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Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

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Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#41

Post by waterfowl »

nashashmi wrote: post #36

Okay, Okay. I get the crying from the threes developers and all, but there is a key difference between why 2048 did phenomenally well and threes didn't. 2048 is a game that was HACKED together and displayed on HACKER news and made open source for the sole purpose of independent HACKING, and indie creativity. In fact, 2048 has got to be the best case study of how HACKING went viral, not so much about how the game went…

To be fair Threes! has been at the top of app store charts, so I wouldn't say it didn't succeed at returning on investment.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#42

Post by jagt »

smacktoward wrote: post #7

> We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it. I played Threes, and I liked it. And I feel for these guys having to watch everybody and his brother pile on to the idea they had to work so hard to tease out into reality. But here is some hard truth: none of that matters. Nobody cares how hard you had to work to get from idea to product. All they care about is what you have produced at the end of all th…

Right. So we're on hackernews celebrating ripoffs and clones.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#43

Post by ijk »

smacktoward wrote: post #7

> We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it. I played Threes, and I liked it. And I feel for these guys having to watch everybody and his brother pile on to the idea they had to work so hard to tease out into reality. But here is some hard truth: none of that matters. Nobody cares how hard you had to work to get from idea to product. All they care about is what you have produced at the end of all th…

The big differences between Threes and the followers are nearly invisible at first by get more apparent as you get deeper into the system.

So, while they could probably make the game restarting interface more streamlined, the part where you're playing the game is something subtly deeper that unfortunately doesn't become apparent until you've put some time into it.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#44

Post by dfan »

nashashmi wrote: post #36

Okay, Okay. I get the crying from the threes developers and all, but there is a key difference between why 2048 did phenomenally well and threes didn't. 2048 is a game that was HACKED together and displayed on HACKER news and made open source for the sole purpose of independent HACKING, and indie creativity. In fact, 2048 has got to be the best case study of how HACKING went viral, not so much about how the game went…

Threes did pretty well too.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#45

Post by mattgreenrocks »

gkoberger wrote: post #16
Gracana wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody cares how hard you had to work to get from idea to product. That was my initial reaction to that statement as well, but upon reading on I realized that's not the point they're trying to make. They're not saying "respect our efforts," they're saying "we spent a year on designing this to be challenging and replayable," and they go on to provide evidence for their claims of superiority.

It's almost a shame they spent so much time talking about 2048; it takes away from the point I gleaned: to make something simple and "obvious" takes a ton of work. I've spent months on designs, and felt bad because the end design was so obvious . "Why didn't I think of that in the first place?"

Very true. It's easy to look at something someone else has done and say, "not a big deal." You don't see the sweat or the design process.

It's actually a big compliment, too. It signifies the design is conceptually sound and as small as it could be.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#46

Post by GuiA »

Having a foot in the indie game developer community and another in startups, it's fascinating to see the HN comments in response to this post.

The indie game developers care about originality, passion, the sweat and hard months of work, the dedication to the craft. I think the point of Asher's essay is to show how much love and effort went into it, and that they were indeed the first to ship a full, polished game with that concept. That's where their pride and satisfaction comes from.

The startup people care about end user experience, how good the PR is, and ultimately how numbers matter more than everything else.

I don't think there's a wrong or right vision - it's two very different communities.

Indie game devs dream of making amazing games with other talented, inspiring people - and as long as they make enough money to live not too uncomfortably, they're fine. Their biggest dream is to receive an IGF award and see their game on Steam. Maybe make enough money to be able to start a studio with a bunch of their friends, but definitely not to "scale" to EA-size.

Startup people dream of growing their company to Facebook size, making billions of dollars, scaling, and being on Techcrunch.

It's two very different communities, and it's fun to see the two worlds collide.

Addendum: if you feel like this post is vindictive, bitter, etc.- remember: the best way to interpret a view different than yours is to understand that there is a worldview in which those statements are perfectly coherent, logical, and meaningful. Asher, Greg, and all the other people mentioned in this post are successful, highly respected members of the indie game dev community - not a bunch of guys who are angry for whatever silly reason.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#47

Post by ssully »

steven2012 wrote: post #20

I have a friend who works at a successful mobile gaming company (not Zynga). He freely admits that what they do is rip off whatever games are most popular. Period. End of Story. They even have a SWAT team that will go out and build prototypes in days and launch them on the App store as quickly as possible to get some users. They've even launched games with the exact same name as the popular game in hopes of tricking…

I dont think mobile games are entirely indicative of what the gaming industry is. The rampant cloning and wild west nature is kind of a characteristic unique to mobile. Cloning and stuff still happens in other gaming mediums, but it has never seemed to be as bad as it is on mobile.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#49

Post by jankins »

chubot wrote: post #21

I saw 2048 on HN, but downloaded 1024 because I wanted to play on an iPad rather than a desktop. I like 1024 better than 2048 because it has a little more richness. Yesterday, I tried to pay and download Threes, but it said it requires iOS 6. I never upgrade my iOS devices after too many screwups from Apple. So not sure if I will ever play Threes. I don't know much about iOS development, but I wonder why a game which…

> I wonder why a game which is basically a 4x4 grid doesn't work on every single version of iOS. 1024 works just fine.

It's pretty much an effort vs. payoff thing; the dev environment get nicer each iteration, and iOS < 6 is in a fractional minority.

Re: Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

#50

Post by benched »

frou_dh wrote: post #28
smacktoward wrote: post #7

> We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it. I played Threes, and I liked it. And I feel for these guys having to watch everybody and his brother pile on to the idea they had to work so hard to tease out into reality. But here is some hard truth: none of that matters. Nobody cares how hard you had to work to get from idea to product. All they care about is what you have produced at the end of all th…

> Threes makes you swipe-swipe-swipe after every game ... before you can play again I actually took that de-emphasised retry loop of Threes to be a lovely touch of "humane" game design. A lot of us are probably familiar with an unconscious just-one-more insta-retry reflex, and while that does keep you in a game, there's a fair chance of the conclusion being quitting it on a bleary-eyed low note after your last-last-l…

I despise UI that gets in my way. It's even worse if it's for my own good.
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