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Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights'

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Re: Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights'

#71
post #68

I can see NimbleBits being miffed a bit, but they have not released an update in a very long time. I tweeted @eeen and he said there is no update anytime soon. My wife cannot play Tiny Tower anymore, she has every floor possible (153), 12 vacant floors (waiting for more floor types to build), 30 million coins and 250 bux. Is this what an "iPhone Game Of The Year" acts like? It seems to me that Tiny Tower was a great…

Well, the other half of having 3 employees is that you move on to the next game, and the old one is left as-is.

indeed. I get that for sure and the game was free.

I still sort of wonder how much work it would be to release an update that i just new floors, not other new functionality.

I imagine it is work..still sort of want it!

Re: Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights'

#72
post #45
post #3

Honestly, this isn't really even that bad. There are a ton of games ripped off of Zynga that are MUCH closer to the Zynga assets. You could argue Tiny Tower ripped off Sim Tower etc. The whole thing is stupid. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, even other giants.

> You could argue Tiny Tower ripped off Sim Tower etc. About the only thing Tiny Tower and SimTower have in common is the word "Tower".

Hmmm, that and they are also both games which simulate running a tower as a business.

Re: Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights'

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are. WoW, Farmville, all use a skinnerian model - different reward types on variable, regular and random schedules designed to make sure that you get that next dopamine buzz just right in time. leastI don't doubt that some of these games need someone to take a look into them. Likely we need legislation such as that which covers the gambling industry or rules such as those that cover the slot machine indu…

This seems like an impossible thing to regulate. What public good are you aiming to maximize? What has the market proven that it can't do without intervention? How will you determine which market behaviours are the "bad" ones? In the case of gambling, I think the only protection the public needs is education ("the house always wins")--in the UK, at least, gambling regulation is usually in place to isolate gambling fr…

These are the questions I am asking myself.

At one end, there is the market will solve it approach, and if it isn't broke, why fix it?

After reading your comment, the most I could suggest would be game companies having to show the general rate of growth players could be expected (average, maximal).

Re: Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights'

#74

If they don't like Zynga re-implementing their idea, they should keep adding features and innovating so their game is better. You can't be against the patent game the big guys play but for protection against this kind of behavior. edit to add: If I worked on the blatant copy, I wouldn't exactly be proud of that work.

You can't be against the patent game the big guys play but for protection against this kind of behavior. Clearly you have no idea what concerns many people here about patents, otherwise you wouldn't be making a comparison like that.

Care to elaborate?

Re: Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights'

#75

And tiny tower is arguably just a tweaked version of sim tower. Whoopie doo. But seriously, the whole time I played tiny tower, all I could think about was where was the rage over copying yoot saito?

Sim Tower is basically an elevator management simulator with some very basic tower management that's similar to something like Sim City. Tiny Tower is a very simple game about building floors putting people in the right floors. There's no comparison beyond the fact that they both take place in towers.

I disagree; I've played both and they share many of the same game mechanics.
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