The Emotional Topic of Cloning

edited in General
I thought I'd start this discussion on cloning because it's a topic that keeps popping up in different threads and should have it's own.

I read this article a while back about how indies should complain less about cloning by Joost van Dongen.

I liked how Joost categorizes clones into Asset Ripper, Art Replacer, and Mild Changer.

This was the part of the article that got me the most.
Joost said:
It seems like the general public thinks 'clones' are a problem if few games do it, but if lots of games all do it for years, then we call it a 'genre' and it is okay.
So, let's start with a few questions.

What do you define as a clone?

Do you think there are degrees of cloning?

What do you think are the positives and negatives to cloning?

PS. I don't want us discuss cloning in your basement/room/lair for yourself/friends for practice and understanding concepts. I would like us to discuss cloning in terms of people releasing games.

Comments

  • Usually when a developer blatantly copies another game and tries to make money off it is when people get upset. In general when one gets upset about cloning, it's this practise.

    On the other hand, I think of cloning as more of a "made from the same DNA" type thing, and there have been some lovely iterations of existing concepts. This I think is healthy, because we see the medium moving forward and we see different people's takes on similar ideas.

    And then there's the opposite end of this scale - folks who would happily accuse Spelunky of being a Rick Dangerous clone.
  • "cloning" in the vlambeer sense is a very specific phenomenon where someone will copy your game to a T and try release it before you can.

    Example, skyfar:

    versus luftrausers:


    This is one distinct issue that is obviously a bad thing to do. Borrowing heavily from another game, and refining and improving it is NOT cloning. (controversial opinion alert) I was not outraged by 2048. I though it was a clever iteration and streamlining of Threes, and it was not rushed to market to capitalise on Threes' success. Grouping it with obviously malicious cloning practices is a mistake.

    I think making a "clone" or "heavily inspired by one other title game" is a lot like doing a cover as a band: Are you putting your own spin on it, letting people experience a new side to it, improving or expanding on it, or are you just putting out a worse version of someone else's work?

    Also: Copying one person's work is called plagiarism. Copying from many people's work is called research.
  • The actual quote is:
    "Stealing from one is plagiarism, stealing from many is research"
    And, as I understand it, it's tongue in cheek. Pointing out that you're stealing is the key here.
    Thanked by 1francoisvn
  • That skyfar vs luftrausers makes me sad. Cloning someone's game is bad enough without them trying to beat you to it! Normally the advice is to share your work online so you can get advice and make improvements. A lot of newcomers though are reluctant on doing this, afraid that their ideas will get stolen. And the truth is, that their work is very unlikely to get cloned (it's not like they are on the level of vlambeer or as well known as them). It just sucks that people would do this anyone. I mean, at least give me ample chance to finish first!
  • edited
    As far as I can tell, a big part of the problem around this debate is that different people have different ideas of what the word 'clone' means. The word has been misinterpreted and used so loosely as to be practically useless.
    SUGBOERIE said:
    What do you define as a clone?
    Lots of people use the word 'clone' for things I would not really call a clone at all.
    Heretic is not a clone of Doom, CoD is not a clone of Wolfenstein, MineCraft is not a clone of Infiniminer. The Skyfar thing given as example above is a clone.
    To me it means the "The other thing is identical or as close as practically possible". Cloning is about greed and laziness, not deliberate malice IMO, but it ends up being harmful all the same. It is a system that punishes innovation so it is obviously unhealthy to the ecosystem of gaming and media in general.

    One amusing thing I often notice about clones is that they copy things that are irrelevant to the design. They show their lack of imagination by copying the art-style or some other thing that is just a random, personal idea of the original devs and is not essential to the game. This could be because they don't know what is important to the design, it could be because they want to grab the same audience, or it could be because they have no ideas themselves. I reckon it's all of these.
    SUGBOERIE said:
    Do you think there are degrees of cloning?
    I certainly think so. There are also degrees on the not-a-clone side of the line.
    SUGBOERIE said:

    I read this article a while back about how indies should complain less about cloning by Joost van Dongen.
    Yeah, it was quite interesting. I agree to some of the notions, but I think they only start finding positives in 'clones' when they stretch the definition so far as to be a completely different thing.

