In Casual Games, Imitation is No Flattery

It's no secret that the majority of casual games are clones of casual games that preceded them. But is the frequent practice of one developer copying the successful games of another causing irreparable harm to the casual sector, as some developers claim? And, after spending long hours and not-easy-to-generate bucks designing an original game, is there any effective way a developer can protect its IP from being plagiarized?

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(Link to GameDaily.com)

I know it's old hat and all, but PopCap complaining about their game being ripped off? Come on.

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Some developers within the Casual Games SIG say that a case can be made that cloning is just part of the process of making better games. For example, said one SIG member, if id Software had copyrighted the first-person shooter game mechanic of its "Wolfenstein 3-D," there would never have been a "Quake" or a "Doom" or a "Half-Life."

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What?

and he's talking about games under the same development house.

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Originally Posted by MechDeus

What?

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lol! WHAT!?

also:

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Originally Posted by pulitzer prize winning dude

The latter (Bejewled), generally considered the first "match three" game, challenges players to swap adjacent gems to make three or more of the same color line up horizontally or vertically. Since Popcap came out with the game in 2001, fans of "Bejeweled" have had no trouble finding dozens of other places to match gems, such as "Jewel Quest", "Paris Hilton's Diamond Quest" and "The Treasures Of Montezuma," for instance.

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lol! What!?
Columns says "hi".


Can I be a game journalist? Seriously? It must be wonderful to not need to know a god damn thing about what you're writing.

For college I did a story on what's wrong with gaming journalism, a dreadful piece because I was over ambitious and could only get a couple of sources (nobody cares about college papers, regardless of the badgering reporters do). Anyway, the two guys I spoke to were journos with decent experience.

One guy said: There's no problem with gaming journalism. There may have been a problem before, but it got a lot better. Asking about the integrity of gaming journalism, and presuming that it is in anyway faulty, was a loaded question.

Another guy said: There are problems, but it's really not as bad as you think it is. While mainstream video game journalism can be crap, the internet is a refuge for the intellectual gamer.

My editor saw the story and said, 'well, that's bullshit.'

Let me see if I can write like a game journalist:

*ahem*


If Capcom had copyrighted the 1-on-1 fighting mechanic of their original "Street Fighter II", NEC would have never been able to usher in the CD age with their spectacular "Fighting Street" on the Turbo Duo console. We might have missed the CD age entirely. How terrible would it have been to play such games as Super Mario 64 on cartridge instead of the convienient CD format we enjoy on today's games like "Resident Evil 4"?

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Originally Posted by Cheebs

Let me see if I can write like a game journalist:

*ahem*


If Capcom had copyrighted the 1-on-1 fighting mechanic of their original "Street Fighter II", NEC would have never been able to usher in the CD age with their spectacular "Fighting Street" on the Turbo Duo console. We might have missed the CD age entirely. How terrible would it have been to play such games as Super Mario 64 on cartridge instead of the convienient CD format we enjoy on today's games like "Resident Evil 4"?

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We need more men like you.

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Originally Posted by Cheebs

also:

lol! What!?
Columns says "hi".


Can I be a game journalist? Seriously? It must be wonderful to not need to know a god damn thing about what you're writing.

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This bit makes me cry, because you are so right (and I am so a whore for Columns). Did people not play it or something? Fucking MASTER SYSTEM Columns you retards, don't bring up 2001 releases.

You stole that from 1up or something.