Only just found this thread. No I'm not trying to rile anybody up. Yes I should have just made my points and not throw in any of the other stuff. To get back on point, I agree that what they did with the icon and promotional material was stupid. It was completely unnecessary for them to do so when they've clearly put in a lot of work of their own in other areas. I actually have no idea why they did that, I doubt they're trying to trick people into thinking it's Don't Starve given that it's in a different genre altogether. They probably just thought it wasn't a big deal and as a result they've brought this sort of criticism on themselves. They should have just replicated the overall style and left it at that. I also don't have a relation to the dev. The reason why I felt compelled to respond repeatedly is because I looked at the thread and felt that they've put a lot of hard work doing their own thing with the art even though it had obvious inspirations. Survival craft, Block Fortress et al. didn't receive the same extent of criticism IIRC. If most of the criticism is because of the look of the main character, icon and the promo material, then I wholeheartedly agree. They sort of tainted people's impression by doing that and they should be face palming themselves given that they have a good game here overall. Apart from the art itself, people should be criticising how close the game is mechanically to The Enchanted Cave, if anything. It's similar right down to the highlighting squares. If I was the dev of that game I'd be pretty annoyed. But as a consumer I enjoy the game and see it as an improvement of that title.
Guys, it's really just the title screen. Your own designed character in game looks different. I could go so far now and say it's a compliment to Don't Starve, somehow. In game, some of the monsters (like that walking eye) are also inspired by DS, but I wouldn't call this a rip-off in any way. And I think it's true, the cardboard art style that DS is using isn't new.
This. Once you get into the game the art style may be similar but I think the criticism is way overblown. You can tell that a LOT of work was put into this game, including the art. It's incredibly impressive for an unknown dev. And it's ashame that this petty argument over marketing material is taking away from what is truly a great game.
I actually went as far as contacting the studio directly, recommending that they change the icon, default character and promo material. I tried to make it clear that it would be an easy fix that would dispel most of the criticism. Maybe they don't care and trying to coax people using such methods is central to their marketing. Or maybe it's just something that they thought wasn't a big deal and didn't have sinister intentions. Cultural differences and all that. It's anyone's guess really. It is however an easy fix on their behalf.
A Chinese friend once told me that some concepts that Westerners have, are mostly unknown to Chinese people. There are some big cultural differences between our 'inspired' and Chinese 'inspired'. Your mail to the devs might leave them amused, but that's just a guess. Maybe it's even honorable how much you care for the devs and don't want to get them in trouble, on the other hand, you're giving them advice they might not even want. Do you really think they are so dumb not to realize what they did? Really, come on. Since you've found enjoyment in playing 'social justice warrior', don't forget to write to the devs of Survivalcraft, World Craft, lunacraft, Block Craft 3D, Pixel Gun 3D, Last Warlock, Eden, Exploration, The Sandbox, Block Story, Delver, Mine Builder, Growtopia, World Of Cubes, Adventure With Companions, Block World, Block Fortress, Discovery, Block Earth, Gun Crafter, TOCA Builder, Droidcraft and Block Fortress that they have blatantly/not blatantly borrowed/stolen/taken inspiration for their games from Minecraft, especially the art/graphics and/or the concept and/or the gamplay and/or the sound and/or the music and/or the controls and/or the assets and/or the creature/world/tool or general block design. When you're finished, you can care about the copycats of Threes!, Flappy Bird, Triple Town, Tetris, Super Mario Land, Dungeon Master and Final Fantasy (don't forget Kemco here!). If we're done with iOS, we go and clean up the PC and XBox game scene. I first thought there is a mild smell of bigotry in the air, but it's more like a horrible stench.
LOL. Nice post. I also wonder if the devs just did it almost tongue-in-cheek and not maliciously anyway.
We have 2 options: we will never know because the whole fuzz is in reality just a little annoyance, or we ask them and then have to decide if we trust their answer or put it off as a lie. I assume that this is one thing we'll never know. What I am wondering about is simply the fact that the whole copycat stuff, which created outrage and turmoil some years ago and eventually changed into 'normal' behaviour, now has to be hammered into the outrage and turmoil topic again. I exaggerated here a bit but that's how it feels. I totally understand Eli's hestitation because he's responsible for the tA front page, but I do not understand the fuzz in the forums. We have hundredthousands of 'inspired' examples on the Appstore today. And either we treat them all equally or we drop that topic. Just concentrating on one of thousands and thousands of examples won't have any effect at all.
Nice list and reasoning, but in Zen's defense, I don't think he was trying to belittle the dev. as he's been on the "who cares about the art similarities" side of this discussion from the beginning. I think he just meant it as a "some people are hating on your game because of..." FYI to the dev.
