I dont mind the " copy cats " as long as they individualize there product and add there own flavor. You cant be mad at people for doing that, because this is how our world works. Somebody comes up with an idea and sells it, and then somebody else takes that idea and puts there perspective on it. The app store is no different from any other product market. The world and the app store would be pretty damn plain if there was only 1 of everything. Instead of you having 100 apps your would have 10, 1 for each genre. Creativity is king. Your argument is invalid.
Creating a new genre is not hard, it's just changing so many parts of an existing one that we can't see the original anymore. The difference between a clone and an new original product is how many elements you changed from the inspiration. This ability is in the range of everyone. It's just a matter of time spent on conception.
Bare in mind Doodle-jump itself is a copy-cat game. Sadly people never give enough credit for the one who started it all: Papi Jump. Sure Doodle Jump introduces many new elements, but Papi Jump is the first and original. No doubt about it.
Tried tested and true Developers tend to go where the money is. Clones are easier because a) customers will already be familiar with it and b) it's easier to imitate than to innovate and c) if it's sold well for someone else it might sell well for you. Doing something new is a risk. People might not get it. If they do get it, it's hard to gauge how fun it will be to the general public. You might make an awesome new unique game with no peers, but you might be the only one who finds it any fun. You'll need a focus group to study that. There's a lot of hit-or-miss in being innovative.
In art school I was always taught "you have to learn the rules before you can break them", so that's what I've tried to do with AstroSerf: learn the rules. I've never made a game before, so as my first project I tried to take an existing genre and create a polished, quality game in that genre. Even within that scope though, I've still tried to innovate enough to make something fun and worthwhile. I never set out to rip anyone off or cash in on some trend, but making a whole new type of game would have been a bit of a tall order for a first try. I have plenty of big ideas, I just need to work up to them!
We tried to be as original as we could with iPlutoid, but even so, we still were influenced by other games. I think this is a good thing. For example, without robotron, you might never have had (eventually) minigore, but you could hardly call the games the same. Small evolutionary steps can lead to some great games being developed.
Amen, I was thinking the exact same thing. It's the evolutionary baby steps that lead to something completely different. Where would RPGs be today if Dungeons and Dragons (pencil and paper version, you know, before computers were commonplace) never had any copycats? Do you really think huge hit games like World of Warcraft would have come to be if no one ever tried to copy and improve upon dungeons and dragons, and then someone else didn't come along and say, "Hey, we've got these fancy computers and we've got this Role Playing Game called D&D. Why don't we make our own (text-based) RPG but do it on the computer." Without events like this Zork would have never come to be, nor would any of the RPGs that came after it leading eventually to games like first Ultima Online (the original modern MMO) and World of Warcraft (the current king of that particular jungle). Q
