I was thinking about how much you had to innovate in the puzzle/logic game genre the other day.

Anyway, a long conversation turned to looking at Zuma Deluxe (one of the top selling games on real, I think its a popcap game).

So we were saying how it was really just puzzle bobble with a twist, when someone else chimed in with this:

http://www.coinopexpress.com/products/pcbs/capcom_cps_ii/Puzz_Loop_2_3407.html

Now, I dont want to call them thieving pikey *******s :) but basically, thats a pretty direct one-to-one relationship with features there :)

So I guess my point is, that you do NOT have to be overly innovative in your products, just find some "inspiration" from a puzzle game that was only popular in japan! :)

See, maybe Brian H should have looked further afield for inspiration :)

Ballistic is essentially the same game, and while it was never all that popular, it had a version made for Playstation GBC, GBA, and XBox.

well bugger it all.. so even the copyers are copied :)

well, I dont know who the first one to make this style of game was, but its definitely been "done" now :)

I have no qualms with developers raiding old arcade / puzzle games for ideas and the reason some (but not all) of these clones are becoming so successful is because of their target market.

You have to remember that the "casual" gamer is largely new to video games (defined as having been playing for less than 6 years) and did not hang out in arcades back in the 1980s and never owned a Commodore 64 or Amiga. In all likelihood they never even learned how to use a computer until the late 90's.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Varmintz on Real Arcade, which is pretty highly derivative of Frogger. But when you track down casual players (your Mom or Dad for instance) you find that they may have a vague awareness of what PacMan and Frogger were but that they never played them. Can you imagine that there are people out there who find the concept of running around a maze eating dots to be something new?!

Which is exactly the reason I think the 2 week puzzle game market is still viable for indies..

Because basically, you arent fighting for anyone long term. The customer simply doesnt have a long term history of games playing, so they dont have a preference.

This means its simply the delivery and getting eyeballs on the games that are the main barriers.

So someone is just as likely to buy from gamehouse, as my site as anyone else's (obviously given the same publicity and presentation of the game).

Okey dokey... I'll not bang on about this again too much...

But, yes, it seems that you really don't have to innovate (even in the most modest sense) to find commercial success, and I have every reason to suspect that you could make better games, and faster, if you don't.

However.

All of this coding, art-producing and everything else that goes into creating a game is really just a means to an end. For some, this end is simply to make money. But I would hope that for many of us, one of the main goals would also be to contribute something new, however small, to the videogame canon rather than simply plundering it.

There are also some people, myself very much included, who feel that cloning a game in this way, without permission, for your own gain, is unethical. And that the widespread practice of doing so is insulting to all the people who work hard developing their own game designs (both the people whose designs you are plagiarising, as well as all the rest - since by doing so you are effectively saying that a game design need not be given due respect as someone else's creative work).

Sure, it's tempting. I can fully appreciate that. But I'm hoping that with due consideration, more developers will come to the conclusion that it's simply not kosher.

Now, if you really were the person who took Puzzle Bobble as your starting point, and gave it a radical new twist that transformed it into a whole new game, then that's another story.

And kudos once again to Svero, who got in touch with the original author of the game he wanted to remake, and ended up making the official sequel. If you want to do a remake then that's the way to go about it.

And kudos once again to Svero, who got in touch with the original author of the game he wanted to remake, and ended up making the official sequel. If you want to do a remake then that's the way to go about it.

Yeah, I always thought that was pretty cool of Steve how he got the original author. As you said, Steve now benefits by being able to use the official brand, instead of some rip-off.

It'd be nice if some of the bigger companies were more accessible with their retro games. With the exception of Atari and Midway, most companies just sit on the rights without releasing a port or an update of their old titles to modern platforms. In many cases, it's the emulator community that keeps those games alive.

But you never know...if you present yourself as a serious developer and approach a big company the right way, you might be able to convince them to let you do an official sequel with one of their long forgotten titles. They might even give it a bit of a marketing push, if it's worth their while. You never know...

I think in general it would probably be quite difficult to get the bigger companies to let you do an official remake. In the case of Space Taxi 2 it was a little easier because the original author retained the copyright and so I could deal with him directly.

As far as Zuma goes, I have to say that I'm still very impressed with it from a pure "implementation" perspective. It's just about perfect. I've never seen a single screenshot from that other game which wasn't a spiral. If that game only uses a spiral then I'd say Zuma, with it's multiple boards took the game in a new direction and doesn't qualify entirely as a clone.

Take for instance, the game A Snake's Life has elements from all the snake games that preceeded it and uses some of the basic gameplay elements in the same way, such as eating and growing. I don't consider it a clone because IMHO it added enough and strayed far enough from the other games to be unique. And the answer to the question "How much is enough?" is going to be different for everyone. I think you'd have to do something pretty offbeat to be entirely original and not use any gameplay from previous titles.