Your work can be stolen, but ideas are still just ideas

[lmbarns]

I disagree. Some geeks on forums will care, but the millions of people that play Zynga's games won't care. To be honest, I didn't like Tiny Towers - it was a farming, face-book, operant conditioning experience that made me feel dirty just for playing it. Just like every single Zynga game I've ever touched.

As for cloning, why would people be upset? There are 9000 first person shooters that are just clone's of Id's early Castle Wolfenstein. Almost ALL games are clones in some form.

Gigi.

I think the correlation between Wolfenstein and those 900 fps is far different from big company actually cloning up and coming indie games that show any signs of success. If a game were to copy each character, and level layout, as well as weapons, ammo, etc and objectives, then it would be considered a clone.

The "operant conditioning" is spot on however, and as game developers we should be taking notes. The top farmville players spend over $200/mo each on in-game items, that's far more than any multi-hundred-million dollar game could ever hope to make from a single individual. And yes plenty of people don't pay anything, but those free players are valuable assets to the game as they improve the game for paying players by populating it.

I'll try any game out for inspiration, Lord of Ultima by EA was by far the biggest stretch of the term MMO. It's html5 for god sake and uses ajax with a MVC setup. It was soooooo simple, basically just database record vs. database record, absolutely no models or action to code, just statistics vs. other statistics....yet it's successful....it's dumbfounding why people find those types of games fun, but there's tons of money in it.

[hippocoder]

What I'm waiting for is someone to clone zynga's games then zynga takes them to court and gets smashed to pieces by the defense showing a big printout of nimblebit's letter.

You reap what you sow. I don't think any of us have anything to fear by making a decent farmville clone...

[Izitmee]

For serious cases, apple removes the developer's account and does not give them any money. But there are so many of them like rats, that a few will slip by.

And what, they just keep all the money for themselves? Smart move :/ I hope they at least give the thief's percentage to the original owner.

[Aiursrage2k]

You see it all the time big companies scooping up great concepts for pennies on the dollar, making millions off of someone elses idea. That the best case scenario otherwise they will simply make a better clone of your game and you wont even get squat.

Look at you have people like mika mobile making there game zombieville usa, so many people clone there game, release it for free on droid that when mika mobile release there game no one buys it.

[lmbarns]

What I'm waiting for is someone to clone zynga's games then zynga takes them to court and gets smashed to pieces by the defense showing a big printout of nimblebit's letter.

You reap what you sow. I don't think any of us have anything to fear by making a decent farmville clone...

hehe, a second/third generation clone. Would be good for a satirical blog at least Do a mass cloning (open source project??) of zynga games to prove a point.

One thing though, is Zynga has paid out 10's of millions in settlements to people they've ripped off, after being taken to court, which makes me think there might be some legal concerns to what they're doing, they've just found a way to make it profitable by pushing the limits (targeting small devs with no real/financial means for recourse in our court system). Lawsuits can drag on for years and the smaller guy has to go "all-in" financially to challenge the big guns of the corporation raping them. Should watch the documentary "Hot Coffee" to see how our court system works when you're the little guy....

A kickstarter to invest in lawsuits to protect the little guy would be epic right about now...

[Starsman Games]

What I'm waiting for is someone to clone zynga's games then zynga takes them to court and gets smashed to pieces by the defense showing a big printout of nimblebit's letter.

You reap what you sow. I don't think any of us have anything to fear by making a decent farmville clone...

I'm sorry... but you don't seem to be paying attention to the news lately

It's a sad world, this one, but until Mars gets colonized, we have no other to go to.

[Morning]

I'm sorry... but you don't seem to be paying attention to the news lately

It's a sad world, this one, but until Mars gets colonized, we have no other to go to.

The first people to go to mars will be the rich ones so you're not free from corruption even there.

[n0mad]

As for cloning, why would people be upset? There are 9000 first person shooters that are just clone's of Id's early Castle Wolfenstein. Almost ALL games are clones in some form.

Why when it comes to arguing, people always mix up cloning with inspiration, and vice versa ? :/
As opposed to real life situations, where the limit is instictively recognized : when you look at it, there's often a collective conscience about what is a clone and what is inspiration. Most of the time, even a totally uneducated person can say if X piece of Art/game/book/music/movie is a clone or inspired by Y, even without having that much culture in the said domain.
That's what always upset me with cloners, they instinctively know what boundaries not to cross before turning an inspiration into a clone, but still cross it by playing it all "oh I thought it was just inspiration sorry".
This sociological phenomenon is even observable in early school with kids.. "Hey Joe did copy my drawing !"

[keithsoulasa]

Word, the funny thing is when i tell my none game designing friends that I plan to put my game up on kickstarter, or show it off at an interview, they warn me that my brillant idea will get stolen .

Even if it was a brilliant idea its very very unlikely a large / or even a small company will just drop everything their doing and focus on what i'm doing, ideas only get copied once their successful-
Although my master plan now is to come up with something so cool by June a company offers me a job .

[Aiursrage2k]

Portal was taken from nacular drop without them creating the demo there would be no game. It came from someone having a good unique idea, probably wrote it on a napkin at a bar somewhere, someone at Valve realized it and they scooped it up. There was nothing like it on the market. Someone with a good idea should be able to make money off just the idea, then you would have people sitting around and coming up with ideas.

[hippocoder]

I'm sorry... but you don't seem to be paying attention to the news lately

It's a sad world, this one, but until Mars gets colonized, we have no other to go to.

I usually do but that slipped right by me. It's time this shit ended. What is really absurd though is that brazillian developer didn't even change the level layout, just the graphics.

