Is Dong Nguyen Trolling Gamers With "Swing Copters"? 113
Nerval's Lobster writes Given its extreme difficulty, it's tempting to think that the new Swing Copters is Dong Nguyen's attempt at a joke (You thought 'Flappy Bird' was hard? Check this out!), or maybe even a meta-comment on the emerging "masocore" gaming category. Or maybe he just wanted to make another game, and the idea of an ultra-difficult one appealed. Whatever the case, Nguyen can rely on the enduring popularity of Flappy Bird to propel Swing Copters to the top of the Google and iOS charts. But his games' popularity illuminates a rough issue for developers of popular (or even just semi-popular) apps everywhere: how do you deal with all the copycats flooding the world's app stores? Although Google and Apple boast that their respective app stores feature hundreds of thousands of apps, sometimes it seems as if most of those apps are crude imitations of other apps. The perpetual fear among app developers is that they'll score a modest hit—only to see their years of hard work undermined by someone who cobbles together a clone in a matter of weeks or days. If Apple and Google want to make things friendlier out there for developers, they might consider stricter enforcement policies for the blatant rip-offs filling their digital storefronts.
It's easy to troll gamers. (Score:5, Funny)
Point out literally any trivial mistake in any popular platform or game, and they(they being self-identified gamers) will inexplicably act as if you have invented the most vile insults about their parentage.
Honestly, my observation is that it's harder to not troll gamers than to do so.
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Re:It's easy to troll gamers. (Score:5, Informative)
Console A is terrible! Why would you ever want to use that? Console B isn't much better. PC Gamer Master Race.
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The uber games own all 5 systems, including PC, and they will gripe about each one being inferior.
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Pro-click zone right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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[copypasta'd OTT ITG parody]
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. [somethingawful.com]
Like most games ... game dev is hit or miss (Score:1)
This is a non-story ...
As it was already pointed out on reddit.com//r/gamedev ... Dong Nguyen got extremely lucky with Flappy Bird. The game is cheesy but it has focused game design making it a "good" game.
Of course everyone will be watching if he can replicate his success with Swing Copters. The controls aren't that great but everyone is waiting to see how it will do.
Trolling? No, just another game dev trying to follow up on his success. Just like Notch "failed" at his "Scrolls" project.
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Edit: Or Notch's "0x10c" ... or whatever Notch is working on these days ...
"Game tuning" is always an on-going process. Witness Blizzard with WoW, and Star Control 2, GGG wtih Path of Exile, etc.
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I don't find swingcopter very fun, I think the mark was missed.
Of course I'm just me, but the interaction is less direct it feels like.
I have nothing to add (Score:5, Funny)
I just wanted to post "trolling with a swinging dong" and have it be relevant to the story for once.
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Don't you be talking about Dong's Schlong. That's just wrong :(
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???
Profit!
lol @ dongs (Score:1)
Doing it wrong (Score:2)
Clearly, if he were trying to troll he'd have named it "ROFLcopters!"
How do deal with copycats? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, I dunno. Maybe ask some of the big studios that squeeze out sequel after sequel of identical games that look in no way different than the identical games offered by the studio next to it?
It's not like that phenomenon is unique to the handheld gaming market. You get the same kind of crap on PC as well. A thousand similar FPS combat about as many RTS clones for popularity.
And since AI is hard, you get the same shit with crappy AI from the Indie devs and call it Zombie shooter, since you're kinda expecting a zombie to be kinda mindlessly dumb, so nobody is gonna complain about an AI too dumb to dodge simple pits with mindless straight-to-the-player pathing. Actually, I'm kinda astonished that only a few big studios jumped on the latest Z-shooter fad to cut corners.
And of course mix in the load of "Minecraft meets $genre" games we've been thrown at recently. From Minecraft-zombieshooter to Minecraft-spacerace, everything's available.
You think the handheld market is full of copycats? Compared to the PC market they're petty amateurs.
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Slots apps are a good example of this. Virtually all of them will toss you a small amount of coins every four hours, and you gain levels by spending coins, so you can play more elaborate simulated slots, some of which only are playable for 30 minutes. Of course, if you don't want to wait the rest of the four hours, you can do in-app-purchases.
In fact, it seems most games on the smartphone tablet are this way... you need to consume/use "X" resource to gain levels to do more stuff... and the only way to do
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Given enough copycat games that business scheme doesn't work out. Once I used up your 30 minutes, I move on to the next and use my 30 minutes there.
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>Gee, I dunno. Maybe ask some of the big studios that squeeze out sequel after sequel of identical games that look in no way different than the identical games offered by the studio next to it?
Is that you EA?!
Rating system (Score:2)
Wouldn't the rating system help hide the cheap knock-offs, or is the sad fact that people can't tell the difference?
Maybe the rating system should be like rottentomatoes, where there is the "audience rating" and "somehow accredited professional critics ratings", and the app's position in the store searches/listings could be a weighted sum of both of those, and the app store user could adjust their weighting toward more audience score or more critics score. (Before you patent that obvious concept, consider t
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This doesn't compute...or does it (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is the reasoning for why we have patents. It took Edison (his team really) hundreds if not thousands of tries until they figured out how to create a reliable light bulb. Once they did all that hard work, it is ridiculously easy to merely see what they did and copy it. Patents exist to project people who do that upfront investment.
Sure, they have lots of issues that need fixing, but the fundamental idea is still OK. On the one hand, there should be a way to protect original apps from copying, but on
*snark* missing or complete Bullshit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Thomas Edison was one of numerous scientists that were working on similar "inventions". Scientists shared notes and findings which lead to the invention of the filament bulb, but it surely was not one guy doing all of the work.
The patent system gave a monopoly to Edison and isolated every other scientist that worked on the bulb reducing "their" work to non-existence a short time later. It did not help anything in science, and the only person that benefited was "Edison".
The same guy by the way, that staged live executions to show how dangerous AC was and cost Tesla numerous contracts (one of numerous publicity stunts to help his own career and harm others). It only cost Tesla most of his funding. It only took us a century to figure out what a genius Tesla really was and what a dickhead Edison really was.
I'm sure we could spend time digging and find a patent that is not complete bullshit, but your example is surely not one of the few.
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Edison/Tesla rants are so boring.
Edison was a very successful businessman. His greatest invention was the Research and Development Lab (you hire a bunch of people who work for you inventing stuff that you own the patents for) Probably his second greatest invention was whatever he did to win the PR battle so well that people consider him as an individual a 'great inventor.'
Tesla was a different matter. He was an Edison employee, one among many. It's sad that he went stark raving batshit mad in his later
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That's cause edison was a moron, like you.
This doesn't compute...or does it (Score:2)
The original creator comes up with the idea, usually among many ideas. Then they have to decide which one to go with. Then you have to design and implement, refine, and see what works, until you have something worth releasing.
Then you might have to put the effort into social media or advertising.
Then you might become popular.
Then someone else looks at what you created and breaks the concept down into components that are easily reproducible in a day or two, while their artist copies your art. They flood the
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The only real counter to something like that is to create a game that's complicated enough that reproducing the game mechanics that make it popular takes long enough that the clones don't come out in time to bite into the profit during the critical first week/month.
Or in other words: make a product with actual lasting value. Oh, the horror!
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What generally happens is a developer might spend "years" on several different games/apps, with each probably benefiting from lessons learned from the previous ones. Eventually, one of the games finally breaks out gets popular. Since we're talking about very simplistic games here, it's not at all difficult for someone else to just copy what they see working.
The problem here is that these knockoffs aren't even trying to pass for unique games. Most even try and copy the developer name, counting on a certai
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What happens is that the developer has dozens of ideas, and the 30th one actually works. People like it; people play it. It has the right "stuff" that it becomes a success. Finding that combination is what takes years. Actually producing that one game may have only taken the amount of time it takes a copier.
Alt
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Supercell is eating Zynga's lunch. With a business plan so different that it's staggering. No, Zynga isn't long for this world. When they die, nobody will fucking care, either.
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Flappy bird is certainly not a good example of the ideas being the expensive part. Here's just one example of an earlier game that is similar in nature:
http://www2.sunflat.net [sunflat.net]
Easy (Score:2)
Basically, years of honing your game design skills and trying new ideas and then someone comes along and copies your mechanics and your game is irrelevant just like that.
Hye, how about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
So when someone expends significant effort and time to develop something we want to ensure that they realize the benefit for their work. The challenge is that once the work has been done, it is easy for someone else to copy it and steal your profits (because they avoided all the development costs).
