So what I am understanding is this only applies to platformer type games. People spend weeks to years trying to create an amazing platformer game that is pushed onto 1000s of platformer games released every day on app store with a small chance of actually getting the attention it deserves. IF you get the attention the game deserves and magically becomes a success Ketchapp will copy your game and release it in a few weeks. Chances feel very very slim on these type of games, I have no clue why majority of people make only platformer type games. Just make a RPG for a few years would give you better chances of being successful?
I think you meant puzzle games instead of platformers.
Yes it can be done assuming you hand the outsourcing team the game you want to copy and explicitly tell them âswap every asset in every level for ones with a similar function.â
You hear the problem in here?
You are shamelessly telling them âpick-up that game as the baseâ.
You are RE-SKINNING a game, NOT making one.
Two different things!
And as long as it is a 2D game making use of sprites, the programming will never be too complex.
Not in the days when you are giving an out of the box functional 2D physics engine.
The modern iOS environment is one where
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Giana_Sisters#Alleged_lawsuit
is allowed.
You say I lack the experience of development, but isnât that exactly what the Threes developer is complaining about?
Seemingly Simple games with a nice hook being copied in a matter of weeks and the new game being inferior because they didnât even bother understanding its appeal or core underlying mechanics (1024 and 2048 are inferior to Threes) and yet get the spotlight. You say âSimpleâ because you look at them and say âOh, I could make that in 15 minutesâ.
Iâd say you are the one lacking game design experience if your views about development are that superficial.
You remind me of those idiots at Halfbrick(Makers of Jetpack Joyride) who just kicked all of their game designers.
Slowly becoming an industry of people who think âAnyone can design 
â . smh
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/253579/Halfbrick_lays_off_game_designers_refocuses_design_into_teams.php
Yes, Crossy Road is a Frogger clone and Candy Crush is Bejelewed which is Panel de Pon.
And Angry Birds is that old game I canât remember and Minecraft is that old game I canât remember.
But you are disregarding one crucial factor: the âclonesâ in this case came many years after, and their developerâs intent wasnât âI want to copy that just released gameâ but âI loved that old game and I will make a new one with my own twistâ. Ketchapp (and others) are just all day, sitting in there in the App Store, waiting for preys with potential to be released and copy them.
And nice work disregarding the Flappy Bird example as âsomeone won the lotteryâ when my point was about how it
took its developer 3 days even when it can be cloned in 15 minutes.
And yes, I am grateful gameplay canât be patented.
What I am not grateful is that games you can tell are shamelessly ripping off others that have come less than a month ago are allowed into the AppStore.
ONE BIG EDIT:
As long as animations are not involved, content creation will be a breeze.
Which is the case for most puzzle games.
Hence what makes them easier to clone.
Again you donât know what you are talking about. Re-Skinning imply that you have the source code, or that you are using the original binaries and in both cases if not authorized itâs not a matter of ethics anymore but even law. You are breaking the law, and it can be persecuted. This is not the case you made before, because Ketchapp is obviously not re skinning but copying the gameplay, which is totally another thing. Re-skiining without authorization is usually only done by Chinese devs because it is very hard to enforce there,so they exploit the situation.
You make it sound everything so simple. Look, we have Unity that do even coffe, successful game for sure.
Maybe itâs not just 1+1? Maybe even making good art that blend together well is hard? Making captivating sound track?
Guess why we donât see many super mario clones reaching its popularity?
Look, you need to take a stance. One second you say anyone can do it just by having more devs, then you say it is very easy because of 2D physics handling everything, then you say flappy birds can be done in 15â and then you tell ME iâm the one thinking everything is so easy? Are you listening yourself?
I said a game like most ketchapp( I donât know them well, not my cup of tea) do can be cloned in 2 weeks(up to 2 weeks, if it make you happy), which is true because itâs even backed by fact yourself are providing when you say they monitor the market and immediately come out with their own version.
So who is saying designing a game is easy, me or you?
I didnât disregard it, I seriously donât understand your point. I said game like that can be cloned in 2 weeks( up to 2 weeks,ok?) and you said it can be cloned in 15â so you said the same thing.
When I said won the lottery, I was talking about the easiness of copying it. You make a game that simple?
It can be copied in no time, so your chance of being successful are very slim because anybody can copy it and become successful in your place.
By the way I would like to see you do it in 15â from zero( no reskinning) and no prototype but final product, good luck.
Again show you are way underestimating the easiness of development. Or are you gonna use a 18 devs studio to clone a game like flappy birds in 15â?
I donât like it either, but the world doesnât run on our taste. Life isnât fair. You either adapt or succumb.
The situation is this and if you donât like it nobody is forcing you to do it.
