Johann Sebastian Joust Is Latest iOS Cloning Victim

@Elazul said:

@patrickklepek said:

"The studio told Gamasutra that ex-Big Brother UK contestant Sam Pepper contracted Papa Quash from Ustwo..."

Uuuuuuhh... what?

Yea I tried to reread that several times and it still doesn't make sense.

@patrickklepek said:

"The studio told Gamasutra that ex-Big Brother UK contestant Sam Pepper contracted Papa Quash from Ustwo..."

Uuuuuuhh... what?

These people who do the cloning are among the first to complain if their own work gets stolen.
 

>

the crowd playing this game looks hell of hipster

@l4wd0g said:

I'd feel a lot worse if I broke my iPhone over a $40 Move Controller

was just gonna say anyone who plays this on their phone or pad is a dumbass, move controllers can take a drop. phone? not so much.

@buft: Yup, and just about everyone has a smartphone/iPod, where as very few own a Move, let alone multiple Move controllers.

I'd feel a lot worse if I broke my iPhone over a $40 Move Controller

I always thought it would make more sense on a smartphone, and hell maybe someday i can actually play this damn game.

Cloning a game that doesn't even have an estimated release date? How about don't show your game off if you're never going to release it, or else people will copy the ideas and actually get shit done with them?

It's [b]really[/b] hard to feel sorry for anyone about this. If your team can't finish their project, then maybe you need a better team. This is a business, not a charity. People won't wait forever.

it's his fault for taking forever to release it.

Sorry guys, but while it does stink, I was never doing to buy a move or a ps3 for that matter, just to play jsjoust. It's great that it's on the iPhone; would have been great if the original developers got to design it, but look how long it's taking them just to make a ps3 version.

People tripping over themselves to post post post about how much they don't care, and others being contrarian for the sake of it. Oh, internet.

And before anyone tries to claim they're not just being contrarian: the alternative is that you really do believe "I don't sympathize with Die Gute Fabrik because I wanted their game NOW NOW NOW" is a statement you want to associate yourself with having made. Decide for yourself which is worse.

Great idea making people drop $400 devices with glass screens on the floor, rather than relatively sturdy $30 move controllers.

Then, more than 2 years after first showing off Johann Sebastian Joust without making the game available, and the idea being pretty simple, I'm not sure I'd call this cloning in the traditional iOS use of the word. Have a look at the TIG Source forums, and you'll see that considerably worse ripoffs and clones than this is an every day issue on iOS, and in many - if not most - of those cases, it's not just the concept for the game that has been cloned, but the actual art assets are often ripped straight from the source game, and are published on iOS under the false banner that it is an official iOS port of a popular indie game.

The stupid thing is Johann Sebastian Joust isn't out, when it rightly should be. Now that Papa Quash got officially released first, technically JS Joust is a clone of Papa Quash. You can't clone an unreleased game. The developer of the iPhone game may have stolen/borrowed the idea, but any claims of cloning are limited, due to the fact that JS Joust isn't commercially available. If the developers of JS Joust had released the game, it would be a different story.

Yea, it does suck for Die Gute Fabrik, but they should have known better than to disclose a unique game mechanic without any intellectual property protection or realistic prospect of release. It is also just a single game mechanic that isn't really revolutionary. If they can still manage to produce a great all around package, they'll still see success. For example, all the Minecraft clones that came out on X-Box Live prior to Minecraft's PC or X-Box release, and yet Minecraft was greatly successful. If Die Gute Fabrik is banking only on that single game mechanic, then they have done nothing but stumble upon a good idea. In the real world, nearly everybody stumbles upon great ideas, however, knowing how and when to execute that good idea is actually the skill to be praised.

All that said, the game seems more like a short lived gimmicky experience, one that will be even shorter when putting an expensive smartphone at risk.

@Kraznor said:

You know, at some point I can't exactly blame them. Yeah, I've been hearing a lot about this game for awhile and it sounds fun but...I don't have a Move. I don't want a Move. I also like it when games actually come out. Sooooo, iPhone seems like a natural fit, these "rip-off artists" actually completed their version in a timely manner, and the Johann Sebastian Joust people have some lessons to learn for next time. Don't show your game unless you're about to actually release the thing.

Jdaman is right, they borrowed a mechanic they saw elsewhere. So what?

God, I couldn't agree more! Nicely stated.

All I hear is whine. You don't hear Mojang crying about all the Minecraft clones, well because he can't. This and Minecraft are new genre's (dare i say), and if you can't release your product shortly after showing it, then don't show it all. UsTwo has every right to be inspired. They didn't copy anything, because Johann Sabastian Joust doesn't have a copyright on the anything related to the concept... oh wait, YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT GAMEPLAY MECHANICS!! You can't only copyright intellectual property as it pertains to story, characters, plots, names, titles. I'm thankful that gameplay mechanics aren't able to be copyrighted. Think about how stifling every genre in gaming would be if Wolfenstien 3D copyrighted many of the concepts it created???

I say good on ya, UsTwo. I'm going to rush out and buy it!

"Johann Sebastian Joust has been in perpetual development, despite endless positive press, for a while now, and it’s still unclear if it will see a proper release on PlayStation 3 or otherwise."

So I can't buy the original? On any platform? Despite the game being shown off over the last year? And I'm supposed to dislike clones?

Whole thing reminds me of TF2. Valve showed all the gaming press TF2 in the late 90's/early 2000's, went quiet for 7 years, the whole industry was influenced by the early coverage and yet TF2 still did fine when it was finally released.

This game looks fun. Too bad it is a clone. But the idea of having this game on a portable format is pretty cool.

