Tiny Gamemaker Takes The Right Approach To Giant Zynga Copying Its Game: It Thanks Them
from the nicely-done dept
It's no secret at all that casual gaming giant Zynga has a dreadful reputation for copying the games of others, and then crushing them in the marketplace. What's even more ridiculous is that Zynga also has a habit of using IP laws to go after competitors. There's been a lot of news this week over the story that Zynga's new tower sim game Dream Heights appears to copy another game, Tiny Tower from Nimblebit, a small, 3-person development shop. As with any "big company copies little company" story, this story blew up fast and is getting a ton of attention. But what struck me most about it was how Nimblebit handled itself. Rather than threaten or sue or flip out... it put out a (slightly sarcastic, yes) "Dear Zynga" image that congratulated the company, wishing them luck, and saying that they were "looking forward to inspiring you with our future games."It also demonstrates, yet again, that there are social costs to straight up copying. Even if it's legal (and it might be -- and it should be mentioned that there have been other sim tower games as well... ) there's a social stigma against such blatant copying. And it seems that by going public Nimblebit ends up accomplishing a lot more. It gets a lot more attention to its own game without wasting money on a costly and long legal process... plus it shames Zynga, but still leaves the actual competition open to the market place.
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Filed Under: competition, copying, games, tower sims
Companies: nimblebit, zynga
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That's not bad - in fact it appeals to me (and I'm sure lots of readers here) much more. But the Zynga version is worthy of some recognition: their graphics are bouncier and rounder and less uniform, with brighter colours and humanist typefaces, big bright buttons and artwork that looks more like modern vector icons than traditional videogame sprites. The avatars have that cartoony feel to them. It feels like a little animated world - not an interface.
Zynga knows a lot about psychology and it's clear they apply it to their visual design as much as their game mechanics. The Tiny Tower graphics engender a subconscious reaction in a lot of people - they are, to put it bluntly, geekier than the Zynga graphics. Zynga's is designed with the flashiness of advertising. Personally I love the Tiny Tower look - but then, I grew up playing DOS games and coding in QBASIC. Is it really any wonder that Zynga pulls the big numbers from the general population with their games?
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For a while they milled countless games off the same tired turn based equasion and put them on facebook. All they had to be was at least a little bit catchy. They reel in high numbers this way, looks good on paper, but the games get boring FAST. They just aren't as good as they look.
I think it's a unfortunate that they shamelessly copied that, and in my opinion this is the sort of thing copyright laws should be focused on. Zynga should be giving Nimblebit credit and sharing profits, particularly because this is a for-profit situation.
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As far as what you say about copyright, I have to completely disagree. There is no way Zynga should be giving them money. If they did, where would it end? Should both of them pay royalties to the publishers of Sim Tower? Should Nimblebit be paying Fox because they apparently use the joke name "Mapple" as a stand-in for Apple, which The Simpsons did first? Should the pioneers of pixel art get a slice? Should Atari come calling, saying they invented games where you progress by moving up floor-by-floor?
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On that I completely agree. The hypocrisy is absurd and I would love to see Zynga slapped down every time they try to throw their IP weight around.
But I also don't think two wrongs make a right in the copyright word - for Tiny Tower to use its IP against Zynga just because Zynga does it to others would, in my mind, only compound the problem (and I know that's not what you're suggesting here - it just seems like that's where a lot of people's minds go. But "give 'em a taste of their own medicine" is not a useful approach when the *real* goal is to get everyone off the pills altogether.)
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Least that is what I read over on the escapiest.
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Accusing Zynga of copying Tiny Tower is no different than saying that GIMP or Corel Paint is a copy of Photoshop. The only similarity between them are the ideas behind the games. The worst you can say about Zynga in this is that they are lazy about generating ideas, but everyone in the entertainment industry is lazy about ideas. That's why we have "Snow White" and other old folk tales in Disney's film catalog. It's why so many novels become movies or old animated shows like "Transformers" become big budget films. It's because everybody just re-hashes ideas into their own interpretation. It's cruise control for profit, like caps-lock is for awesome.
What you're asking for copyright to do is just stupid and reckless. You're asking for the ownership of ideas and nobody has the right to do that.
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SOPA/PIPA and ACTA is twisting copyright into EXACTLY what you're against.
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...Made with the expectation that the person receiving the 'donation' would take specific actions on behalf of the contributor. That's completely unlike a bribe where the person receiving the bribe is expected to take specific action on behalf of the contributor.
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And I'm saying this as someone who has a problem with Zynga's business practices and have had more than a few of my own software products "ripped off" in exactly the same way.
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I disagree for many of the reasons stated before me, but in any event, copyright does NOT focus on this sort of thing because the only thing that was copied was the game mechanics, not the appearance or "expression" of the game. What would protect this sort of thing is patent law, assuming that the processes by which the Tiny Tower game operates are indeed patentable, which I doubt. However, even if they were patentable, I also doubt that the folks at Nimblebit would go through the expense of filing and prosecuting a patent application in connection with their game. A 3-person operation whose premier salable good is a $0.99 game likely does not have the desire nor the resources to go through with that.
