This mateen fellow kind of reminds me if keyser soze from the usual suspects. Is he real or is he just someone we know and is on the forums laughing at all this
@Doguz said:
This mateen fellow kind of reminds me if keyser soze from the usual suspects. Is he real or is he just someone we know and is on the forums laughing at all this
... and everybody said, holy crap man,
I'm gonna make a game like that then,
they got down to working on how to cash in,
came up with names that stuff this rhyme right in the tin bin,
they called one Packri Monster and I have it in my collection,
but that was paled in comparison to Hangly-Man,
most notable of Pacmans scamalambs,
I need not go in to just games in the arcade,
as there's ones on many computers we have played,
and there's more on the handhelds of a different age,
the number of clones might bring dismay,
games will always be this way,
when there's a will,
there's a way.
@matarua said:
There was this game called Pacman...
... and everybody said, holy crap man,
I'm gonna make a game like that then,
they got down to working on how to cash in,
came up with names that stuff this rhyme right in the tin bin,
they called one Packri Monster and I have it in my collection,
but that was paled in comparison to Hangly-Man,
most notable of Pacmans scamalambs,
I need not go in to just games in the arcade,
as there's ones on many computers we have played,
and there's more on the handhelds of a different age,
the number of clones might bring dismay,
games will always be this way,
when there's a will,
there's a way.
I think that if a game is going to be; in it's very essence, indie; and not a really "proffesional" game, then there is not a whole lot you can do. it will get ripped off. Every game in history has is medly of clones, and you can tell the really good games from the o.k. or mediocre games because they have far more clones. Need I mention that one game with the bird and the pipes? Just think of atari back in the early 70's. Not only were people mimicking, they were just taking atari systems and putting them in different shells.
QS had a point when he quoted martarua:
From this I think we can say that; at least sometimes, having clones of one's games can even boost the positive "chat" about their game.
I dunno, just somthing to stew on, I guess.
@BBEnk said:
But the difference in cloning today is ease of distribution anyone can do it with little effort.
Yep, the dynamic is entirely different, to the point that the games market of 20 years ago cannot credibly be compared to today's, even if you wanted to copy Pacman you'd still have to hire a team of engineers / programmers, manufacture hardware, or if were not a manufacturer of hardware systems yourself, you'd need to negotiate a deal with those who did manufacturer hardware . . . and so on, that's a world away from todays mobile app market where someone can simply buy a £10 copy of a popular game and after less than an hour's worth of fiddling around with swapping out a few images can then market it as their own.
@Socks said:
Yep, the dynamic is entirely different, to the point that the games market of 20 years ago cannot credibly be compared to today's, even if you wanted to copy Pacman you'd still have to hire a team of engineers / programmers, manufacture hardware, or if were not a manufacturer of hardware systems yourself, you'd need to negotiate a deal with those who did manufacturer hardware . . . and so on, that's a world away from todays mobile app market where someone can simply buy a £10 copy of a popular game and after less than an hour's worth of fiddling around with swapping out a few images can then market it as their own.
Lets go back further than 20 years, 30+ years to the whole indie game movement starting in bedrooms in the UK on the almighty Spectrum! Sure the arcade machines required people with money and no conscience to copy them and a lot of games back then were derivative by design. As the video shows above there's heaps of home brew and professional versions as there was on the Spectrum.
But @Socks can you imagine saying that last sentence to somebody in 1984? It would blow their minds
@LumpApps said:
Here are some examples.of Pac Man clones:
There was one on the ye old Philips system too. I only know the Dutch name.
I watched it for a little but don't have 45 spare min. lol. But anyway, this seems to be a collection of amateur homebrew games for the Amiga, not commercially released titles. Also the Amiga came out LOOOOONG after Pac-Man was in the arcades (and even in the homes).
Recreating decade old popular games as homebrew projects is completely different from ripping of a new title that hasn't even had the chance to gain traction, then placing your ripoff on sale as direct competition, even worse, releasing a template which makes it possible for a monkey to rip off the original too.
Seriously, if you think that modifying a GS template takes as much effort as coding for a 68k CPU in assembly... well.
Also, you forget. Indie devs couldn't sell to the masses back then, they needed a publisher... no decent publisher would touch a ripoff title, due to being sued. That's why most coders were hobbyists.
I really don't understand how people can't see the difference. If you're profiting from someone else's work, well, you're not a good person.
