Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game

asherv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 218 posts

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

#71

Post by pom »

DanBC wrote: post #66
GuiA wrote: post #46

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 wit…

They shipped the first version. They then decide to ise the term "rip offs" - even though people developing one of the first very popular rip offs claim to have never seen Threes!

If you are referring to 2048, that’s because it was ripping off 1024, not Threes.

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

#72

Post by MBCook »

powera wrote: post #33

From the very end - these guys sound REALLY bitter: """If you read this whole thing. Thank you. Wow. If you scrolled down here and skimmed it or just wanted to see if there was a prize at the end, well, you're here. It's about the journey, man. Hopefully this post points to what we're getting at when we say that making these tiny games is littered with hard and painful times that are full of uncertainty and self-doub…

Things weren't that bad this time, but they've been seriously bitten in the past. As (one of them) got close to releasing their game Ridiculous Fishing last year, a competitor quickly cloned it and beat them to the app store and got a high ranking. They nearly canned the game because of a ripoff.

Truth is, the app store is a pretty scummy market.

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

#75

Post by MBCook »

corresation wrote: post #27
patresi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Android version of Threes wasn't even out yet

If you don't serve the market, there are a lot of people who very quickly will. I have mixed feelings about this. While they may have mulled over this game for a year, it remains a relatively simple idea and execution (compared to most other mobile apps). Threes has always seemed a little odd to me given that it was endlessly pitched on HN by people who seemed to believe that the authors are owed some debt of gratitu…

Some things are only simple in retrospect, like the laws of planetary motion as opposed to the older epicyclical orbit theory.

Three is a great game, but there were gaps in the market. The delayed Android release and the fact it couldn't be played on a desktop certainly left a vacuum others would try to fill.

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

#76

Post by DanBC »

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.

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

#77

Post by MBCook »

hoilogoi wrote: post #39

I just looked at 1024 on Google Play, and I have to say it would really sting to work on Threes for a year then read that "If you played 2048 in Hacker News, That [sic] you should know this is the original one."

Have you seen the original description for 1024 on the app store? I see they've updated it to be less tasteless, but luckily the internet never forgets:

"No need to pay for ThreesGames. This is a simple and fun gift for you, and it’s free."

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

#78

Post by MBCook »

jankins wrote: post #49
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.

Yep. iOS 6 has some nice APIs, iOS 7 is even better.

According to a company called Mixpanel Trends [1], iOS 7.x is currently on 89% of all Apple devices. iOS 6 is just under 10% and iOS 5 and before is under 1.5%.

Since you can't downgrade and devices ship with the latest version, that means that anyone running iOS 5 or iOS 6 is also running an older device with lower performance. If you're doing a resource heavy game it may not even run well on those devices even if you did work to support them.

1. https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_7

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

#79

Post by kaliblack »

MBCook wrote: post #70
DanBC wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shipped the first version. They then decide to ise the term "rip offs" - even though people developing one of the first very popular rip offs claim to have never seen Threes!

Are you referring to 2048? They said they were based on 1024, and 1024 explicitly launched with an app store description along the lines of "Why waste your money on Threes, we're free". EDIT: Found the quote. Surprise surprise it's no longer in their description. "No need to pay for ThreesGames. This is a simple and fun gift for you, and it’s free."

Which 2048 are you referring to? The creator of the one that hit it off on HN said that they weren't aware of Threes until after it took off [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373927

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

#80

Post by MBCook »

kaliblack wrote: post #79
MBCook wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to 2048? They said they were based on 1024, and 1024 explicitly launched with an app store description along the lines of "Why waste your money on Threes, we're free". EDIT: Found the quote. Surprise surprise it's no longer in their description. "No need to pay for ThreesGames. This is a simple and fun gift for you, and it’s free."

Which 2048 are you referring to? The creator of the one that hit it off on HN said that they weren't aware of Threes until after it took off [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373927

He says he wasn't aware of Threes, I have no reason to doubt him. If I saw a simple game and wanted to make my own version, I wouldn't do in-depth research of the original game either.

He was cloning 1024 which was explicitly a clone of Threes. I was only pointing out there was a chain there.

Post reply on HN