That could be the worst advert for anything ever. I don't ever want to be near someone who downloaded that now.

Just when I thought I couldn't get any more sick of shitty dubstep in video game trailers...

it sucks that it got cloned but... this just means now me and my friends can play this.... and i've told a lot of girls about this game and they said "can we play it?!" and i said it wasnt out.... now we can totally play it... oh wait some of them dont have smartphones FUCK!

You know, at some point I can't exactly blame them. Yeah, I've been hearing a lot about this game for awhile and it sounds fun but...I don't have a Move. I don't want a Move. I also like it when games actually come out. Sooooo, iPhone seems like a natural fit, these "rip-off artists" actually completed their version in a timely manner, and the Johann Sebastian Joust people have some lessons to learn for next time. Don't show your game unless you're about to actually release the thing.

Jdaman is right, they borrowed a mechanic they saw elsewhere. So what?

@patrick: you need to have Andrew Fitch copy edit your articles...please... Or do your articles in Google Docs first before publishing it. Great article though! Getting in with new amd releant news scoops!

Okay, the fact that the trailer used dubstep and used it badly just unsold me on it. The last time a trailer was done well with a dubstep soundtrack was Syndicate. Every trailer done with dubstep that I've seen after that was just irritating.

What's next? Stem cell phone research?

I am sympathetic to a point. Since JSJ has been in dev for soooooooooooooo long at what point does e dev community say that it's never going to get finished and run with the idea. Now that is obviously not the case here, this is some bold faced copying, but the question still stands.

I hope that the JSJ folk will want to settle this shit with an actual, proper joust.

it woudn't be a patrick article without misspellings and such

"Just to be clear, we have never and would never approve, give permission, or encourage anyone to clone of any of our games."

“We genuinely care about what we do and out reputation in the indie community."

@AngelN7 said:

@Sin4profit said:

Girl in that Joust photo weirds me out. The fuck is she suppose to be doing?

She's in the "no!, please stop punching me! my move dropped" pose

I'm more worried about the creepy dude coming up behind her...looks like there's a surprise in store for her.

On a serious note, leave it to an ex-big brother star to be the crux of this.

fucking worst video ever. get that dubstep outta 'ere!

On the plus side it's pretty much guaranteed that anybody who buys this will break the shit out of their iphone.

@Sin4profit said:

Girl in that Joust photo weirds me out. The fuck is she suppose to be doing?

She's in the "no!, please stop punching me! my move dropped" pose

Not sure how I feel on this yet. The game is a brilliant idea and I'd have liked to see the original creator be credited with that, but at the same time I'm kind of sick of this perpetual 'beta' bullshit developers have taken to in the past few years. If you're not ready to release a game, don't plaster it all over the place and allow people to show it off. And if you do, you can't really complain when a year later somebody manages to release your own game before you.

I can see where the confusion lies...

"Would you like some of this delicious cake?" translates perfectly to "Can we copy your unreleased game?"

@ADarkMatter said:

Is looking like a douchebag required to play right this game?

Yes

So I guess I probably shouldn't release Rocketpack Thrillride.

Is looking like a douchebag required to play right this game?

Also it seems that this game is not completely free, in order to use any other characters (which gives you taunts and sounds while playing) it's 99c a pop for another 4 characters. So there is some money to be made here by the douchebags.

On one hand, I've always really wanted to play JSJ but never gotten to, and with the way their dev is going, never will. This will allow me to.

On the other hand, the guy who contracted Ustwo to make this is a gargantuan ex-reality star geordie twat and would never want to do anything to support or even associate myself with him, game IP stealing or not.

It's a tough one.

I was always under the impression 99.9% of the crap on IOS is a rip off of a rip off of a rip off or something along those lines.

But i really can't speak with confidence on that issue because i don't own a smartphone or desire one but if the whole "inspiration" bullshit is just a nice way of saying nice idea, i am going to pathetically steal it and make money off it.

Thats sucks for DGF, but does he have total and exclusive licence for that type of game on all platforms? i would get probably not ,other wise id would be only one making FPS, yes thats a stretch, but believe it or not this is not even one of the bad ios clones, atleast they did their own art

Even though they don't take another guy's work, I was lost in dubsteps

You know, I think, I just think I've seen that picture before...

I sympathise but whenever I hear a story like this I always think of something a teacher of mine told me years ago when we were having a discussion about how to protect our concepts, he told me: 
 
"The best way to protect your ideas is to get on your horse and make them. An idea is only worth so much and if someone can come along and make it better and faster than you then maybe you don't deserve as much credit as you think". 
 
Maybe that's a little too dog eat dog but in this age you'd think developers (especially indies) would realise people are watching and waiting to make money off of their ideas. 
 
...and it's free? Dag.

I'm willing to let the plagiarism slide so long as the iPhone-waving, ironic-shirt-wearing jackasses in the video get the ridicule they deserve.

"Yo, kids these days like DUBSTEP, RIGHT?! We gotta add some DUBSTEP!"

Wow, too bad things are shaking out this way. While I would want the Joust guys to be protected, iOS is actually a really great platform for this concept. Johann Sebastian Joust is a better title, too...

@RenMcKormack said:

@laserbolts: hahah I always do that. Sebastian Joust. But also that musician should get off his ass and get on the Iphone.

I remember seeing him on the trailer park boys but I can't remember what band he was in.

Are iPhone and PlayStation the same thing? Also, the big live live show was like 6 months ago. iOS game development can work a lot faster then that.

One person makes one clone of one game.....what about the 100 duck hunt clones on the app store??

This is a much bigger problem than one clone of one game

Anything in writing, Ustwo? Because I'm pretty sure without that you're just a bunch of fuckers.