@POLYGAMe said:
I really don't understand how people can't see the difference. If you're profiting from someone else's work, well, you're not a good person.
I was only showing an example. Who said in this thread he doesn't see the difference?
Pac Man was cloned when it was populair too. Midway were granted summary judgement in 1983.
@quantumsheep said:
matarua I think the worst thing you can do is 'turn a blind eye' and say 'Well, it's always been like this - why complain?'
"Please leave the room as you found it" is never as good as "Please make sure the room is clean and tidy for the next person"
I think the same, really I like to leave a room in better shape than I found it.
But what I see and think, not much has changed in 30+ years.
You are born. You learn everything in your entire life from doing one thing. What is that? Copying. Sure you can come up with original ideas, people do that all the time but your mind and body are programmed to copy from birth. That is how we physiologically learn to move, touch, talk, behave, think and react. When somebody sees success in something they have a very strong urge to copy it. Look at somebody grab something and your own arm might twitch and make a Flappy Bird clone.
I sit somewhere in the middle on the template/clones issue. I think ultimately most of us do. I could write pages on the issue and the ethics of it but I think it would be a deeply boring read for most.
But what I don't get is why people who have a legitimate case against Manteen don't do anything about it. He didn't buy the template from DBA that he's clearly using? Lodge a complaint against Apple, force him to prove he legally owns it. He downloaded a game off the Arcade back when it was possible? Lodge a complaint against Apple, force him to prove he legally owns it.
He's assuming people won't challenge him and it appears he's right. At the very least make his life a little more difficult. He steals even a single graphic of mine and I'll be complaining up and down every avenue I have available to me.
He might be untouchable. I heard stories about cafe's full of scammers in Afrika tricking people giving money on dating sites. Mostly older people. It was on doctor Phill. They can't do a lot against it. I don't know where Manteen is from and am not saying Africans are bad. Just so you know.
@Polygame English isn't my mother langue indeed but I am happy to hear you didn't notice that
@Brenton222 said:
King did PAC avoid. Not to mention how ALL of there games are clones.
Yea, King is the king of ripoff "artists".
@Armelline I agree. Anyone that has legal grounds against him needs to pursue them. If no one does this d-bag will keep getting away with it. Someone please sue him for everything he is worth. Honestly I despise lawsuits for the most part, but there are times when certain people just NEED to be sued into oblivion. This is one of those justifiable cases. @firemaplegames That means you. Be the champion that brings this monstrosity down. Take all his scam money while you are at it.
@LumpApps said:
He might be untouchable. I heard stories . . .
I've heard that he crushes the skulls of his enemies and mixes up the ground bone powder with his first cocaine lines of the day, I've also heard that he's 7ft 2in tall in his bare feet and can chase a man down even with a 200 metre head-start, he is also said to drink the blood of 2 pythons every day and sleeps standing up . . . armed . . . with both eyes open.
@matarua said:
You are born. You learn everything in your entire life from doing one thing. What is that? Copying. Sure you can come up with original ideas, people do that all the time but your mind and body are programmed to copy from birth. That is how we physiologically learn to move, touch, talk, behave, think and react. When somebody sees success in something they have a very strong urge to copy it. Look at somebody grab something and your own arm might twitch and make a Flappy Bird clone.
I agree with you in that we learn by copying/imitating. Where I disagree, I guess, is how we use that.
I spent a long, hot summer back in 1989 spending hours upon hours indoors with my guitar learning how to play a bunch of Guns 'n Roses songs.
While I also learned by copying many, many others (e.g. Hendrix, Prince, Page, Van Halen etc.) Slash (the G 'N R guitarist) was a huge influence on me.
I learned a lot about chord progression, soloing, general techniques etc etc by copying Slash. Note for note.
But I never, ever wrote a song that used the same intro as 'Sweet Child o' Mine'.
A few years later I formed a band that was popular at my Uni because we played cover versions of other people's songs. We also played 1 or 2 original songs too.
I was instrumental (badoom-tshh) in changing that to one, maybe two covers, with the rest of our set made up of original songs.
Our singer resisted it. 'People want to hear songs they know,' he'd say. My argument was that it was easy to get people to dance to songs they already know. It's getting them to dance to your OWN stuff that's really satisfying.
And I was right
To get a little more scientific, as Isaac Newton himself once wrote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
So yeah, the tl;dr version of this is 'Copy to learn, we all do that. But make something new with what you've learned.'