Yes, I do understand what he wanted to say or do and acted mostly in defense of the devs, but he also declared their action to be a stupid move. If that's his opinion, fine with me. But we should not live double standards. You can't poke one dev and let 1000 other devs do freely. Either the rules apply to all, or to none. When I am looking into new threads where the similiarity of the game compared to other games jumps right at you like a face hugger, I barely notice someone complaining about that these days. This became uncommon. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, like "Monumnt Valley". Years ago this was a massive thing, see Triple Town/Yeti Town. I have to exclude the copyright owner of Tetris, who still hunts down some games that are heavily inspired by Tetris. But that's just my opinion. I now go and tell off all the devs who made Pokemon clones. I hope I get that done in the next few years. Digimon is first to sit on the naughty step. And: if we could manage to ban all the clones and inspired games from the Appstore, we would have only a few dozen games left. And from each genre, that's only one: the original.
But yet TA has covered/reviewed games like those you listed. There is no doubt that they drew inspiration from Don't Starve in the marketing images in particular. But it's far from theft or copyright violation. And it's TA staffers that were the ones that really made a bigger deal out of it than I think it is. Not saying they shouldn't raise it as a question. But I just think the whole thing is blown out of proportion. These devs IMO seem to have put a lot of effort into making a really good game. Like you said, we'll never know their true intent with those marketing images but I think the pitchfork movement is unwarranted.
I agree; I also bought the game and the whole thing is totally different from Don't Starve. As I said, it's the title screen. And don't get me wrong, I don't intend to attack anybody maliciously here, it's just how I feel. Before I saw this thread, I saw Eli on Twitter asking the same and wondering about the community - while those people brutally jump 'at every Escher-like Monument Valley knock-off' - declaring him insane in this case. As I said: double standards. He's just reacting to the reactions of this particar game, afaics. And I'm sure he doesn't want to pull an upcoming forum shitstorm directly to the front page. Oh, and since I don't leave a claim without backing it up, I leave this right here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_China I'd like to point out the last three sentences of the first paragraph.
Yup. But the Greedy Cave guy doesn't look as much like Bruce Campbell as the Don't Starve Guy does to me. Hardly the worst copy I've seen on iOS: Dark Quest comes to mind first: (And in this case Dark Quest's gameplay is very similar to Hero Quest...) vs
Good example, Drelbs. I am trying not to laugh, but I really understand when Eli sometimes goes Sad Panda mode, because in one moment the community goes like: 'ARRRR blatant copy of Monument Valley, bring tar and feathers!" and the next day they are like "Woah wait that's just the title screen and everything is fine". Repeat as you like. In Eli's case, I'd go nuts after a while. I've dropped thinking like that long ago. Just because it's not my duty. And I live happily since after. I buy what I like. If I think that a dev just want to make quick money by stealing stuff from another game, I answer it with not buying the game. It's the devs job to protect their IPs, not our job. We just chose if we support an inspired game or not. We chose if we buy the umphteenth clone from Diablo or not. I never intended to tar and feather the Torchlight devs, btw. And yeah: The Greedy Cave copied a BIT from the artwork of Don't Starve. But it copied nearly the whole game concept from Enchanted Cave (which was copied from blahblah, which has copied from blahblahblah before), but refined it and added a whole lot of stuff. And maybe that's it. People tend to get angry over copies but are very forgiving when another game makes all the stuff 'better'. Now excuse me while I sue all devs who copied from 'ROGUE'. Boy, that's going to be a hard cracker to chew.
Yeah, I didn't say he was very tactful in his approach.# However I just didn't feel his lack of etiquette here reached the level of bigotry. Ignorance maybe but not hatred.
Oh, I see, this can be taken the wrong way. I did not point at him with my comment about bigotry, that went to a lot of people. I am sorry if there was confusion about this. Look at Sash-O for example. Dismisses and accuses of stealing (without even trying the game?) and, according to his post history, celebrating other games which have copied far more stuff, like Horizon Chase. It's that kind of bigotry. Eventually, we reach the point where all this becomes utterly confusing.
I understand now. Sorry I didn't get that. I will concede that like some others I could spend all day rolling my eyes at Minecraft rip offs but I got this game right away. I guess that makes me a hypocrite but I feel that most of the rip off/clone games out there don't get past what there stealing from and do anything interesting with their games. In this case I feel wherever the inspiration came from (Tim Burton or Don't starve) they made a really good, high quality game that exceeds what came before it.
Exactly what I was talking about, yeah. Greedy Cave was 'inspired' by Enchanted Cave and Don't Starve, it's not something new, but refined and in some ways, upgraded. Same applies in m opinion to Hero Enblem and Guardian Sword. In the end, you are the customer and you're deciding which games your are supporting and which not. You're speaking or not speaking through your wallet, and everything of that happens in the save bubble of your own responsibility and freedom of choice. I doubt that this makes you a hypocrite. I don't see a bad thing in people taking inspirations from other people. The whole music industry is based on people who inspire others. Inspirations are generally a very good thing (maybe even neccessary) while just ripping something isn't.
I agree. Boycotting is the best way to show you don't approve of something. I still don't eat at Chic-fil-a. You can add this to you list, http://appshopper.com/link/amazing-geometry-tappy-climber-run-and-jump-escape-from-the-high-block-city I'm not even sure how this happened.
