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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

#161

Post by dasil003 »

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 to get your score and "sign" it (why do I care about signing it?) before you can play again; 1024 just moves you straight on to the next game. Mobile games need to be simple and streamlined, and 1024 understands that imperative better than Threes does.

This is such facile commentary on the metagame. Any armchair designer can come along and recite a checklist of attributes that any "well-designed" game must satisfy.

But the fact is that gameplay is much more important than metagame and the gameplay of Threes is much better considered. It's a deep game yes, and maybe that's not for everybody, but it doesn't fail as a mobile game. I play it on the tube all the time, and it works fine just to put it away and come back to it.

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

#162

Post by shdon »

DanBC wrote: post #76
prezjordan wrote: post #40

I felt the same sentiment when 2048 first landed. I was shocked at how no one had really heard of Threes! Then the developer put "Gameplay similar to Threes" or something like that on the page. I thought it was a nice gesture. But, overall, I felt for the Threes developers. I'm glad to see this posted to HN.

I had heard of Threes! but only I was only vaguely aware of it as "a good game". 1024 and 2048 and the others caused me to buy Threes! so the clones get them at least one sale.

Same here. Although the games do operate on similar concepts, the differences are enough to make the gameplay quite distinct. Threes is undoubtably the better game. And getting hooked on 2048 made me buy Threes. The people who are amenable to buying paid apps won't be deterred by having a free, inferior, alternative and if the knowledge is out there, it could actually increase sales.

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

#163

Post by zanny »

prezjordan wrote: post #40

I felt the same sentiment when 2048 first landed. I was shocked at how no one had really heard of Threes! Then the developer put "Gameplay similar to Threes" or something like that on the page. I thought it was a nice gesture. But, overall, I felt for the Threes developers. I'm glad to see this posted to HN.

All that Threes should really ask is that if you make a derivative you put a link somewhere in the description pointing back to the parent, like "Inspiration derived from 1024 / Threes".

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

#164

Post by gagege »

ruswick wrote: post #102
zemo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an essay from a craftsman to other craftsmen. Your position is not one of a craftsman, it is one of a salesman.

And the consumer doesn't care at all what anyone is. All they want is a good game, and for many of them that game is 2048...

And the most important things in the world are consumers?

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

#165

Post by m3mnoch »

alagappanr wrote: post #124
m3mnoch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup. making no money. and, as the threes guys point out, with no longevity. it won't be at the top of the heap for long. then, unlike threes, it will crash out the bottom instead of hanging around. so, again. meh.

Only the web version is ad-free. The iOS version has ads. Its longevity I believe will be greater compared to the Threes game. What makes you think otherwise - that Threes will stay on the top for longer than 2048?

in a word? retention.

of the magical kpi beast, that's the single, most important metric. this is something i cut my teeth on hard as an mmo guy -- you wouldn't believe the amazing realtime monitoring of these numbers going on by homegrown services like soemon in the mmo space.

anyway, the growth-hacking startup crowd gets all riled up about install numbers where the game folks are only concerned about retention. because, if it retains? you can charge money for it. if it retains? it can go viral. if it retains? your ltv will lift. retention is key.

while 2048 is hot for the moment (it's got virality), it doesn't have any retention. i would bet that if you looked at their 7-day retention, it's terrible. everyone discovers the "corner strategy" or gets lucky and drops a big score or beats it. "oh, this isn't hard." it's the opposite of the flappy bird effect.

if you guys want to set a calendar reminder to go back and look at 2048's numbers on april 27th, you'll see it being a shadow of its former self.

building on what zemo said, craftsmanship gets your retention where lean gets you market fit and growth. personally, like i said, i'm a fan of both tactics and i believe they can happily coexist at a lifecycle perspective.

p.s. this is the same phenomenon where folks show their google analytics charts with one, giant spike on the day their post went viral. that's called growth without retention.

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

#166

Post by hnal943 »

gagege wrote: post #164
ruswick wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the consumer doesn't care at all what anyone is. All they want is a good game, and for many of them that game is 2048...

And the most important things in the world are consumers?

Yes? Unless you are making something for your own satisfaction of having made it, the responses of the people consuming your product are the most important thing.

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

#167

Post by hnal943 »

vacri wrote: post #107
livepreview wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but it seems to me that researching and subsequently ripping off 20 year-old games is somewhat different than ripping off days-old games already designed for the same interface.

A fair point in terms of ethics. I guess I was talking about originality.

I think the true originality is pretty hard to come by. There's nothing new under the sun.

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

#168

Post by gbhn »

jmduke wrote: post #93
zemo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

craftsmanship is not lean.

Man, I really like this comment. And I realize that sentence alone is pretty pointless, so I'll expand on it a little: One of the huge sources of cognitive dissonance I have in HN and startups in general (and this is coming from someone who is explicitly not a startup/SV person, though I find it a great spectator sport and a wonderful font of knowledge) is the clash of lean against polish. I felt like I've spent the…

I've played both games. It's definitely true that 2048 appeared in a world where threes was popular. But it isn't the case that a bunch of effort improved threes over the simpler 2048.

Yes, it is simpler, easier. Sometimes that's exactly why a game is better. I can appreciate that the threes creators spent months working on their game, presentation, etc. To my taste, the result is poorer than 2048.

Another fun factor is that because it's so simple, and open source, 2048 has all these fun variations available. Those explore the game space in a way that a bunch of WIP snapshots from the threes creators just don't. The result is, I think, a more fun, engaging environment.

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

#169

Post by gbhn »

MBCook wrote: post #57
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…

I disagree with you, but I'm curious about this bit: > I think of the three of them 1024 stands up the best. It takes the core ideas in Threes and sands them down into a game that is easier to grasp and plays faster, without becoming so simple (a la 2048) that it becomes a game a script can beat. I've never played 1024. Could you explain how it "sands [the ideas] down" and and "is easier to grasp"? I found Threes sim…

Specifically, once you've played puzzles of this sort, it is easy to see that the core of the puzzle is that all the tiles move as far as possible on a move. That threes doesn't do this makes it look like the prototype, no matter how much thought went into it.

Threes then seems more like a combination of this concept and a 15 puzzle.

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

#170

Post by gagege »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #92

Threes is a significantly deeper game than 2048 - see for instance this thread on reverse engineering the gameplay mechanics: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3133680&postcou... This is something the developers are known for. Greg's earlier game, Ridiculous Fishing, not only had it's own internal Twitter app ("Byrdr") with it's own ARG mini-game - including a fake website with SQL injection vulnerabilitie…

Ridiculous fishing is a piece of video game art. It's really blows all of it's clones out of the water (pardon the pun). You can't clone talent and polish.
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