Story with @DzjengisKhan’s expansion pack?

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All in all does it really matter if a game has been copied in some way. If the successor does not provide the as much or more enjoyment to all that play the game as the predecessor then it would not be played and supported by fans of the genre.
Yet you have all heard of Game Dev Tycoon right? So someone must have liked it.

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[SirEverard]

Okay it’s finished now, feel free to discuss.

[Kisai]

There’s two kinds of games that are kinda being confused here.

“Inspired by” is a nice way of saying “stolen the look and feel” of another work. In the case of GDS and GDT, you can see where some aspects were copied, but it has it’s own look and feel. Nobody would draw a connection between GDS and GDT on appearances alone. Generally you can have something inspired by something else, and not outright steal the concept.

“Clones” are exact copies of the game mechanics of another game (eg Secret Maryo http://www.secretmaryo.org/ vs Super Mario World), usually onto a platform that does not have such a game, or due to copyright/cultural-taboo/licencing issues has been reskinned to only cosmetically be a different game.

GDT is not a clone of GDS, as the games progression in GDS is based on blindly figuring out the direction of a game to make games that sell, where as GDT is less flexible and you only need to figure out which console/genre is best and just keep alternating between two. Where GDS and GDT are the same are that the easy winning game strategy is to keep alternating between three winning combinations and ignore the rest of the trial-and-error.

Where I believe there’s a strong problem with “clones” is that in many cases the clone games are being made to capitalize on the popularity of a certain game (take “Flappy bird”) in the media and aren’t honestly trying to make anything new.

Game developers have no excuse to not be innovative. You can make a completely new game and still have some aspects that are a callback to the reason you made the game in the first place, without ripping off the game it’s inspired from.

Most game companies are more guilty of cloning the worst parts of a games aesthetic (take all the farmville clones and even 3D MMORPG’s) without knowing why that is fun in that game. Anyone stop and ask why we have a dozen high fantasy MMORPG’s released every year and most of them fail? It’s because everyone keeps hopping on bandwagons “Oh let’s introduce pets, farms, stamp collecting, song composing, etc because it was in that other game.” At some point the developers need to step back and figure out why people are leaving too. “Oh it’s too casual, I hate pandas(#1 reason people leave WoW and complain in-game why they left on a new MMORPG), new skills that made my old skills obsolete, etc”

Like I think there’s plenty of ground that GDT hasn’t covered (One of the things I hate in GDS was the power outages, nobody heard of a UPS in Japan?) Mostly it seems like GDT has a small handful of event scenarios, even less than GDS.

GDS and GDT have drawn their game mechanics from “Business Simulation” games

List of business simulation video games

of which the ones I’ve played on that list “Lemonade Stand”, “Detroit”, “Theme Park Tycoon”, and “Monopoly Tycoon” (which I enjoyed a lot.) Detroit feels more like GDS/GDT except you’re making cars.

Speaking of clones. SimTower/YootTower. Here’s a case where the original developer was inspired by another game (SimCity), got published by the publisher of said game (as SimTower) and then created a sequel that was too much like the previous game, under a different name(YootTower,) leading to confusion if this was a new game or a clone. Doesn’t this sound familiar? Can’t say that the game mechanics of GDS and GDT weren’t inspired by actual highs and lows in the game industry.

But GDT probably could have gone farther to differentiate itself from GDS, as it is people are confusing the two games titles, and that is a bad thing.

[SirEverard]

Thank you for taking part in the discussion

You’re right about the cloned games, I have made edits to the thread.

[Kisai]

Yeah, cloned games aren’t even new. It’s been done since the beginning of arcades.

One reason the Apple App store is the way it is is to prevent too many duplicate apps. An example of an non-censored version of web games is to go look at newgrounds, where clones that capitalize on current trends (like this flappy bird duck hunt clone) tend to show up more frequently.

Off hand, cloned games are FAR more common, the simpler the game mechanics are. This is why just about everyone and their dog does a Pong, Pacman, Super Mario, and Zork-style text-adventure clone as their first project and eventually move on to Point and Click adventure games (eg Sierra or Lucasarts) or 8/16-bit RPG look-a-likes (Final Fantasy 1-6, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda, Pokemon etc) before either giving up or trying to create their own thing.

Personally I think GDT is easier. GDS you can create your own console once at great expense and then just build exclusively for it for the rest of the game. GDT becomes much harder if you build a console or create MMORPG’s, as the maintenance costs for both seem to just be RNG decay rates. So you’re stuck constantly replacing both or you burn money.

[Charlie]

Great Thread
Be sure to keep the chat on topic.

[CaptainSnake]

I love Armor Games. D: