dear zynga

[Vilham]

Making a duplicate of an existing product doesn’t take us anywhere.

The bucket loads of money could prolly take us to the moon.

Its not a duplicate and I doubt the major facebook/ios population sees it as that. Gameplay might be exactly the same, or even the frames/scenes, but as long as the art has a totally different (better) style, then sure..

Also, warcraft is a total dune clone only with different graphics and story.

How would you feel if someone literally reproduced Pirates of New Horizons scene-for-scene, with everything in the same place and the gameplay exactly the same? Same plot, same script, same characters, same everything? Except switched to a viking theme and done in CryEngine 3 instead.

I realise the above is unfeasible and wouldn't happen, but that's exactly what Zynga has been doing on a smaller scale. If that wouldn't disgruntle you a bit, well more power to you I guess.

tbh, i would applaud their efforts and probably play that game just to figure out how they solved some of the problems I had Creating a game is really time consuming, even for Zynga. So for them to clone a game is still a pretty impressive feat. Especially when they do it with such quality in mind.

You completely missed his point there. They wouldn't have solved any of your problems, it would be EXACTLY the same game but with different art. Nothing would be solved.

[Skjalg]

...

tbh, i would applaud their efforts and probably play that game just to figure out how they solved some of the problems I had Creating a game is really time consuming, even for Zynga. So for them to clone a game is still a pretty impressive feat. Especially when they do it with such quality in mind.

You completely missed his point there. They wouldn't have solved any of your problems, it would be EXACTLY the same game but with different art. Nothing would be solved.

No I don't think I did. I'm not a native english speaker so it might not read correctly, but what I was trying to say was that I would love to see how they solved some of the problems I have had, that I have already solved (being as in this hypothetical scenario PONH would be completed). PONH is a very complex game (not as complex as many games, but more complex than ios games in general) and no matter how hard they tried to clone our game they would not succeed 100% with every detail and some of their solutions would be different from my solutions. Like camera movement or shader usage, or the movement system for the character. I would most likely run around on all the terrain and see how their character behaves compared to mine, and seeing as this is a 3d thing with physics I'm bound to find stuff that is different.

You know, I'd look at all the small crazy shit that only game developers really care about. I'd investigate heavily to see if they came up with something better than I did. Mostly to learn, and for the occasional laugh (hopefully).

But seeing as those ios games are significantly easier to make, and simpler in terms of graphics (2d vs 3d) then I can totally understand that the differences between the games are smaller. But that doesn't mean that they aren't different and that there is nothing to learn. On ios things move a lot faster and the margins between a success and a failure is getting smaller every day, so there the really small shit matters more and more. Which is also why the +1 that zynga added should be learned from and taken into account when trying to create the next game, even if that +1 is really really small. (I mean, at this point it could be just the placement of a row of buttons in a menu, or the hover effect when you click on something, or the sound that something plays etc). Personally, I think that the +1 in this case is the art direction and general cuteness that zynga added. Pixel-art in this day and age, to me, is very hipster. But of course thats just personal opinion.

[selmitto]

[Izuno]

Related news...

http://www.edge-online.com/news/apple-p ... -app-store

Apple has removed a host of cloned games from the iOS App Store, all of which are apparently the work of a single developer.

The games, developed by Anton Sinelnkov, had instantly familiar names, including Plant Vs Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds, and Temple Jump. In a tweet, iOS developer David Smith noted that last week Sinelnikov had 68 apps on the store; at the time of writing, that has fallen to nine.

Speaking to Gamasutra, Natalia Luckyanova, co-founder of Temple Run developer Imangi, said: "We're really happy with how quickly Apple responded to the situation and removed [Temple Jump]. The app was clearly a scam that traded entirely on the popularity of Temple Run and was packaged to confuse users.

"This was really upsetting to us and damaging to our brand, because we work really hard to put out very high-quality polished games and win the love of our fans, and we don't want them to think that we would put out crap to steal a dollar from them."

It's welcome news after a spate of App Store clones, such as Zynga's Tiny Tower-inspired Dream Heights and 6waves Lolapps' Triple Town clone Yeti Town, which has compelled Spry Fox to commence legal proceedings.

Yet Sinelnkov is a special case, making no effort to hide the fact that his games were designed to be confused with more established App Store properties. Luckyanova went on to say that Apple could not reasonably be expected to completely purge its download store of clones.

"I don't think there's a perfect solution, because you need human judgement involved in the system," she said. "The platform holder can't realistically police copyright violations, or just misleading apps. As developers, we sign an agreement saying that we have obtained all the IP permissions necessary for our work, so that responsibility is on the developer.

"I guess I don't have a perfect solution, because I wouldn't want reviews to be even more strictly policed. The good thing is that most stores have a way to appeal the process if something does slip through the cracks."

[-HP-]

Yet Sinelnkov is a special case, making no effort to hide the fact that his games were designed to be confused with more established App Store properties. Luckyanova went on to say that Apple could not reasonably be expected to completely purge its download store of clones.

Ah ok.. in that case, it's alright.

lmao

[Mazy]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... over-study

Somewhat related. Finally the world is starting to make some sense

[blackdog]

Hope my gravedig is not annoying.

Zynga buys UK game-maker NaturalMotion for $527m

friend of mine works in the London office, I hope no cuts are on the horizon for these guys.

[DrywallDreams]

Does Zynga now own just the games side or the middleware side as well?

[Nysuatro]

also the tools

[Pampers]

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/30/zynga-layoffs-2/

[FrieChamp]

Hope my gravedig is not annoying.

Zynga buys UK game-maker NaturalMotion for $527m

friend of mine works in the London office, I hope no cuts are on the horizon for these guys.

 

I literally yelled out "NOOOOOOO" when I read this

 

EDIT: To clarify, I'm happy for Torsten Reil et al but if Zynga's past is anything to go by then this is bad news for NM. Don Mattrick, you're our only hope...

[blackdog]

Does Zynga now own just the games side or the middleware side as well?

The interesting thing is, from what i was told, that the company (NaturalMotion) seems to be more interested and aggressive on the game dev side, instead of the framework and licensing.

I'd guess that every game will get the Zynga logo, and NM will keep its image for the technology.

Edited January 31, 2014 by blackdog

[Nysuatro]

The news makes me sad though

I hope not much changes for BossAlien. Great people there

[Jord]

Certainly interesting they'd spent half a billion dollars buying new studios at the same time as laying off over 300 people.

[blackdog]

Certainly interesting they'd spent half a billion dollars buying new studios at the same time as laying off over 300 people.

 

i've read new layoffs are from infrastructural stuff. And the impression from outside is really that Zynga outgrew itself, with more "chrome" than "content".