Gish ripoff?

#1 If this situation was reversed, the smaller guy rips off an idea from the bigger guy,
no one would complain.

#2 That's probably true, but in that case nobody would be hurt, so not much to complain about.

#3 Meh. It's got a different control mechanism than Gish and the world setup reminds me more of Kirby's Canvas Curse. Which speaking of I'd much rather this game were on the DS. I'd prefer the touch screen interface for controlling it, and it'd prolly have a better market base to actually be sold to. I think the people yelling at it being a rip-off are sounding very childish and hot-headed.

#4 Tut tut Brian... you know better than to post a thread twice ;)

Problem with games these days is they all copy each other in some way... it's hard to find an original game. :(

#5 Everything has been done, you can break down any game into elements of previously done games. So, I suppose it is silly to get all bent out of shape when a game is directly ripped off - I mean, look at GTA vs. Driver 3, Saint's Row, Scarface, etc...X 100,000. Good games either get ripped off to death or sequeled until they are despised...that is the nature of the entertainment industry, and it has been this way for a long time.

#6 @Joseph - ya, I tried to kill the other one, which I thought I created here, but it went up in the Mac area. Gotta wait for a moderator to kill old thread.

#7 Just to play Devil's Advocate here a bit, of course games borrow different bits of gameplay from other areas (MBU/Monkey Ball anyone?). This is the first time, in quite a while anyway, that I've seen where a major publisher/producer of games, Sony, has possibly lifted the core gameplay from an indie however.

It's totally their right to do so, and gameplay should not be copywritten or patented IMO. It's pretty lame that they are claiming that Gish had no influence on their game when they admit they saw it and played it though.

This situation is probably a good thing overall. The industry in general has been saying that innovation will come from the indie sector for a long time. They are interested in it because it saves them a ton of time prototyping new gameplay. Indies provide inspiration for us all when new gameplay works, like it did with Gish. If this is a trend, it will be good for indie developers because more people will check out indie games looking for what might come next.

#8 Though bigger companies may borrow innovative gameplay from indies and make the game industry better as a whole by providing new gameplay and ideas, the indie that was 'borrowed' from doesnt really benefit at all. In fact, they may be adversely affected by the stealing of their ideas, since the AAA game company is probably going to make their game - only a lot more polished and heavily marketed. And so, those brilliant indies that made such a stride in terms of gameplay are robbed of what should (in a perfect world) go to them - the financial gains from an excellent idea.

The only flaw in my reasoning is that I agree that we shouldnt have the ability to patent gameplay... I dont know how you would reconcile those two statements... or even if you could

#9 Isn't this what innovation is all about? Someone sees an idea, and says, "I can make it better."
or puts a different twist on the idea.

If they took the idea from Gish, then they went in the right direction. Their game presentation
is totally the opposite. Gish is dark and underground, while their game is bright, colorful,
and out in the sun.

A little competition doesn't hurt anyone, it just makes the other guy work harder to improve
their game.

#10 But no matter how hard that indie works to improve their game, they dont have a marketing team or the money or the contacts to do what a large corporation can do. It's like trying to compete with M$ to make an OS...it doesnt matter how good the indie is, the corporation is all that plus more.

All that Indie can hope for is get enough attention from the game industry to either be offered a contract, financial support, or a good buyout for their IP. (Of course this is from the standpoint of those who are indie to break into the game industry and build a major dev studio, not those who's aims are different)

Some guys may be happy that their indie project made enough waves in the industry to get major notice, which I think is awesome. I guess that is all you can really hope for in a land of copycats and clones.

#11 I think complaints like this ultimately leads people to do irrational things, like trying
to create stupid software patents. Ideas should be free to whoever wants to innovates them, the
big guy or the little guy. But I do believe in giving credit where it is due, though...

#12 I agree, though I don't think that M$ is irrational for patenting everything they ever make. When you consider the amount of shady business people out there, if M$ didn't patent everything they created, someone else would create the same thing, patent it, and then sue for millions. It is a defense mechanism that M$ uses to watch thier backs and save themselves from as many lawsuits as they can.

#13 About increasing your size by assimilating more Lobos or bits and bops like in Damaci.... Well, if we talk about who did it first... than Centipede's creator should rant about getting copied?

From that video, gameplay did feel different from Gish, and at a place I worked before, a few years back there was a similar idea flying around, similar to Gish and Lobo...
Some time it does happen that people in different areas of the Globe come up with similar ideas.

I had to stop a personal project last year when I saw a video on Gamespot about this new game being developed by a developer in Japan. It was soooooo similar to my idea but by judging from the content of the WIP video 'they' must have had the same idea about 6 months before I did... I mean sooo close it felt scary.
Mind you I'm still contemplating ways to modify my idea and take it in other directions, and actually this Japanese developer ruined it, their implementation isn't that great, what a waste!

#14 Didn't M$ "borrow" the idea of icons and tabbed browsing from other companines? ;-)

I agree, though. There has to be a happy median somewhere between IP and progress (not that they are always seperate entities).

#15 Haha well M$' borrowing habits are another story :)

#16 A PSP demo for the clone was released:

Loco Roco Demo
Someone with a PSP give us the low down on it. =)

#17 Whenever someone write "M$," this is all I can think of.

Rage against the machine, stick it to the man, and all that jazz.

#18 Wow, he really nailed me, how did they know about the name of my novella?

#19 You were writing that too?!

#20 Apparently, I mean, I got the idea when I first put the $ at the end of my microsoft abbreviation...