way to misinterpret. i was referring to your comment on how I would feel if someone cloned my game. also: nice name dropping, names don't mean **** to me. ******* other peoples egoes is for followers and I'm a leader baby... a leader (edited by retro64: keep it professional)
what are you talking about? how is this name dropping? Im not claiming these are my mates. And how on earth am I misinterpreting your defence of blatant cloning exactly??
While the game is actively selling and being marketed might be a reasonable place to draw the line...
So they crossed it with Zuma then I guess. Puzz Loop 2 was released in 2001, as far as I know Zuma was released 2003. Two years doesn't seem very long does it?
just play Puzz Loop, then play Zuma Zuma beats the living shit out of PuzzLoop in every single aspect (except being first) Also, from what I hear there are only 5 stages all together in Puzz Loop (the one on the portals), which is ridiculous.
That's not the point though. Well, unless you're saying that it's fine to rip off another game so long as some people think the new version is better? Some could argue that err.. "other" clones are better than the original game...
Well for my part I have to support games like Zuma being made. Not because I've cloned or am cloning... but simply because zuma.. unlike its predecessor was a really fun game. Puzz loop... despite having the idea first... had such a lousy implementation that it offered little to the player. Does that mean we should forever just shut that basic idea down and never iterate from it? never create a new game based on the same concept? At what point is a game different enough to be called new? Space Invaders -> galaxian -> galaga -- surely at least galaxian and galaga are very similar. Maybe zuma doesnt introduce all that many new elements but it does introduce some.. a lot of them in the subtlety of he implementation. If allowing that, opens up the door to people making a cheap reskinned clone with nothing new at all in it.. well that's a price Im willing to pay.
Not necessarily. Almost every of us can tell appart a clone from a newly done game. As an example, I'm right now developing a game that's unavoidably inspired by Bubble Bobble, Snow Brothers, and games like those, but when you'll be seeing it you'll find the mechanics are really very different. Not on walking, of course, but in the way to clean the enemies. In fact, when you compare Bubble Bobble and Snow Brothers you know they are not clones: they use the same "one screen platformer - kill'em all" concept, but the mechanics are so different and the few elements they have are so far from each other that you have to agree that they are not clones.
Of course they've borrowed other ideas from other games (and not necessarily computer games), but their games are just fresh, different, you can't say "hey, this whole games is just like that other game". Being original doesn't mean starting an idea from 0, but developing it to an extent that the idea becomes just different to all other ideas you were basing yours on. I like the example of the first "Commandos": it's a bit like an RTS, then it's a bit like Metal Gear, then it's a bit like ... but when you played it, you knew you just had never played something like that before. And that's originality.
Well I dont know if it was or it wasn't. The point isn't so much who makes the better or more evolved or even different flavour game. The point is that I see some value in the variations. I know John Raptis was annoyed by Faires, and I can certainly understand where he's coming from, but at the same time faries did bring some things to the table that I appreciated as a player that chuzzle lacked (and vice versa). The same is true of Zuma. I think we'd be poorer in some ways without these versions. That being said I think I'd be in favour of some time lapse between a game like chuzzle and faries.. say a year.. but it's so hard to quantify exactly what's meant and how to do it. In the absence of a simple system to prevent so called parasite cloning, I guess Id have to err on the side of allowing copies for the diversity they introduce. Zuma was puzz loop and yet... in so many ways it was not. Zuma was a game I played to death, and puzz loop one I put aside after a few sessions. Surely therefor they're not the same.
Yup, and there lies the danger of trying to legislate these sorts of things. But if recent trends continue, court battles are surely on the way sooner or later. Since lawsuits would obviously be destructive, while an industry built on systematic parasitic cloning would also be destructive (not least because it would encourage lawsuits), I always advocated a simple, non-enforcable policy of just trying to be reasonable. Some people will laugh at that. But the least we can do is just try to be reasonable ourselves, and not take such an amoral* attitude towards our businesses. After all, we here are a community of sorts. We shouldn't need legislation to stop us from turning on ourselves. * nb: different word to immoral. (Oh, and yeah, Galaga is the sequel to Galaxian - I looked it up. I know it was just an example, but there ya go)
You'd be surprised at the vehemence some people can exhibit when they don't understand your point of view. I gather ErikH would gladly shop me to the FBI if I gave my dad and a few friends a copy of my full version of DRoD, whereas I'd actually encourage him to allow his friends and family to register Ultratron under his email address. Small differences of opinion can sometimes lead to big fights. Over a few dollars. Cas
Well, there's opinion and there's law. One is arguable, the other is not. You may not like the law, may not agree with it, etc. but that doesn't change the fact that the line of right and wrong has been established. And no, I won't be getting into this any further because I can already see the response that will be written up to this. And then my response to that, and so on. Just wanted to make my point and I'm done.