Recently sent to me was a link detailing an unsubtle ‘Ripoff’ of the immensely popular first person shooter/Moba/Comic book smackdown/Rock-Paper-Scissors simulator from Blizzard called Overwatch. Understandably, from a creative standpoint, it’s easy to think about why this would make developers someone a little upset.
Let’s rewind the clock a second and deliver a quick peek at everyone’s favourite dinosaur film for an accurate summation as to what really irks the gaming development community via Dr. Ian Malcolms’ character portrayed by the timeless Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic park:
“You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now–
He proceeds to bang on the table before continuing.
–you’re selling it, you wanna sell it. “
That about ties a bow on things, doesn’t it? Now, regardless of your thoughts as to how deeply cloning titles affects the industry (the debate will rage far past the last star in the universe imploding) nowhere is this more rampant than the mobile games market. One need only throw a rock in any direction before hitting a number of Flappy Bird pastiche programs that still remain in circulation in the play/IOS store. It’s important to note here that we’re not discussing piracy (another topic for another time), but the cloning of mobile titles, specifically ones that do very well.
There are a lot of them.
I urge you to think twice about the negative effects of picking up a cloned title. What do I mean by ‘Clone Title’? Skins. All about the skins. It’s completely fine if the game BUILDS on an existing idea, mechanic or property- such things are necessary for the development of games as a whole (we wouldn’t have the latest Mass Effect series without Link’s adventures throughout 1986’s Legend of Zelda, after all). But if the only difference is an aesthetic, and the rest of the game remains unchanged, please reconsider your purchase.
You might save a buck or two, but the damage this does reaches further than you might think. Games that sell well are, in turn, more likely to be promoted due to their likelihood of being placed on a ‘Best Seller’ list. Games that re-skin titles and offer them up for free are also quite damaging, as their open availability discourages the purchase of actual developers’ game at all. Catching the eyes of the general public means someone else is likely to do the same to them, which starts the entire process over again. As you can probably tell, this leaves the original developer in the dust, having pumped countless hours, weeks or even years of their lives into a title with little-to-no return on investment.
All this can be simply summed up in a request for you to do the right thing and purchase the game proper from the developers you want to support, especially the smaller ones. On the mobile market, it’s almost always a negligible cost bump that goes a long way in securing the financial security many of the smaller developers (or developer, as is often the case). Support your smaller developers. They need you.
-Charlie Ze Soapbox Standing Enthusiast
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