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Funny how you say I am not talking about when your definition of âre-skinningâ is as narrow minded as âYou need the source code to re-skin somethingâ
âMaking good art blend togetherâ is a valuable skill, but nothing a professional isnât lacking.
Same for music making and sound mixing.
Conflating game design with game development.
I am not the one who should take a stance.
You should simply start learning about the industry.
I took less than 15 without the UI.
The exact same game.
It is just an upwards force applied to a rigidbody and a pipe spawner. What exactly is complex about that?
Thatâs only me talking about a game I didnât t come up with of course.
I agree.
Doesnât mean I canât point it out and see if we could slowly come up with a a solution if thereâs one.
Here, let me put it in bold, so maybe youâll stop reading half sentence:
If you know any other way, please enlighten me. And decompiling the code mean you are still relying on the original binaries and itâs breaking the law and I doubt itâs what ketchapp do.
http://www.heroescharge-arena.com/2015/03/25/blizzard-vs-lilith-games-vs-ucool/
Again oversimplifying. Nice, a game without UI, who wouldnât want a game without UI. So polished.
Letâs remove practically everything, because the game is already so complex.
I guess in 15â you also did your artwork, right?
Or you downloaded it from the internet?
What about advertising? You need to integrate also ads, you wrote all the code to handle the ads in these 15â?
Gamecenter leaderboard? The original had that too.
What about sounds?
Anyway I thought it had at least some different levels, didnât remember well.
Iâll probably get in trouble from the sensei for even revealing this much before I release. But the game is in a completely different franchise and genre. Pond Wars really is done.
Oh, and to solve the flappy clone in 15 minute debate.
Its ugly as anything. But technically it is flappy birds.
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Well no, but no.
Itâs too little even for a prototype and you just proved 15â is too little.
There is no sound, no UI, no score saving, no animation, nothing.
And you didnât even use pooling, which in a game very time sensitive like that you donât want the GC to kick in when you are near a pipe causing a glitch in the animation that will make you crash.
I would like to say the devils is in the details, but these are not even details that are missing you didnât even scratch the surface.
Itâs like saying, look I made super mario 3d just because i put some cube on a plane with a collider and add a standard character controller to a cilinder that can jump over the cubes, woaaah. Letâs be seriousâŚ
I didnât actually assert that a saleable flappy bird clone could be made in 15. Just showed what a competent dev could do in 15. You are right, it would take a couple of days to make this game saleable.
But if the core can be built in 15 minutes, expect a lot of clones.
Actually, who am I kidding. Its just shameless self promotion of my video. If you watched it I just made another 0.001 cents. Thanks everybody.
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tbh it shouldnt matter. They will only know about your game because it is already successful.
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Yeah, this thread really is the equivalent of worrying: âIf I win the lottery, do I have to pay extra taxes on my regular income?â
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It might seen like that but it is just I got the impression after Flappy Bird, an organized industry with a focus on finding and copying trends before they go full eruption was born. At least before it people used to be more subtle, but now it seems like we have embraced the âNo new original idea under the Sun so why bother trying to make our own thing if someone else already made it beforeâ and distorted it even harder into âEvery game is a re-skin, so why bother trying to rethink the mechanics.â.
But at least I learned from this thread that you can have some influence into the success of âyour simple game conceptsâ by releasing initially more complex and harder to copy games with a big focus on asset amount and art itself and âcloser to a console experienceâ than smartphone typical tap/swipe mechanics.
Who would have thought: I thought we begin by making simple games and slowly grow up into making more complex ones, when in the current ecosystem, there are actually higher chances of your âcomplex gameâ(closely associated with the word ânicheâ) gaining you the necessary userbase to back the release of your future âsimple gameâ concept.
So I wouldnât say the thread was a total waste
If you canât beat em, join em.
If you think youâve got what it takes to predict game success and produce a flood of clones then do it.
It might end up being harder then you think.
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I think a lot of this is tied to your definition of success, too. Iâm super proud of myself for just finishing a game and releasing it (Iâll be even more proud once my patch is accepted that makes things work how theyâre supposed toâŚ). The game is not monetized at all, and I currently have 112 âpurchasesâ (not sure if theyâre all installs). I have one review giving the game five stars.
To me, this is a success. If someone had those kind of numbers while trying to make money off in-game ads, theyâd be sorely disappointed. The concept of the game is simple, the logic of the game rules is out there and researchable, so itâd be easy for someone else to implement as well, and if they had a small team, they could probably also easily add all the features I had planned, plus monetize it properly.
All that being said, Iâm not concerned at all about someone copying the idea (in no small part because my idea is not wholly original itself) and making more money or getting more attention for the idea. Partly because the game is indeed niche, sure, but also because Iâve already achieved what I set out to do, and Iâm not competing with the type of developers who clone.