@quantumsheep said:
To get a little more scientific, as Isaac Newton himself once wrote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
No one ever puts the rest of the quote in, he went on to say " . . . but I've had more fun standing on the shoulders of clowns, they make me laugh, I like clowns, they've got big feet, really big feet".
@Armelline said:
I sit somewhere in the middle on the template/clones issue. I think ultimately most of us do. I could write pages on the issue and the ethics of it but I think it would be a deeply boring read for most.
I agree. And I could do the same. I've always used templates to learn from, and really don't like clones on the App Store. But Mateen may actually be stealing the actual files, not coming up with his own clone. That's a new level of crap.
However, while everyone seems to be upset about the cloning of Flappy Bird, I really couldn't care less anymore. My reasoning being that he took it down. There's no conflict of interest, people just rushed to fill a hole where there were millions of people craving a play experience. Not to mention that his game was a more simplified, endless, non multiplayer version of doodle jump. I really don't have a problem with it, aside from the fact that if you clone something that's no longer available, at least make it look better. And if he were to ever put his app back up on the store, and wanted the clones gone, I would be more than happy to oblige.
Same with clones of Angry Birds. Rovio copied Crush the Castle. Not to mention Zynga: Words with Friends IS Scrabble. FarmVille copied HappyFarm and FarmTown. King.com couldn't come up with an original idea if they tried.
It seems the consensus is that if your game becomes wildly popular, it means it's ok to be a clone and everyone pretends it's original.
But God forbid Brent Cherry makes a free app that's a clone of something you can't download anymore, and makes next to no money. Pure evil.
In regards to flappy clones, if anything, just be frustrated that they're not trying to come up with the next best thing.
Making games is a cutthroat business. On one side you have people saying they only make games for fun, and the other side wants the money. If the people that make games for fun complain they are mad at cloners looking for a quick buck...then one can only assume theres a bit of jealousy against those who clone and do make money from all our hard work. The people who make templates of popular or existing games need not post since they only feed the Clone Wars and would be seen as hypocritical. A long time ago it was once said that copying was a form of flattery....guess not when the all might dollar comes into play. Point being, we have a Flappy Bird thread that is jam packed with inquiries on how to make (in my opinion the easiest game to make) but nobody on the forums are asking mods to shut it down with the passion of this thread, and it's the Mother of all GS Clones I have witnessed to date!...Look at the marketplace or any of the reputable GS Template sites, They all did it.. I agree a template should be purchased with the intent to learn and improve upon with the developers own artistic and creative imagination, and not simply re-skinned. But many templates are sold with the caption "All art and sound is yours to use, but Re Skinning is advised (not mandated) before publishing". If anyone is guilty of getting their feet wet in the App Store by re skinning a template (again, not comment necessary). I think it is what it is and will be what it always has been, so lets get back to making the next best thing.
Comments
This mateen fellow kind of reminds me if keyser soze from the usual suspects. Is he real or is he just someone we know and is on the forums laughing at all this
looks at QS sheepishly LOL
There was this game called Pacman...
... and everybody said, holy crap man,
I'm gonna make a game like that then,
they got down to working on how to cash in,
came up with names that stuff this rhyme right in the tin bin,
they called one Packri Monster and I have it in my collection,
but that was paled in comparison to Hangly-Man,
most notable of Pacmans scamalambs,
I need not go in to just games in the arcade,
as there's ones on many computers we have played,
and there's more on the handhelds of a different age,
the number of clones might bring dismay,
games will always be this way,
when there's a will,
there's a way.
A+ @matarua
MESSAGING, X-PLATFORM LEADERBOARDS, OFFLINE-TIMER, ANALYTICS and BACK-END CONTROL for your GameSalad projects
www.APPFORMATIVE.com
I only remember Pacman
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
But the difference in cloning today is ease of distribution anyone can do it with little effort.
A very valid point.
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Here are some examples.of Pac Man clones:
There was one on the ye old Philips system too. I only know the Dutch name.
Lump Apps and My Assets
Yep, the dynamic is entirely different, to the point that the games market of 20 years ago cannot credibly be compared to today's, even if you wanted to copy Pacman you'd still have to hire a team of engineers / programmers, manufacture hardware, or if were not a manufacturer of hardware systems yourself, you'd need to negotiate a deal with those who did manufacturer hardware . . . and so on, that's a world away from todays mobile app market where someone can simply buy a £10 copy of a popular game and after less than an hour's worth of fiddling around with swapping out a few images can then market it as their own.