    I found this section pretty weak:
    Joost said:
    One aspect that seems completely absent from how indie developers react to clones is pride.
    That is probably a good positive way to take something nasty, but still, companies/developers/artists need more than pride to continue producing things that are worth cloning.
    SUGBOERIE said:

    I liked how Joost categorizes clones into Asset Ripper, Art Replacer, and Mild Changer.
    IMO, those are just different intensities of the things on the wrong side of the cloning border.
    Joost said:
    It seems like the general public thinks 'clones' are a problem if few games do it, but if lots of games all do it for years, then we call it a 'genre' and it is okay.
    I think that's stretching it too much again. All games in a genre are not all the same. I found Quake 3 very different to UT even though they sound pretty much the same on paper.
    dammit said:
    The actual quote is:
    "Stealing from one is plagiarism, stealing from many is research"
    And, as I understand it, it's tongue in cheek. Pointing out that you're stealing is the key here.
    The notion of "cloning from many" seems a bit absurd to me because once you've grabbed a bunch of ideas from many places, you're left with an incoherent tangled mess of a game. It will take a decent amount of actual work and skill to turn that into something good.
    Cloning a single game means you get all the R'nD that went into it for free. I can copy StarCraft's units and stats and be certain to end up with the same well balanced and tested game.
    If I grab a bit from SC, a bit from CnC, a bit from WarCraft, I still have to test that mixed gameplay and iterate until it works well. In all likelyhood, I'd end up with something a fair way off from the initial idea of lazy cloning and may actually have something new.
    Cloning from one rather than many also focuses the damage more on the single developer you've cloned.
    Denzil said:
    That skyfar vs luftrausers makes me sad. Cloning someone's game is bad enough without them trying to beat you to it! Normally the advice is to share your work online so you can get advice and make improvements.
    It is very lame to have that process stunted by cloning.
    Denzil said:
    A lot of newcomers though are reluctant on doing this, afraid that their ideas will get stolen. And the truth is, that their work is very unlikely to get cloned!
    Yeah. Only proven ideas get cloned. (And a lot of folks don't yet realize how terrible the ideas really are :p ) Implementing, testing and proving ideas is where the work goes in and the value is generated.

    I hope all that doesn't read too much like a rant. :p
    But I am biased as we're in a position far more likely to suffer from the scourge of cloning than get any benefit from it.
    Everything I said, obviously, depends very much on the definition I use.
    Thanked by 1dislekcia
  • edited
    SUGBOERIE said:
    The Emotional Topic of Cloning
    I'm going to make the assumption that Joost has never had a thing he's worked on cloned...

    I'd suggest to him to go watch this video: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-07-24-watch-vlambeers-17-lessons-for-indie-developers?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily

    In it Rami Ishmail from Vlambeer mentions (among other things) that the impact of being cloned meant that their studio stopped making games for 8 months and basically felt shit the entire time.

    I know QCF had a really traumatic time when they were cloned as well.

    Obviously I am talking about the more harmful sort of cloning (like the Luftrausers clone). i.e. The clones that intentionally beat the original game to the market.

    So I just kind of feel that language like "Indies should complain less about cloning" should fuck off.
    Thanked by 1dammit
  • edited
    On the other hand, I think of cloning as more of a "made from the same DNA" type thing
    Would I be correct in understanding this as having the same main mechanic?
    raithza said:
    (controversial opinion alert) I was not outraged by 2048. I though it was a clever iteration and streamlining of Threes, and it was not rushed to market to capitalise on Threes' success.
    I disagree with it being a clever iteration. Just in the fact that it has a design flaw. There's a simple strategy to "beating" the game. Although, I wouldn't disagree with you on it being an iteration. IMO I think the major outrage of the game was that more people knew about 2048 than they did Threes. I'm one of them. 2048 just seemed to eclipse Threes. Which is sad because the designers of Threes would go unnoticed for having the idea first.
    Everything I said, obviously, depends very much on the definition I use.
    I think this is where the crux of the argument lies. The definition of a clone. Do you think as an industry we could define a clone, as in the evil kind?

    @BlackShipsFillTheSky His game was cloned and beat to the iOS market. He explains his feelings about it in the article.
  • edited
    raithza said:
    "cloning" in the vlambeer sense is a very specific phenomenon where someone will copy your game to a T and try release it before you can.

    Example, skyfar:

    versus luftrausers:


    This is one distinct issue that is obviously a bad thing to do.
    I remember the Vlambeer guys talking about this but I hadn't seen the game in question. Just wow.

