Indie iPhone Devs Feel the Copyright Wrath

You cannot copyright the rules of a game - a fact lost among these heavy weight bullies.  One mans Uno is another man's Crazy 8's.

So long as these games don't use the name or it's likeness (which would be trademark, not copyright) or use game assets like images from the older game (I won't say original because that let's you think Atari invented breakout from thin air) it's fine.

It's the fact apple as demonstrated it will delete/block/ban apps it just doesn't like that has the fat cats looking for a captive audience.

BTW - copyright is not theft or stealing.  To steal you have to take away the original, not take a picture of it.

Last, a point missed by the GiantBomb crew in the spore DRM podcast talk, is that these games and even "piracy" has only ever been shown to increase sales.  People who downloaded from music from Napster bought more CDs than those who didn't.  Sharing games among friends back when we used a Xerox to copy manuals got us buying more overall games.   If someone had data to show it really hurt sales overall, I'd feel differently, when the opposite is shown to be true it's hard to buy these claims.

Making a game that plays exactly like an older game should be A OK. Ripping graphics, or naming it in a way that potentially makes people think it is the original shouldn't be.

I mean come on, pretty much every shooter has the same mechanics, with a few minor changes at best. Same goes for most genres of games. Its the content in the game that is relevant and not the mechanics.

The way I think about it is what it does for game innovation, and how it protects the work of designers. 

I'm totally for an author nailing someone for plagiarizing their writing, or a musical artist going after someone who copied their song, and games have, for a long time, been subject to very lax standards when it comes to copying.  Games in general, I believe, have been treated as second class when it comes to creators.  This goes for all games, board games included, where the industry basically accepts that the rules they write for a game are going to be snapped up by competitors.  Outright copying of a game may still be prohibited (may, I might be wrong), but you can make a decent facsimile and likely get away with it.

It gets tricky when you think about how software writing has two sides to it, though.  What you see on the screen is an end result, there's a lot going on in the code that you'll likely never know.  If someone can program a clone of a game on a system that's never had it before, or they write very elegant code that totally trounces some bulky original version, this needs to be recognized too.  With writing and singing, what you take in is what's there.  There's thought behind it, but thought is never in danger of being copied (and is thus the subject of endless debate: what did the author mean when he wrote this?).  Computer programming has thought, then code, then user interface.

What they're trying to nail people for is the user interface part.

But this user interface part, when we're using the word clone, means it's a copy of something someone else designed.  It's what matters to most of the people who see it, it's what drives the games market (though I have strong appreciation for anyone now who can code a game that doesn't force you to upgrade one's damned hard drive).

In this particular instance it's more about guys who own the properties (that others created a long time ago) are having their properties copied, and those copies are pulling money away from them, so they are finding a way to stop this.  The effect is it stifles innovation of this particular game's concept, but since we're all concentrating on the fifty versions of tetris there are out there, it also suggests that innovation of games as a whole is slowed down when people are still producing breakout games.  Really, how hard would it be to add some sort of feature to make it different?

The sticky problem with this is not so much that people are copying games, though.   Would a graphical overlay be enough (how many first person shooters copy each other, and just cover this up with different graphics? how many of them really innovate?  They try, but I'd say a good number fail), or maybe adding a new feature or two?

As long as we're talking straight clones, like 100% copies including misleading titles that make you think it's made by the original property holders, and exact graphics there'd be no question that the market is set up to stop this, even if the code is more elegant.  But how much do we have to change a game to make it unique? 

I guess I should just put this on my blog.

The idea of maintaining a specific intellectual property under a copyright protects 'little guys' from the bigger companies. When Braid was created Microsoft could have came out with a similar game called Brad. Jonathan Blow would have never been heard of and probably still in his parents basement. While I'm torn over how these developers have brought back many otherwise dead games, honoring a copyright is ultimately more important.

Stealing is stealing and I don't mind companies coming down hard on these people.  The creators should use their talents to make something original.

Still the best version? Jeff...have you never played Strip-Tetris?
...No?
...Just me...?
...oh...

Thieves!

I feel that indie developers have to be really innovative to get momentum in the industry.   Making a pac-man, or tetris clone, should be treated as a tutorial in game development, not a sellable product.  When I started programming I made a pac-man clone with more sophisticated AI.  I and a few of my friends played it, but that's all.  I can't put that up on the web, because I didn't come up with Pac-man, I just added to it.   There's million of idea's out there.  Just do your own if you want to make money.  

If these little guys are actually and truly taking business from them, sure. I can't see why, if the people can make these clones so easily, they dont try to come up with their own unique quirk for their game in their defense

Hippie fuck nerds thinking "free technology" of something that's 30 years old is bullshit.  A group of dudes far more talented than you made these games before you were fucking born, and they need to get paid.  These were the "Gears of War" and "Metal Gear Solid" of the dawn of video games, age doesn't make them public domain and making money off it makes you a fucking thief.

There's nothing that beats Tetris on a Game Boy.

I think this makes me brain hurt. too much contemplation involved.  It's easy to understand why these companies want their royalties for what is rightfully theirs, but i dont know.

I think anything that raises awareness of where gaming came from is good.  I think people just need to be careful of treading on toes.  Iphones are bad anyway, get yourself an Atari 2600 off Ebay and bring it old school!