What is being asked is for an institution, such as Google or Apple, to take steps to prevent other from copying one's work.
Put another way, the ask is that Google/Apple create a private patent system.
I have to laugh that when developers want to take advantage of other people's work, they condemn patents, but when they find their own work being cloned suddenly they are clamoring for someone to come in and protect their work...
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Not quite what's happening here. These aren't people just copying designs. They're usually trying to pose as the original work, including the developer name, to trick people into installing their version.
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Not quite what's happening here. These aren't people just copying designs. They're usually trying to pose as the original work, including the developer name, to trick people into installing their version.
Slight modification to the GP post, then:
Put another way, the ask is that Google/Apple create a private patent and trademark system.
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Their innovation was that they invent something that people like. Their advantage is that they invented it first and should have both the buzz and the initial profits of said game. If you think that magically a clone game company can write the exact same game at a fraction of the cost, I'd say you're a liar, the original company did it horribly, or they stole the content assets from the original.
1. Yeah, most likely. Games are not trivial to write. They're incrementally easier if you know exactly what you w
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I know, how could anyone make a statement as ridiculously inconsistent as "I don't like this one system administered by this group over here, and would like a very different system to be put in place by that group over there"?
Morons.
And how to tell the rip-offs from improvements? (Score:1)
On person’s “blatant rip off” is another person’s “Words with Friends.”
Re:And how to tell the rip-offs from improvements? (Score:5, Funny)
Doing it wrong? (Score:2)
While coming up with good game mechanics is important to a successful game, if it takes you years to develop a game, and someone else can copy it in weeks or days, then you're probably doing something seriously wrong. Either your game is too trivial, or you weren't a very good developer to start with.
Yaz
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Sure, you could cobble together all the assets and code together in no time...
That depends on the game, which supports my thesis.
Strong AI is difficult to do, and can be the real differentiator between a great game and a cheap copycat. Likewise for a physics engine or a rendering engine.
If your game doesn't feature any form of AI, or is easily reproduced with off-the-shelf physics and/or rendering engines, then your game is probably trivial. And if it took you years to put together your trivial game when it only takes the next guy days to replicate it -- than as I've said, you did
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Sometimes a clever but simple idea is brilliant. (Like Tetris).
The problem with some kind of legal protection is that sometimes somebody has a neat idea that is badly implemented, or maybe its implemented ok, but somebody else can provide an implementation that really brings out its potential. Not always is the original the best. So it would be stagnating the category to bring the law into it.
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Well, you mean as an Indie developer if I start from scratch, do the design, generate graphics, coding, testing, then it should still takes me as much time as some one who can simply download the app, and replicate without having to 'think' (or like in case of Android apps, just download the apk, decompile and open it up, grab the resources) and put out a clone. Interesting.
You have a fair comment, so I should clarify somewhat. I'm assuming that whomever does the copy is not only generating their own code, but is also generating their own resources. If they're copying your resources you have the ability to go after them for copyright infringement. That's not really a new thing in game development, and there is legal recourse (and yes, I know it's a shitty thing to have to go through, as it has happened to me personally with someone who ripped off both code AND resources fro
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Unless that "someone else" happens to be a game studio of 500 artists and 50 devs, in which case it makes sense that they can do it faster.
Personally, I've never known a team of that size to be able to ramp up development all that quickly. What that many devs, you'd probably wind up with a month of design meetings before any coding got started.
Yaz
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Not necessarily. I don't particularly care about Flappy Bird, but let's look at Chess. Chess took centuries to develop, and almost anyone could reproduce it now.
Chess has evolved over time, and wasn't the product of a single development team, so it's not exactly an apples-to-oranges comparison. It took roughly 900 years of evolution for chess to take on its modern form, and there have been many variations of chess (Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] claims more than 2000 published variations).
Early versions of chess weren't unplayable, in-development versions. They were proper, stand-alone games. You could think of modern chess as actually having been a "rip-off" of these earlier games.
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I admit to putting too much time into Flappy Birds (Score:3)
So, yeah, I downloaded Swing Copters. And then I played it... for about two minutes.
Nguyen stated he wanted to come up with a game that was "less addictive" than Flappy Birds, and I think he accomplished that - by creating a new game that will almost certainly irritate and annoy most people very quickly. That game is freaking impossible!
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Re: I admit to putting too much time into Flappy B (Score:1)
QWER? Do you mean QWOP?
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Who decides what's 'blatant' ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It took a lawsuit for Atari to kill KC Munchkin ... and even then they only won on appeal : http://www.mathpirate.net/log/... [mathpirate.net]
If KC Munchkin was a rip-off of Pac Man, then every first person shooter is a rip-off of Wolf 3D. (which might've been a rip-off of Space Simulation).
Don't get me wrong -- there needs to be something done about people making crappy games and tricking people into buying it (eg, The War Z), but once in a while, someone makes a *better* game that's similar to something that already exists (eg, Arkanoid vs. Break Out).
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That's because games themselves are eligible for very limited IP protections.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/f... [copyright.gov]
Poster is new to computers? (Score:2)
>> their respective app stores feature hundreds of thousands of apps, sometimes it seems as if most of those apps are crude imitations of other apps
Is the poster new to computers? This clutter has been the case with software since it first reached the consumer. (e.g., RPG games in the 1980s, etc.)
This is why:
1) It's good to be the PLATFORM (you get paid no matter what apps sell).
2) It's good to be a CONSUMER (you get zillions of choices).
3) Being a DEVELOPER is hard, and making a living trying to se
The biggest cash cows are ripoffs. (Score:1)
Do you really think Google and Apple are going to bite the hand of Zynga, King, et al. when such a huge proportion of their app store profit comes from their blatant ripoff games?
'emerging genre' (Score:2)
The rating system on app stores are WAAAYY too g (Score:1)
The rating system on app stores are too generic.
And considering 90% of all the apps get like 4.5 stars, the ratings are comepletly useless.
The top downloaded lists are much better, but that makes it near impossible for a new app to get any attention.
When you are looking for apps, you usually are looking for something specific.
For example, I was looking for a professional drawing/painting tool for my kid.
About 99.999% of these apps are more like coloring books for kids.
While there were some very nice tools,
original games? (Score:5, Insightful)
Angry Birds? Flappy Birds? I had similar games on my C64 and those were probably already copies of similar games on Atari and earlier computers.
Except for the eye-candy, these games could be programmed by anyone taking a basic programming/gaming 101 course.
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mod parent up.
I haven't seen an original game since the PS1. Most/all of the popular most downloaded games can be shoehorned into a few dozen categories. The only "originality" I see comes from the refreshed graphics, a few plot tweaks and whatnot. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But to insist that your (the developer's) game is all so brand spanking original that Thou Shalt Not Copy My (your hapless animal species here) Game is hypocritical to say the least.
Who is Dong Nguyen? (Score:2)
Are we supposed to know who all people with generic vietnamese names are?
Absolutely not. (Score:2)
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2048 is terrible. All the clones of Threes leave out important gameplay elements, making them stupidly easy.
Re: Absolutely not. (Score:2)
That guy is gonna be rich (Score:2)
Regardless of how "trolled" any one feels by this he gets an ad hit every time the user looses a round in the game. So do they pay him with a bucket of cash or just Apple store credit?
Dong's Formula (Score:1)
1. Make a game which is simple to understand but impossibly difficult.
2. Make it free with an iAd banner for revenue.
3. Withdraw the game as soon as the feeding frenzy begins and the media pick up on it.
4. Repeat.
Consumers love nothing more than a freebie in limited supply.
Dong's limited editions.
There's a new iPhone coming out and I'd like to upgrade. ;)
My fingers are crossed that he pulls it so I can sell my current iPhone, with this latest game installed, for twice the price of the new iPhone 6
If you can rip it off in days... (Score:2)
"years of hard work undermined by someone who cobbles together a clone in a matter of weeks or days"
Sorry but if I can reproduce the game in entirety in days, then what you've done is years of dicking around.
It's time we stopped babying everyone who got the hang of 2D graphics and sound in Android like they've invented the internet.
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This is an idiotic who had a mental breakdown (or whatever) and removed FB because it was "too hard and ruined peoples loves", after he staged a meltdown online where he blatantly lied and said that the amount of money he was raking in was too much and posed a threat to himself because of where he lived in the world.
IMHO, this jackass should have been banned from the App Store with all the shenanigans he pulled. Now you jackasses are giving him free PR again, because he wrote another shitty HTML5 game that is once more purportedly "too hard". Nice.
Wow. This guy proves i kan reed's point IMMEDIATELY.
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