    I also remember how much it stunted Vlambeer's growth as developers, stalling them for a couple of months. I'm fairly certain it also led to a bunch of legality nonsense and having to do the follow-up on the guys who did it. They also churned out a game which parodied what happened to them, if I recall... Some kind of cloning simulator, which was probably a stepping stone to them dealing with the issue emotionally.
  • It wasn't Vlambeer who made Vlambeer Clone Tycoon :) http://vlambeerclonetycoon.com/

    It's interesting how stories fly around and noone confirms anything and start talking about them as gospel :)
  • I've written a lot about cloning. I've written what getting cloned feels like and how you might hope to respond. I've detailed my thoughts on the whole "argument" around cloning and why so many positions on it don't make sense to me. I've even turned the negative around and ridden the wave as powerful media empires wrote about Desktop Dungeons getting cloned.

    There is a lot I can say about cloning... So much that just thinking about trying to say it makes me tired. And sad.

    I guess that the biggest thing I wish for is that we either ditch the term "cloning" or make it much stricter. It's too ambiguous. Decades of purposeful muddying (oh, you should see the rampant bullshit cloning that nuked much of the casual games industry back in the 2000s) and a seeming inability to distinguish between inspiration and downright theft, makes it almost impossible to use without fucking carefully tapdancing your way through a million stupid definition points as familiar arguments derail even your most ardent desire to change things... (Hey, doesn't that sound familiar? Try talking about feminism... Such a successful derailment tactic)

    Plagiarism is wrong. I hope one day we can back that up with legal teeth.

    Inspiration is cool. I hope more people get inspired to make things.

    Emulation is useful. I hope more young devs emulate games from their pasts to learn their craft.

    Remixing is fun. I hope that one day we'll have a working definition for game "sampling" that doesn't leave any creative input unsung.

    As long as "cloning" is all of those things, it's a useless term that just makes me tired and sad. And if I hear someone defending plagiarism through obfuscation of what "cloning" means? Well, that's one of my few real-world triggers to anger.
    Thanked by 1hermantulleken
  • Tuism said:
    It wasn't Vlambeer who made Vlambeer Clone Tycoon :) http://vlambeerclonetycoon.com/

    It's interesting how stories fly around and noone confirms anything and start talking about them as gospel :)
    Rami linked me to an early version of Vlambeer Clone Tycoon several months before it came out. Vlambeer was working on it in at least *some* capacity.

    For the record, he loved it :)
    Thanked by 1Tuism
  • Story time!

    In 1987, a game was released on various 8-Bit platforms called The Great Giana Sisters. The game was a very blatant clone of Super Mario Bros. Aside from the similarity with the name and the fact that it played the same, the first two levels were almost identical to Super Mario Bros.

    Just look at it.

    image

    Nintendo would have none of this and shortly before the ZX Spectrum release, the game was pulled from the shelves.

    The game itself, however, was loved by all who managed to get their hands on it, mostly Commodore 64 owners. SMB was bound to Nintendo hardware, so those who played/loved GGS likely would not have bought/played SMB in anything other than their arcade. So, fast forward many years, another Giana Sisters game was released - this time ironically for the Nintendo DS.

    And then more recently, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams was successfully Kickstartered and released. It's a genuinely good (and flupping gorgeous) platform game that actually stands on it's own exceptionally well.

    Here's a song by Swiss futurepop group mind.in.a.box that plays tribute to the Great Giana Sisters. The word "clone" features in there too. :)


    gianasisters.jpg
    500 x 350 - 9K
  • edited
    Cool story :) It's an IP that grew from full clone status to standing on its own two feet, which is great if all clones did that. Cloning for me has always brought with it MARKETING. Exposure for everyone. Now I'm not saying that's a justification or that it's a good thing or a bad thing, just that it is a thing.
  • The best part about bringing SMB into this discussion is the fact that South Africans had to look to hardware clones to play anything Nintendo-related at the time.

  • edited
    Yeah, I don't get the emotional investment people have in The Giana Sisters. It seems to me that people are conflating their own personal experience of good gameplay with the game itself - of course people are going to enjoy playing The Great Giana Sisters, it's SMB, everyone *knows* how good the gameplay is going to be.

