Your feeling on discovering that your game is uncannily similar to another game?

General Discussions
#1

Let’s say you’re happily developing your game and posting builds of it for other people to see and try out… Then, someone comes across it and says that "Hey, your game reminds me of " or something like that. So, you check out that game and discover that not only is your game reminiscent of , but it’s actually incredibly, uncannily similar… even down to some low-level mechanics.

How would you feel about your game then? Would you lose a bit of that passion and excitement in developing your game? Would your impluse be to change things so that they aren’t so similar anymore? Or just continue on as you would if you didn’t know about ?

#2

Finding out about game X is actually an unforeseen blessing. I would try to get a copy of it and play the hell out of it for a few days. I’d note what works and what doesn’t and see if I’m on the right track. I’d figure out how to improve upon it and incorporate those ideas into my game. There’s no way I’d start over or give it up. I’d do my best to use it to enhance what I’ve got.

#3

Here here ^^^ :wink:

#4

What’s even more annoying is when someone just says it’s a blant clone of another game.

I had someone say that Pixel-Space was just a 2D copy of Starmade :frowning:

Bastards.

#5

Bastards, +1

However, you are having a quite good fantasy if you can imagine a game that isn’t already made… 1000 types of FPS/RTS/Race games exist…

But I would try to add some differences to my game (new features) and stuff.

#6

I admire this perspective on the matter. I may try to do the same and consider the experience of playing the similar game as a learning experience.

I guess seeing a somewhat known game (at least known enough to be recognized when someone sees something similar) out there also means that your mind is on the right track and also that games like this have a market.

#7

Good question. With as many games as are in existence, or being developed, I can’t imagine this scenario not becoming more common.

I don’t think there is any one right answer, though, because how I would move forward would depend on many factors:

Passion for the concept (and its possible evolution)
Motivation for making the game
Time/money investment on the project
Project momentum
Other developers involved in the project
etc…

The right answer may be “move forward, don’t quit, evolve/finish your game”, but there may also be times when you have to consider the opportunity cost of the “original” game you are not making while working on the “clone”.

#8

There’s a saying that if an idea is good, then someone else has had it, and thus what matters is not having the idea but implementing it.

There’s also the fact that most creative works are derivative of something that came before, so the chance of converging ideas is pretty high.

In general, it is unsettling when you first come across it. I’ve even had the situation where I was developing a coll idea in my mind, and then a few days later turns out someone had published a full game doing the exact saem thing. But if the lesson you take out of it is to make your ideas a reality rather than just rest on their geniality, then it’s a good outcome.

#9

princec posted a link pointing to d3caster in the thread of my game, he probably meant that I copied this game without making any change which was completely wrong (anyone can check that as my game is open source). I have to admit that I found his attempt of laughing about me completely ridiculous :slight_smile: I have nothing to hide, I started created my game by reusing the source code of d3caster and I’m so grateful that it is written in the homepage of its website. Now, there is not even a single line of this game remaining in the source code of mine.

I felt really upset when a few guys accused me of having copied some elements of Doom and Tomb Raider.

I don’t mind if someone else makes a similar game. Someone already told me that TUER looks like Tesseract whereas they are very different.

#10

In a different setting, I once found out that a song I wrote was basically almost 90% a David Bowie track, which someone pointed out to me.
Sure, it was a bit of a bummer that I wasn’t as original as I thought I was and that I didn’t steal more ideas from other people. But still I was pretty pleased about how it turned out, and that’s what matters most doesn’t it?

#11

I had ideas for games that I came up with myself but later found out that there were already games similar to what I thought of. I guess I would be a bit disappointed that my idea wasn’t original but I would try out the games and see if there’s anything that can be done better.

#12

Ages ago, I wrote a combat card game suitable for use as a combat system in an RPG. About a year into my designing and play testing, a brilliant and edgy game called, Lunch Money, was published with a fairly different play mechanic and a very similar attack/defense mechanic. It was so close that most of the cards in that game can be used to play my game and a lot of my cards would work for that game. The attack defense mechanism is fairly common in wide range of card games, but it is much more obvious in two combat games side by side.

So I tried Lunch Money out as as one shot RPG and it worked quite well. Had much more mood than my game, but was not going to grow broadly or flex well. The built in unfairness in that game also complemented the mood, but would not do well in an expanding and flexible game. I prefer my mechanic as it is much more level, adds quite a bit of dynamic and results in more play in less time. So I still had good reason to continue with my project despite finding a game that was finished, similar and in some ways superior to my own.

Having compared the two, I found places to improve my own. Since my goal and direction is quite a bit different, the other game helped me to see how to get closer to my own ideal.

My game is now much less like the other game, and is a better game because of it. I still love the game Lunch Money and consider it one of the best beer and pretzel games written.

#13

Bah, really don’t feel like that. First of all, everyone is inspired by someone else to some degree, and what really matters is if what you’re doing is compelling on its own.

People who just bash stuff because someone else “did it first” are really sad in my opinion, focusing more on trying to find flaws, than on trying to enjoy the thing by itself first.

And there are always ludicrous examples of how that attitude can be terribly wrong, like some people accusing Warhammer Online of plagiarizing Warcraft’s green skinned Orcs (For those who don’t know, the original Warcraft game (Orcs vs Humans) was orginally going to be a Warhammer game, but Games Workshop pulled out of the deal and Blizzard had to retool the setting so they could launch the game on their own), and anyone claiming that DooM or Tomb Raider did something first are obviously blind to the long tradition of games that came before those, from whom these games themselves copied shamelessly (Also, DooM was originally going to be a licensed Aliens game, and then Fox decided to pull out and Id had to come up with a new idea… Gee, sounds familiar).

:slight_smile:

#14

Yeah, totally. I’ve seen people run down Minecraft because zomg! Dwarf Fortress is teh 4we5ome! Yeah, DF is great, Minecraft is actually playable by normal human beings. That doesn’t mean DF sucks, nor MC - they’re both cool.

#15

Speaking of Minecraft, I’ve said this before, it irks me when new Voxel-Engine games come out that seem to use the exact same texture design as Minecraft (The grass-on-dirt block).

To turn this discussion around a little, I’m also of the opinion that there is a line separating games that are inspired by others before them, and games that are outright “stealing” from others.

In my opinion that line lies with trying to make the content your own, that is, tweak, modify or expand the setting / art style/ game mechanics in your own direction enough for it to be unique, rather than rely on player familiarity with the previous games (or genre) to push your game forward.

It’s always a balancing act, and as developers we have to be brutally honest with ourselves, and question if we’re doing our own thing, or just playing with someone else’s idea.

Nothing wrong with playing with someone else’s concepts, as long as we’re honest about it, particularly to ourselves.

#16

You’re in good company - every FPS game out there is pretty similar to every other FPS game out there. Same goes for every RTS game, every MMO game, every Chess game (especially every Chess game!)…