Does anybody know how much money the developers of ‘Slender’ (Parsec) had gained up until now from creating a very basic, yet somehow attracting game because I am developing my FPS Horror game now and would just like to know some facts and figures. No hate please.
None sounds about right.
What hippo said. A massive amount of exposure, but that’s about it.
The game is free and hasn’t been monetized, so none, as Rob and PrimeDerektive said.
Nothing I think he should release slender on IOS for free just to screw over those people who are stealing from him.
What are they stealing exactly?
A gamedesign.
So let me get this straight, because there are other people out there copying the game design idea, that means they’re stealing? If people don’t copy ideas, you will never see innovation and advancement in the field. Think of FPS games for example, they must have started somewhere right? If others never copied the idea, you won’t see the likes of COD, Battlefield, Halo, etc.
Let me get this straight too : inspiration is different from plain copying.
And yeah, that doesn’t mean COH, BF and MOH are free from that accusation against Doom 
sidenote : I really don’t get why so few people are able to clearly distinguish the frontier between inspiration and copy … It’s simple : when a game reminds too much in too many aspects another game, it’s bad.
And by “too many”, I mean like 80% of the gamedesign.
Copying ideas is ok in my book. But copying game related stuff such as models, music, storyline, characters, etc is obviously not ok. I also think that copying is a form of inspiration so long as you’re copying the idea and not the game. As a gamer, I would rather have 6 different good shooters than 1.
Speaking of Slender, I doubt it’s the first of its kind. There has been many horror games out there.
This is turning into an interesting debate.
Why should a game feature (= game idea) receive a different treatment than other domains ? It’s exactly the same to my eyes. A feature is a whole department of design, just like music, just like graphics, just like lore.
Inspiration is inspiration, copying is copying 
Inspiration is :
- feed your mind with one existing vision (game, music, painting, etc)
- transform, take that vision into the direction you feel that is missing, or that you wish that was. Basically : “what would have been my vision of this theme”.
- produce the resulting vision
Copying is :
- feed your mind with one existing vision (game, music, painting, etc)
- feed your mind with one existing vision (game, music, painting, etc)
- produce the resulting vision
Chain of Problems from copying :
- not bringing anything to the table, no evolution, no different point of view.
→ you will just target the original product’s audience
→ they will simply expect a better version of the original (emphasis on word “original”, not “something else”)
→ Who can produce something better than the original, except the original creator himself ?
→ You will spend more time walking into the footsteps of the original creator than letting your own natural ideas flow
→ Loss of time, loss of energy, loss of possibilities. You won’t be natural, spontaneous.
That’s also something I don’t understand in majority of gamers nowadays : they don’t care if product B is exactly the same as product A. There’s no sense of identity. They just don’t care.
I personally care about that, and won’t play a game, or watch a film, or listen to a band, if it reminds me too much of another one (too much = definitely tried to walk in original’s footsteps). This is why I couldn’t play SWTOR, Rift, more than 3 weeks (= WoW gamedesign), this is why I didn’t touch a single new FIFA since FIFA 98, why I didn’t find the will to try all recent COH, MOH, etc, etc …
As a gamer, I just tell myself : there are plenty of games to play, so why wasting my time with rehashes ?
Plus, it’s just not helping the industry’s creativity at all …
Oh well if that doesn’t sound like an indie rant cliché here … hahaha
You’re focusing too much on creativity/uniqueness and totally ignoring genre diversity. By this definition, there should only have been one Rock band, one Pop band, one Country singer, etc. This actually hurts the creativity of the industry, not help it. Sure, you will have many games that will clone the original idea. But these games bring diversity to the genre, and eventually some down the line start to bring in different features. This is how I view the evolution.
As I said, I would rather have 6 different good games than 1. My favorite type of games are RPG’s, and I’m imagining how lame the genre would be without certain developers copying from one another.
I’m not focusing at all, as there is just no diversity with a copy …
This is where copying starts to turn into inspiration. The problem with a copy, is that it doesn’t even start, or if it starts, it stops at 20%.
sidenote : we should be careful not to play semantics here …
@Laabu19, there is a big difference between copying a mechanic and copying an entire game. A lot of the slender clones out there go so far to copy the name, the villain (sure he is a known meme but even he has multiple artistic interpretations), the setting, the goal (getting the notes), the exact flashlight mechanics, and other than added words, even the frigging title.
You want to make a first person horror game inspired on slender? go for it! But don’t do a carbon copy!
BTW: carbon copies are also covered by copyright laws. Doubt this guy will do any suing BUT copy something to the level many are copying Slender and you got yourself copyright infringement as defined by law.
I’m guessing tht by the OP’s tone towards people copying the Slender idea, he is also trying to make a slender game?
You could do that… Or you could make something others actually WANT to play, hardly anyone really wants to play slender games anymore, you can see it clearly in every WIP Slender on the forums…
I have not played Slender myself nor do I have much interest in that genre, so I’m not sure what the clones are copying out there. I was just saying that copying an idea is a good thing, not a bad thing. But copying game content on the other hand is a legal problem which is not what I’m talking about.
Wait, so since the beginning you’re arguing on a point I brought about a game you didn’t even play ?
Ok, I’m not sure this is going anywhere then. I was clearly talking about the Slendermania level of copying.
Keeping the same gamedesign but with different visuals is simply called “reskinning”.
Just like your national lottery tickets :
Or … This :
is the same as this :
Exactly.
This is why I asked Aiursrage2k what others were stealing exactly. Because I want to distinguish between stealing actual game content from copying game ideas. One is illegal for a good reason while the other one hurts the diversity and creativity of the genre (Lack of copying that is).
What one person might perceive as a groundbreaking evolution, other people might perceive as unimportant and unchanged. SWTOR is at bird’s eye view, the same themepark design as WoW. but it did have a very engaging story, hours of voice acting, etc. etc.
I, for instance, love co-op. any time someone takes a re-hashed concept and integrates co-op, I’m sold.