Release the clones!
For those of you who do not know, Steam has just released it’s new community initiative called “Greenlight“, which users are allowed to vote for new indie type games to be included in the Steam library. This has come about because of some unfortunate practices on the Steam side where great games fall through the cracks during the approval process (and some have been picked up by their competitors). So to help facilitate a better approval process, they went to the people to see what will is popular and, of course, let those games in. Not a bad idea at all!
Right out of the gates we had many great gems pop up! Such as DLC Quest, Stardew Valley, Zombeer (hey, don’t judge me!), A walk in the dark, Secrets of Grindia, Melody’s Escape, Mutant Mudds (which Steam dropped the ball on before…), and so many more! And I’ve only scratched the surface with 64 rated of the 630+ sitting in the queue.
But then there came the problems… It’s become increasingly hard to distinguish between a developer posting and some idiot’s wishlist. You get a lot of people posting stupid stuff like “huh duuur, me want mass effect 3″ in the game list. That’s not what this is for. It’s developers ONLY! Sure, I’d like to play some Mario Allstars on my pc, but that’s not going to happen.
Then there’s the trouble with clones. I have counted DOZENS of Minecraft spinoffs appearing in the last few days. (Now now, before I get angry emails, yes, I know Minecraft was based off of another game, Infiniminer, but MC did it better and packaged it nicer. It’s like saying CoD:MW2 is a ripoff of Doom…) Anyways, I keep seeing games that are nearly identical copies, but with various tweeks; like say rounded objects or jaggedy ones, or placable wedges, or just MC with tower defense, or everything else in between. This also goes for the swarms of Slender clones! Now, I’m no expert in the realm of slender games, but there is one that is VERY popular right now that’s free to try… well, now we have Slenders of every shape and size coming at us in Greenlight! I get that these are popular games with hazy lines of copyrights, but especially for things that you’re looking to sell on a major distribution platform, I can’t see them going over well.
But that brings us around to today’s topic; are near reproductions to games like Minecraft or Slender copies/clones, or did we accidentally stumble onto a completely new genre of gaming? I have trouble wrapping my head around the answer to this, really. On the one hand, you can look at a Minecraft spinoff game and instantly think “minecraft” every time. But is that because MC was the first successful one to do it, or is it that it’s just the style? The open random blocky worlds certainly scream MC, but is that something exclusive to Minecraft, or is it just the genre, like what Mario games are to platformers? Same with Slendermen, you wander around the forest looking for pieces of paper with a flashlight (torch for my english friends) all the while avoiding the Slenderguy. Every one of those games is exactly this. But are they necessarily copies? Or is a new type of horror genre? Where you feel totally helpless and paranoid for the entirety of the game. Maybe if there were more variations on badguys or more genres that Skinnyman is in, it might be a bit less confusing. But to the lay person, looking at 10 of these next to eachother in a listing tends to raise an eyebrow or two.
Also, extra credit assignment: discuss some games from greenlight that caught your eye! (note, if you post more than like 1 link, it won’t show up right away because it needs to be moderated… and I’m slow… so there you have it! >)
I like to think that we have come up with a new genre. However, because its so knew, people making the games tend to stick to working precedents too closely which is why they all seem like copies.
(I hope that makes sense. It did in my head but as I started typing it seemed to make less and less sense :/ )
you’ve got a point there. probably a lot of mario clones happened after the first nintendo release and I’d wager the same with any genre. that whole “stick with what you know and is safe” type mentality. but give it some time and I’d bet we’ll find that they will branch off into more and more diverse games.
I can see the merits of both minecraft and slender type genres; the randomized block/pixel environments and the horror evasion games.
for now, we’ve got to deal with every new block environment game looking like a minecraft mod until someone innovates a different direction for it. once one goes off the trail, then others are sure to follow.
Mcpixel, Forge, Postal 2, DLC quest, Organ trail: directors cut, Towns, No time to explain, Project Zomboid, yogventures. And for clones, lazy ass developers. >:(
good choices there! dlc quest looks pretty cool and no time to explain as well!
There are certain ”ripoffs” but there are times in history that NOTHING can be original anymore since it has been done before. What you can do ? Well learn from the original and improve upon it.
Minecraft was a big success sure but it had its flaws too. So what can you do ? Instead of copy-paste the same game…add new features and the lacking content from it.
Lets face it, it is hard to create something FULLY original and make it accessable to everyone to play. I can think of crazy ideas that you can Ride a Lazer Shooting shark to defeat the evil Plant lord on planet XZWY-A ….but when it comes to integrating that into the game…well I have to use the existing play-styles or come up with my own ( which probably suck / Be too expensive to even try )
Hell, even if technology would grow to the point where we can Teleport or use Hologram Phones etc.. someone will say ” Well Star Trek/Star Wars had it before ! ” …soo yea, it is a tough nugget to crack. Personally ? I look at those ”clones” to see if they have anything new to add to the already popular genre and make it even more appealing…filling the lacking content.
Most people say Saint’s Row games are a copy of GTA but when GTA forgot to add the ”fun” aspect and get more realistic in their latest game, Saint’s Row came in and filled the void for those who wanted to have fun in the game ! Can you call it copying ? I don’t think so.
As for Greenlight…sadly,with all ”Public” events , it is hard to have a solid system where you have millions voting, most of them don’t even know why they are voting for or as you said are in mind of ” HURR DERR WE WANT THIS POPULAR GAME THAT IS EXCLUSIVE ON OTHER PLATFORMS ! ” . I believe in that power should be in the hands of the customers since they are going to buy the games and if they won’t, the industry will collapse. And you can’t sell games to people if you made them poor with High Prices / Low Quality games.
That said, I think there must be a threshold for the voters. You can’t let anyone you see on the street to vote since their vote will be irrelevant to the topic but will still count. In turn this will cause Devs to manipulate people or flat out giving them ”promotions” just to get some support votes.
Sadly, there is no ”in-corruptable” system in the worlds as they all depend on someone in power ( which is more susceptible to being corrupt ) and with many opinions and standarts rolling around in Steam, Greenlight can either be a shining platform for Quality / Low budget games and companies… or a Garbage Shute were promoters ran rampart just to get their games on steam and campaing to the ‘voters’ just to get a piece of the pie without a care of the quality of their games ( suddenly this last one reminded me of something called ”The Political Elections ! ”…. huh , must be something I heard in the news :P )
said it before and I’ll say it again, Simpsons did it! southpark reference there… anyways, that’s always a struggle being an artist, because in the back of your head you know that at some point, some where, someone has already thought of what you’re wanting to do. it gets to be discouraging, but you have to push through it. in fact, if you go with my little theory (ok, it’s not new, but I claim it, heh) that in a given picture size (say 200×300) you can represent EVERY image possible in the universe. it’s mind boggling yet highly discouraging to innovation. still, my philosophy is that it may be done before, but you have your own style so even if everyone knows how to make a pizza, you can still throw in your own special flair into it.
right on with SR series! I was always against it because I signed up to the GTA bandwagon back in the day… but then I was so disappointed with GTA4 that I was done with the series. later, I discovered SR3 and even though it got a lot of flack for being silly, well, it was! and it was great! best game of all time! right up there with GTA:SA!
recent developments with Greenlight is that they issued at new $100 entrance fee for games. it’s nothing at all for a developer, especially for getting into the top distribution platform. that money also doesn’t even go to steam, it goes to charities so… all good huh? there has been a drastic decrease in new game postings, especially those that are clones, class projects, and fakes.