Lets go back further than 20 years, 30+ years to the whole indie game movement starting in bedrooms in the UK on the almighty Spectrum! Sure the arcade machines required people with money and no conscience to copy them and a lot of games back then were derivative by design. As the video shows above there's heaps of home brew and professional versions as there was on the Spectrum.
But @Socks can you imagine saying that last sentence to somebody in 1984? It would blow their minds
@matarua I think the worst thing you can do is 'turn a blind eye' and say 'Well, it's always been like this - why complain?'
"Please leave the room as you found it" is never as good as "Please make sure the room is clean and tidy for the next person"
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
I watched it for a little but don't have 45 spare min. lol. But anyway, this seems to be a collection of amateur homebrew games for the Amiga, not commercially released titles. Also the Amiga came out LOOOOONG after Pac-Man was in the arcades (and even in the homes).
Recreating decade old popular games as homebrew projects is completely different from ripping of a new title that hasn't even had the chance to gain traction, then placing your ripoff on sale as direct competition, even worse, releasing a template which makes it possible for a monkey to rip off the original too.
Seriously, if you think that modifying a GS template takes as much effort as coding for a 68k CPU in assembly... well.
Also, you forget. Indie devs couldn't sell to the masses back then, they needed a publisher... no decent publisher would touch a ripoff title, due to being sued. That's why most coders were hobbyists.
I really don't understand how people can't see the difference. If you're profiting from someone else's work, well, you're not a good person.
King did PAC avoid. Not to mention how ALL of their games are clones.
I was only showing an example. Who said in this thread he doesn't see the difference?
Pac Man was cloned when it was populair too. Midway were granted summary judgement in 1983.
Stop accusing people here for wrong ethics.
Lump Apps and My Assets
Sorry, your confusion is now confusing me... I need some painkillers for this sore brain... who is this "he" you're talking about?
BTW, there is no such thing as "wrong ethics".
And their budget, £10 went a long way in 1984
Sorry for my English
He is the one that doesn't see the difference.
The one you point at here (see below). Or was this a generic remark?
I am not trying to say Cloning is good! Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.
Lump Apps and My Assets
Ah, sorry, didn't realise English was your second language
Yeah, I meant people not being able to tell the difference in general, not a particular person.
All good
I think the same, really I like to leave a room in better shape than I found it.
But what I see and think, not much has changed in 30+ years.
You are born. You learn everything in your entire life from doing one thing. What is that? Copying. Sure you can come up with original ideas, people do that all the time but your mind and body are programmed to copy from birth. That is how we physiologically learn to move, touch, talk, behave, think and react. When somebody sees success in something they have a very strong urge to copy it. Look at somebody grab something and your own arm might twitch and make a Flappy Bird clone.
I sit somewhere in the middle on the template/clones issue. I think ultimately most of us do. I could write pages on the issue and the ethics of it but I think it would be a deeply boring read for most.
But what I don't get is why people who have a legitimate case against Manteen don't do anything about it. He didn't buy the template from DBA that he's clearly using? Lodge a complaint against Apple, force him to prove he legally owns it. He downloaded a game off the Arcade back when it was possible? Lodge a complaint against Apple, force him to prove he legally owns it.
He's assuming people won't challenge him and it appears he's right. At the very least make his life a little more difficult. He steals even a single graphic of mine and I'll be complaining up and down every avenue I have available to me.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
He might be untouchable. I heard stories about cafe's full of scammers in Afrika tricking people giving money on dating sites. Mostly older people. It was on doctor Phill. They can't do a lot against it. I don't know where Manteen is from and am not saying Africans are bad. Just so you know.
@Polygame English isn't my mother langue indeed but I am happy to hear you didn't notice that
Lump Apps and My Assets
Yea, King is the king of ripoff "artists".
@Armelline I agree. Anyone that has legal grounds against him needs to pursue them. If no one does this d-bag will keep getting away with it. Someone please sue him for everything he is worth. Honestly I despise lawsuits for the most part, but there are times when certain people just NEED to be sued into oblivion. This is one of those justifiable cases.
@firemaplegames That means you. Be the champion that brings this monstrosity down. Take all his scam money while you are at it.