Tiny towers has enough changes I'm thinking, for zynga to feel smug and safe for the moment. Vostu however has 46 million in capital looking at that link, so I'm not caring much about them.

[PrimeDerektive]

For serious cases, apple removes the developer's account and does not give them any money. But there are so many of them like rats, that a few will slip by.

Right, but tens of thousands of people still paid for an app that no longer exists... does Apple just put it all in their scrooge mcduck tower? Can you get a refund?

[tatelax]

Well they get to keep the app on their phone, but if you delete it, you will never be able to get it again.

[Starsman Games]

Right, but tens of thousands of people still paid for an app that no longer exists... does Apple just put it all in their scrooge mcduck tower? Can you get a refund?

You as a player can request a refund, for any game. Depending on the reason you give and the case, depends how long they will take to give you the refund.

In a perfect world, though, they would just convert those sales to licenses of the official app and redirect funds to the real owner.

[Daydreamer66]

Any idea huh? So I guess if someone had an idea of a game about killing human babies and sold them to soccer moms, as long as it has great execution its gonna sell right?

Hate to say it, but if you find the right venue, like Adult Swim or 4chan, even this idea would sell. Just change "killing" to "stealing." Heck, I bet Adult Swim has done something like that already.

[George Foot]

That only works if the original owner does release an app.

[hippocoder]

I've never heard of a case where apple actually gives the money to the right person from cloned sales tbh. I can imagine it happening if the original developer releases it and goes through a lot of red tape, and by red tape I mean enough not to justify going through it in the first place.

I think we need to start fighting this nonsense. Wherever you see it happening, just let the original author know about it. Let's send a message, that it will not be tolerated. Eventually, they'll give up doing rips and start actually doing clones. At least then, they're having to work for a living instead of milking the teat of the west.

I'm not being racist when I say most of these thefts are from absurdly-off the map countries like vietnam, china etc - simply because the west's legal system simply doesn't reach much further than europe and america.

You can't accuse them of being in total poverty because they have fair access to internet, computers and more in order to upload their junk.

[AnomalusUndrdog]

To explain: All your best ideas have already been done in some form or other. YOU are not a true genius that is able to think up something that billions of human beings haven't in all these years. Don't be that arrogant - for your own sake. It will make you look a bit silly

That is why I don't think ideas are important. What IS important is how you use a concept or idea. For example if you are cooking and think it is a terrific idea to add lots and lots of chocolate to a pizza I don't think it will taste nice.

Did I think of chocolate on pizza? probably NOT! Because chocolate can be used with savoury dishes as well. In short, it is about combining those flavour sensations with accepted and established rules. Every chef has done a consommé, but it is the flavours and combinations that work.

That's not a flaw, it just means I have to explain to you :P

An idea is still worthless though, as it's not proven.

Again, I'm not talking about originality, what I'm pointing out is that even if something is only an idea in your head right now, that doesn't mean its worthless by default, like your original post said. But it has potential. Whether it really is good or not, you'll have to think about it and/or find out.

I'm really not getting into the topic of geniuses and unique ideas. If you think there will be no such thing as a unique idea anymore, well, I respect your opinion. Honestly, me, I wouldn't know for sure about that matter.

[Mr.T]

This is only my perspective but what is downright scary for me is the brazen way in which the art assets were stolen form the graphics to the ..sound?

I'm working on my own game and can't honestly say that there is some piece of code I have here that I think somebody couldn't figure out without decompiling it.

The art assets on the other hand are different story. Usually countless hours are spent conceptualizing them then making them come alive in a 3d or 2d graphics application. The idea that anyone can just rip them out and use them with no consequences just isn't digestible to me. I guess this is why the courts too are relatively strict in these matters.

Other people whose work is more code-intensive and whose code is what gives their work the cutting-edge or makes it different, they will have a different perspective and I respect that.

For me, If I made a game. Somebody copied my game mechanics but used their own Graphics. I can live with that.

Somebody copied my game mechanics AND stole my graphics as well. That would be hell for me

[Izitmee]

To explain: All your best ideas have already been done in some form or other. YOU are not a true genius that is able to think up something that billions of human beings haven't in all these years. Don't be that arrogant - for your own sake. It will make you look a bit silly

Hey I respect you Hippo, and usually like what you write (not to mention that Physynth - from what I know of the field - looks "original" to me). But what you wrote looks a lot like "originality is impossible, so give up". If I'm wrong, I apologize, but otherwise let me make a point.

Obviously, if we keep this discussion to a sophistic level, you're right. As they say in literature, every story has already been told. And seen I'm starting sophistically, I might also say that after the first tale was told, nothing else was ever original, since all the letters in the alphabet had already been used.
If we keep it real, though, I believe that originality is available everywhere. It can be given by innovation, or simply by a different point of view. Little Red Riding Hood was always told from the little girl's perspective. The first person that told it from the wolf's point of view actually made something original (though maybe it sucked). This means that I believe we should all - always - at least strive to be original. That said, I believe that having an original idea is very easy, for everyone. What is really difficult is having an original idea that is actually good.

With this, I'm clearly not saying that "I" am original. I'm just stating that originality is not only possible, but reachable for everyone.

Also, apart the originality matter, there's a simple moral one that almost always goes ignored: when someone does something, he should ALWAYS credit from where he got the idea, who helped him, and what else. Simple as that. Anything else is stealing, and should be treated accordingly.

[EDIT]
P.S. obviously, remaking a game while simply changing the graphics to be better looking is not original - not at all :P