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I never understood this concept that people can own ideas and it is somehow wrong or evil that someone else implements the same idea (successfully or not).
Sure it may suck to be one of the three developers that work for Nimblebit in that case, but that's how free-market capitalism works... learn from it an innovate better :)
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so you can copy Angry Birds game and you think THEY WONT sue?
yeah, ok...
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And yes, CtC came out early 2009, Angry Birds started development early 2009 (released Dec 2009).
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In case you weren't paying attention, we're talking about the way things should work and about what's actually right.
We're well aware that lots of people abuse copyright in the manner you describe.
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"And I shall call it... Paywall!" -bob
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Yeah you're absolutely right - bob is just so stupid that he emits a stupidity field that makes other, smarter people accidentally say dumb things just by virtue of his presence.
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They not only copied they improved upon it, now if the little guys were able to copy Zynga without getting sued they would be fine, you see copying is a two way street is not a one way.
Both get their market share, whatever that is, the little guy is able to take advantage of the big corporate bully and the big bully keeps taking advantage of the little guy.
The little guy also can claim he was the original creator, which bring more sympathy to them than it does for Zynga.
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You definitely saw this differently.
I saw that entire image as complete sarcasm bashing Zynga. There are even rebuttal images from other small indies bashing Nimblebit for bashing people (just people in general) for copying.
There's one image, I'll need to find, from an indie that properly congratulates the copying. It was on Reddit yesterday, if I recall. Need to locate it ...
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Re: You definitely saw this differently.
http://imgur.com/ajaYt
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And here's the second one: http://imgur.com/T6vOR
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/eyeroll
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/eyeroll
Yeah, and I'm sure that those millions of "casual gaming drones" would have definitely been finding and playing indie titles like this if only Zynga didn't exist.
/eyeroll
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But you know who will know? Investors, and employees. SOMEONE at Zynga knew they copied the other game. Maybe it was the Product Manager, maybe it was the whole team, but you can bet the entire company didn't know.
And you can also bet that future hires will come across this and stories like it. If I'm good at what I do and want to create original games, Zynga isn't the place for me.
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Not a privacy fan
Fun or not, they don't get to harvest my data even if it's free. I'll deal with ads but this is just ridiculous.
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Fun or not, they don't get to harvest my data even if it's free. I'll deal with ads but this is just ridiculous."
Um, I just ran off to the market to check this game out and it isn't made by Nimblebit. I went to Nimblebit's website and I don't see any word on any of their apps being on android. :(
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Which apparently is not terribly well liked due to things like the above.
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When an original idea is copied it breeds competition.
When original idea realises it must compete, that is when original idea remembers its root
Keep inovating, and the world will be your oyster
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Font used in letter
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Every game is an evolution of the one before it. And that's for the better.
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I don't use Zynga, in fact I started paying attention to other places like open source games.
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X-Gen Studios has something to say on this subject
http://imgur.com/T6vOR
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Re: X-Gen Studios has something to say on this subject
I just googled the app store and these games and wound up with the following information:
I Dig It -> InMotion Software, LLC
StickWars -> John E. Hartzog
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How are they different?
I'm reminded of how Rihanna had to pay out for some images from her S&M music video because they looked too close to some fetish artist. Also reminded how Apple got Samsung kicked out of Germany because the Galaxy Tab looked too much like the iPad. These images are way, way closer to each other in nature than either of the two previous examples.
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We noticed you launched an iPhone game called Tiny Tower! Congratulations! We wanted to thank all you guys for being such big fans of our PC game SimTower! Good luck with your game; we are looking forward to inspiring you with our future games!
Sincerely,
Maxis
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If I want to play a game, why should someone else decide how often I can play? Yeah I know it's done so that they can milk people for "megabuckzors" or "zyngabills" or whatever fake currency they make people buy with real money to get things NOW. But there's plenty of games that don't make you wait, or you wait 30-60 seconds top and may probably even accelerate time.
In SimTower construction was near instant. Many RTSs take a few seconds for a building to pop up. In Harvest Moon, you had to wait a full day but doing other quest-type things, and even there were ways around that.
Man, these "social sims" are so tedious.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jan 26th, 2012 @ 8:23pm
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We never recommend Zynga
They've also just been listed as one of the biggest bullies on the block for going after who THEY see as competitors, even though half the time it's them who stole in the first place.
We'll definitely be writing a story on Nimblebit. Like to give the little guys some promotion, especially when they're being screwed like this.
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None of us think that absolutely all forms of copying are right. Plagiarizing someone's work and passing it off as your own, for example, is a dick move. Copying someone then yelling at others for copying you is infuriating hypocrisy. There are lots of times when copying is frowned upon socially.
The issue is that attempting to legislate against these unacceptable forms of copying just creates more problems. I mean, some people are total jerks - but we don't have laws against being a jerk. We let other people deal with them through social pressures. Most people agree that adultery is a dick move - but it's still legal in most places. Same thing. Generally speaking, I think most of us here would rather artistic issues to do with copying be handled in these societal ways, rather than through copyright law.
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Another Copycat Game
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