I've heard that he crushes the skulls of his enemies and mixes up the ground bone powder with his first cocaine lines of the day, I've also heard that he's 7ft 2in tall in his bare feet and can chase a man down even with a 200 metre head-start, he is also said to drink the blood of 2 pythons every day and sleeps standing up . . . armed . . . with both eyes open.
@socks Your stories are way cooler. But my stories must be true, I head them on dr. Phills show
Lump Apps and My Assets
I agree with you in that we learn by copying/imitating. Where I disagree, I guess, is how we use that.
I spent a long, hot summer back in 1989 spending hours upon hours indoors with my guitar learning how to play a bunch of Guns 'n Roses songs.
While I also learned by copying many, many others (e.g. Hendrix, Prince, Page, Van Halen etc.) Slash (the G 'N R guitarist) was a huge influence on me.
I learned a lot about chord progression, soloing, general techniques etc etc by copying Slash. Note for note.
But I never, ever wrote a song that used the same intro as 'Sweet Child o' Mine'.
A few years later I formed a band that was popular at my Uni because we played cover versions of other people's songs. We also played 1 or 2 original songs too.
I was instrumental (badoom-tshh) in changing that to one, maybe two covers, with the rest of our set made up of original songs.
Our singer resisted it. 'People want to hear songs they know,' he'd say. My argument was that it was easy to get people to dance to songs they already know. It's getting them to dance to your OWN stuff that's really satisfying.
And I was right
To get a little more scientific, as Isaac Newton himself once wrote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
So yeah, the tl;dr version of this is 'Copy to learn, we all do that. But make something new with what you've learned.'
I hope that's a little clearer!
QS =D
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
No one ever puts the rest of the quote in, he went on to say " . . . but I've had more fun standing on the shoulders of clowns, they make me laugh, I like clowns, they've got big feet, really big feet".
I agree. And I could do the same. I've always used templates to learn from, and really don't like clones on the App Store. But Mateen may actually be stealing the actual files, not coming up with his own clone. That's a new level of crap.
However, while everyone seems to be upset about the cloning of Flappy Bird, I really couldn't care less anymore. My reasoning being that he took it down. There's no conflict of interest, people just rushed to fill a hole where there were millions of people craving a play experience. Not to mention that his game was a more simplified, endless, non multiplayer version of doodle jump. I really don't have a problem with it, aside from the fact that if you clone something that's no longer available, at least make it look better. And if he were to ever put his app back up on the store, and wanted the clones gone, I would be more than happy to oblige.
Same with clones of Angry Birds. Rovio copied Crush the Castle. Not to mention Zynga: Words with Friends IS Scrabble. FarmVille copied HappyFarm and FarmTown. King.com couldn't come up with an original idea if they tried.
It seems the consensus is that if your game becomes wildly popular, it means it's ok to be a clone and everyone pretends it's original.
But God forbid Brent Cherry makes a free app that's a clone of something you can't download anymore, and makes next to no money. Pure evil.
In regards to flappy clones, if anything, just be frustrated that they're not trying to come up with the next best thing.
Making games is a cutthroat business. On one side you have people saying they only make games for fun, and the other side wants the money. If the people that make games for fun complain they are mad at cloners looking for a quick buck...then one can only assume theres a bit of jealousy against those who clone and do make money from all our hard work. The people who make templates of popular or existing games need not post since they only feed the Clone Wars and would be seen as hypocritical. A long time ago it was once said that copying was a form of flattery....guess not when the all might dollar comes into play. Point being, we have a Flappy Bird thread that is jam packed with inquiries on how to make (in my opinion the easiest game to make) but nobody on the forums are asking mods to shut it down with the passion of this thread, and it's the Mother of all GS Clones I have witnessed to date!...Look at the marketplace or any of the reputable GS Template sites, They all did it.. I agree a template should be purchased with the intent to learn and improve upon with the developers own artistic and creative imagination, and not simply re-skinned. But many templates are sold with the caption "All art and sound is yours to use, but Re Skinning is advised (not mandated) before publishing". If anyone is guilty of getting their feet wet in the App Store by re skinning a template (again, not comment necessary). I think it is what it is and will be what it always has been, so lets get back to making the next best thing.
I deleted my previous. Too much of a rant.
Honestly, this is what summarizes why everyone is pissed off. Quite simply it is an injustice.
Watching Mateen screw over people, cheat the system, steal games, game the app store, and worst of all... get away with it is a huge injustice.
Its like watching a known serial killer get off completely free because of a technicality. People want justice.