I think itâs also worth pointing out that Flappy Bird wasnât copied because of its great gameplay or original ideas. It is itself a copy of many games like it that came before it (that old Helicopter in the cave Flash game comes to mind), and became copied solely because of its meteoric popularity increase and media attention it garnered. So if you make a game that gets a ton of attention and makes you lots of money⌠yes, Iâd expect your game will be cloned very quickly. However, if your game is good and makes you enough money that you can just continue making games and maybe eat once in a while, I donât believe youâre any more likely to get cloned than Viking Chess.
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If you have what you think is a good app, something that will be popular - thereâs nothing stopping you trademarking the game name. Had .GEAR trademarked âFlappy Birdâ sooner, 95% of the clones would have been pulled down.
Itâs the only way to prevent that kind of cloning/copying. Once you have trademarked the game, theres nothing stopping you sending the App Store a cease and desist order and if you can prove Trademark/copyright, then I see no reason why the like of Apple and Google wonât police it. Just because weâre indie devs, doesnt mean we need an indie mindset if we have a successful game.
Thereâs a blog about it on Gamasutra
Uh, Trademarking a name for each app is not practical except for a big business. Even if you file yourself you wonât have access to the easy look up databases the lawyers have. This is another case of making John Sutter types extremely rich on your speculation for an early retirement and fame.
For information here is a listing of Apple trademark registrations by a cheap online service:
Donât be mislead by the âcheapâ $69 fee with is actually not cheap given the failure rate, you must also pay the government filing fees which is at a minimum $225.
Well thatâs not very a productive use of your money as itâs pure speculation until you have a financially successful product and business. The type of success that lets you buy a house, car, or medical care with cash upfront, not the type of success that you published a fun app that sold nothing, although thatâs fun and rewarding in itself.
And if you imagine you can âname squatâ and make millions from a special name, take a look again at all the entities that registered or tried to register the word Apple. And for all the fame Apple Computer has now, when I was a boy, the only fame the word Apple had was William Tell, Johnny Appleseed, Apple Jacks (a case of a big business registering the name of a specific product and a registration that didnât stop copycat cereals), Apple Records, (solely because of the Beetles so the word Apple was of little consequence when one chose to buy Beetle recordings), and actual apples that you eat.
So, itâs better to settle to actually make and finish at game you think is worthy of such expense and withhold it from release until you properly register it as needed if you feel your product is that good. Even if you donât register beforehand you can still register fast enough if your app is successful to help remove copies from the stores and do that well before the copiers can get their copy of your app to the market if you are aware that in the 1st month of sufficient sales you need to register as they sensibly wonât bother copying your app until you are successful.
So forget the marketing world long enough to create an app that you like and if your creativity in creating the game is applied to naming your game and business youâll find the name you give your business or app is of little consequence unless you choose socially insulting words - and in a market saturated in socially insulting as a crass marketing ploy, well you are showing up with a handful of chaff at a place stocked with silos of wheat.
Trade mark is all about name and brand protection. You can prevent someone pretending to be you, or pretending their product is related to your product. But thatâs got nothing to do with preventing someone cloning a game under a different name and different logos.
Generic terms like flappy and bird would be hard to register as trade marks anyway.
Oh Marvel is safe, even had the game been designed and created in the US that game in no way competes with Marvel characters. It complements them if it is effective satire though.
I used to watch a show called Casualty but stopped because in 2 years all the star characters had been âkilledâ and these were the doctors, nurses, and paramedics for crying out loud. Imagine the surprise of patients from those two years on Casualty that returned to Holby City only to discover the doctors, nurses, paramedics were all dead. Thatâs the type of unrealistic writing that is ripe for parody.
These game makers are based in China and they make no attempt to hide that the game is a satire of Marvel Comics. Itâs legal way for recognition in making entertainment but usually ineffective unless the satire is funny and relevant. Yes, if American business tried this theyâd probably be endlessly harassed by lawyers from Disney but really satire is perfectly legal in America still today, even by non-famous people.
So itâs a smart try by the Chinese company that made this game but you can tell it was expensive to make. They will lose a big lot of money if the game fails but not near as much as a western business. I do like the art work of the characters.
The thing about using otherâs IP is that like a soap opera (are their any US soap operas left?) fans want to see their favorite soap opera, not another soap opera, and likewise so do Marvel Comics readers want to read about their favorite characters and not other characters, like D.C. Comics although anyone that had read comics from DC and Marvel could clearly see they were copying from each other in many cases, e.g. Plastic Man and Mister Fantastic. I donât think DC lost Mister Plastic fans to Marvel and Mister Fantastic or vice versa.
So invent good original characters, original variations of good characters (Plastic Man and Mister Fantastic are examples) or learn to do effective, funny satires of well known characters if you are going to represent them as visually similar characters.