There are different shades of
game cloning
. Frank Lantz wants us to
acknowledge that cloning is complicated
because declaring that a game is a “clone” is prone to subjectivity and personal bias. Cloning runs the gamut from ripping or recreating art and mechanics to be a 1:1 match, to
taking the same code and wrapping it in different skins
, to slightly changing mechanics, to being “inspired” by existing games, to participating in a genre without much variation. There are
loving tributes
, which combine elements of different games into a unique form. There are
legal boundaries
, which vary by jurisdiction and the language of which is sometimes impenetrable. There are ethical boundaries, which are wholly unenforceable. There are grey areas, and there are audiences who don’t know or care about the differences.
It’s really hard to be consistent in how you talk about cloning games. When it’s hard to be consistent, our natural biases—including societal biases—sometimes tip the scales of our decision. Awareness of these different factors should preclude any discussion of clones. With all of that in mind, Mattie Brice asks why
some games have value and others don’t
. In order to shed some light on that disparity, let’s compare Flappy Bird to Threes.
Flappy Bird is a really incredible game. Every part of Flappy Bird, from the exact physics of the flap up and the plummet down, to the pacing of the obstacles and the precise gap you need to navigate, seems to have been lovingly crafted and fine-tuned.
However, my appreciation for Flappy Bird is not universal. In an article titled
“Flappy Bird Making $50,000 A Day Off Ripped Art”
, Kotaku published an article claiming it achieved undeserved respect, using weak evidence tailored to fit that conclusion. Kotaku accused Flappy Bird’s creator of copy-pasting art from
Super Mario Bros
, but Kotaku’s evidence, consisting of side-by-side images, didn’t support their accusation.
The article was later updated to indicate Kotaku regretted the misleading headline, but the question remains as to why Kotaku boldly attacked the game’s financial success.
Mattie Brice did an excellent job of breaking down some of the hidden assumptions
embedded in the conclusions Kotaku reached. Essentially, Mattie argues, Kotaku was reacting to an unknown developer from outside the mainstream bypassing the traditional structures of industry.
When Flappy Bird’s developer decided to pull it off the market, the void was quickly filled by clones.
Stephen Beirne followed up on the logic of the Flappy Jam
, which was explicitly about creating Flappy Bird clones. Many of these clones
did
commit the crimes Kotaku accused the original of committing:
stealing resources from Flappy Bird
or
Mario
. Many clones were also inferior to Flappy Bird itself. [1] Months later, Kotaku published an article admitting maybe it was
a bit harder than it seemed to create Flappy Bird
.
Recently,
something similar happened to the developers of the game Threes
and Kotaku
wrote an article about the controversy
. Similar to Flappy Bird, Threes was an original game that resulted in a swarm of clones. Unlike many Flappy Bird clones, which all emerged roughly simultaneously,
most of the Threes clones
came from a single clone called 2048. 2048 is slightly different from Threes, and most clones of Threes are actually using the
2048 code base
, so the Threes developers attacked 2048 specifically for riding their coattails by releasing their design documents in order to demonstrate that the 2048-esque mechanics were a possibility they investigated and ultimately discarded. Kotaku said of the controversy, “It’s easy to sympathize with the creators of Threes.”
In contrast, most of the Flappy Bird clones were straight
attempts to recreate the original game
and despite Flappy Bird clones being a more clear-cut case of cloning, sympathy was not extended to the creator of Flappy Birds at any point during Kotaku’s coverage.
The way Threes was treated versus how Flappy Bird was treated is a little disturbing to me. Threes got to defend itself using their own design documents, in their own voice, and on their own site. Other sites were more than happy to link to the creators’ unreadably huge pile of emails explaining the concept behind Threes. Flappy Bird’s creator only got a few interviews, which by definition are controlled by the interviewer, so they didn’t give the Flappy Bird creator hardly any opportunity to give a lot of detail.
In a way, this information disparity makes sense. Threes is the product of a Software Company, where the employees followed formal processes and had design documents and a paper trail. Flappy Bird is, by all accounts, a personal project that suddenly exploded. There were no other team members. There was no need for status reports or accounting. It was a hobbyist making something amusing in his off time. When Flappy Bird became a huge, international hit, there was no material to assemble in defense. Neither was there an inclination to do so, because hugely successful games don’t traditionally need a defense.
So while it makes sense that Flappy Bird just didn’t have the professional structures in place to be able to defend its process, the contrast in how the two games were received disturbs me because it puts a lot of burden on hobbyist game devs. The message I get is, if you don’t follow the Industry Best Practice, and your game becomes popular, you are vulnerable to an unprovoked attack.
Mattie’s point is similar. If you don’t pay the right dues, follow the right formal processes, or don’t have the right support network in place, it doesn’t matter if your game is “really” a clone or not. The label of “clone” is subject to things other than passionless examinations of precise details. It is influenced by the surrounding culture. The next time we are tempted to call a game a clone, we should think long and hard about what we’re targeting and why.
[1] I wanted to prove a point about Flappy Bird’s polish by comparing every single clone I could find against the original game. It seemed like a fun project to dive into the nitty-gritty of a game’s mechanics and compare it to imitators to see what was the hardest aspect to mimic, what people got wrong and right, and so on. I ended up not following through on this.
I didn’t give up on this project because it was ambitious, or it was hard. I gave up on it because so many of these clones did what Flappy Bird was originally accused of (stealing assets and ideas), and on top of that, they tried to make money off it. In my opinion, it’s unethical to profit off someone else’s work so directly. I didn’t feel like justifying the clone developer’s decisions by paying them in order to download their app, or by viewing ads on my device. This stance is apparently considered “
unreasonable
” by some. I disagree.
I am pro-2048. Not anti-Threes, I'm sure it's a great puzzle game (I haven't played it, as I don't own a smartphone), but pro-2048. 2048 was available to me, where Threes was not. A browser game is always going to be more widely accessible than a smartphone game. 2048 did challenge me, and it challenged so many others. The Threes developers' claim that it is "broken" seemed to come, in part, from a position of being deeply engaged and experienced puzzle game players. I mean, of course they are, they made one of the most acclaimed recent puzzle games! They figured out a reliable solution, but most 2048 players, including me, did not. It also seemed to me to have an odd definition of "broken" – for them, "broken" meant beatable. But in most games, being unbeatable is what makes a game broken. 2048 also allowed people to play with it, as well as play it. There was no Doctor Who Threes, no Doge Threes, no Numberwang Threes, but there were the 2048 versions, because 2048 let people modify, alter, convert, whatever they liked. Threes seems like a polished art object, to be engaged with in its own way, while 2048 feels like a toy, to be messed around with and chopped up into something else.
Clones or not, I think games such as Keepy Uppy World Cuppy and Flappy Penguin deserve their place on the app stores. They may be inspired by Flappy Bird but it was a great format (after all, how many Tetris clones are there?) and at least they don't copy 100%.
i agree with both of you. I didn't find a way to work in all the complications even from the two examples I used. For example, Flappy Bird started off free, except for some minimal advertising. When its creator removed it from the market, hundreds of clones struggled to replace it. Threes started off paid, but someone took the mechanics and published it for free in direct competition with the paid app. I don’t think software patents are a great idea, and I’m not in favor of legal intervention to protect either app. Could you imagine if Nintendo patented the side-scrolling platformer in 1985? Yet, at the same time, some stores were completely unusable following Flappy Bird's removal – there were literally hundreds of clones, all directly using Flappy Bird iconography, and it was basically impossible to sort through the noise.