    And yes, I played it. Before I played SMB. On a C64 in Austria, which I believe was pirated.
    The game itself, however, was loved by all who managed to get their hands on it, mostly Commodore 64 owners. SMB was bound to Nintendo hardware, so those who played/loved GGS likely would not have bought/played SMB in anything other than their arcade. So, fast forward many years, another Giana Sisters game was released - this time ironically for the Nintendo DS.

    And then more recently, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams was successfully Kickstartered and released. It's a genuinely good (and flupping gorgeous) platform game that actually stands on it's own exceptionally well.
    I don't think the hardware exclusivity is really a discussion point either: Basically, people feel entitled to play things when there are reasons why they can't. Yay entitlement (which always produces solid logical reasoning) compounded by rationalisation because something that straight-up copies something good, is nearly as good.

    Releasing GGS for money made it plagiarism. Yes, the way it grew into something else eventually and became its own game is neat, I guess. But it would be a hell of a lot cooler if it became an inspired game after being an emulated game instead of a plagiarised one.

    If anything, GGS should be a warning against plagiarism, not an advert for it's potential success: The devs who made GGS to sell (and the backers that published it) got seriously burned because they plagiarised. So in the end the game "escaped" for free and built a following, leading to eventual demand years and years later for a unique, non-plagiarised GGS. Guess how that would have gone if the devs had focused on emulating known work first to learn the ropes? Exactly the same thing, but with less loss due to lawsuits. Maybe it would have spread even faster too. And maybe Nintendo would have still sued (releasing someone else's work for free is still potentially damaging to their business), but without the greedy attempt to capitalise on a perceived "gap" in the market for a specific game (that the GGS devs didn't actually own) on specific hardware, you're definitely less at risk... At least GGS didn't release before SMB did.
  • My story was neither to speak for or against plagiarism - just an interesting one relating to the topic.

    Plagiarism is bad - I think most would agree there.
  • @dislekcia I just went and read all your posts, wiki and media articles on your game that was cloned.
    1. What a shitter to go through. 2. Glad you made it out!
  • @dislekcia I just went and read all your posts, wiki and media articles on your game that was cloned.
    1. What a shitter to go through. 2. Glad you made it out!
    We got really, really lucky. It's hard to imagine what a more business-savvy plagiarist would have done to our ability to keep working. @Nandrew's opening quote in that Polygon article still feels as true as ever.

    I've spoken to a lot of developers and press about this topic since then and the thing that keeps sticking with me is how ambiguity doesn't help us discuss difficult topics like this. That's kinda why I want to move away from the term "cloning" at the moment ;)
  • dislekcia said:
    As long as "cloning" is all of those things, it's a useless term that just makes me tired and sad. And if I hear someone defending plagiarism through obfuscation of what "cloning" means? Well, that's one of my few real-world triggers to anger.
    dislekcia said:
    I've spoken to a lot of developers and press about this topic since then and the thing that keeps sticking with me is how ambiguity doesn't help us discuss difficult topics like this. That's kinda why I want to move away from the term "cloning" at the moment
    This is exactly the point I was trying to bring out when I started this discussion. The definition of "cloning" is not consistent and I think that it should be. I think an international summit should be called to create some standards. Maybe I'm going a bit too far :P.
  • edited
    Just a question about the need for a better word than cloning...

    Why not just call it plagiarism? Isn't that what the practice is referred to outside of game development (and often in game development).

    But then you'd still get the same arguments about, "if that's plagiarism then Call of Duty plagiarized Doom". Maybe it's not a problem with the semantics, it's a problem with people? (and more specifically the lack of understanding that consumers have of professional game development).
  • @BlackShipsFilltheSky: I've been using plagiarism, inspiration, emulation and remixing as mutually exclusive terms for a while now, each addressing a subset of the "popular definition" of cloning. It seems to work well with devs and press, I haven't really spoken to internet commenter types because generally something has to go drastically wrong for me to be exposed to that sort of horror...

    I reckon that plagiarism, seeing as it's a more well defined thing outside of games and it has the added angle of "passing another's work off as your own", might have a better chance of defeating that argument. You can go "Okay, show me what Doom contained that CoD plagiarised?" and when they talk about genre conventions, you can point out how films, music and even academic papers have genre conventions.

    I think I'm just too tired to have that discussion very often... Nothing makes me want to leave somewhere like insular gamers being derp :(
  • edited
    @Dislekcia Okay yeah. It felt like a solved space to me.
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