The Aesthetics of Cloning
Taken from Penny Arcade:
The Flashpoint
Tycho
@TychoBrahe
Wednesday, February 22 2012 - 12:01 AM
I’ve talked about David Sirlin a couple times before. I think that if you were to crack open his skull, his brain would look physically different from other brains; I play his games because they’re good, but also in an attempt to figure him out. I felt confident that he’d have a useful perspective on the “clonin’ fever” that swept the web recently, and I wasn’t wrong. He makes a distinction I think is vital, and desperately missing from the utopian/free love model of creative work - what amounts to an Aesthetics Of Cloning. His games Puzzle Strike and Yomi are playable online at FantasyStrike.com.
Regarding cloning, copying, and stealing of game designs: let’s get a couple things out of the way first.
Copyrights. Never violate someone’s copyright, period. That only covers the verbatim expression of an idea though, not the idea itself. This means don’t copy exact art assets, literally identical code, etc. I think we’re all on the same page here.
Patents. Game mechanics really shouldn’t be patentable. I wrote an article on this, on how far warped the patent system has become since 1793 when Thomas Jefferson first outlined the criteria of a patent to be novel, non-obvious, and useful. In that article you can read about Sega’s absurd patent for a game where a car drives in a virtual city with an arrow floating above the car telling you where to go, and where virtual people jump out of the way of the car. Or Namco’s absurd patent on mini-games in loading screens. Wizards of the Coast has an absurd patent on cards turning sideways to denote a game state (aka “tapping”). If anything, go ahead and break some patents on game mechanics so this stuff can be struck down in court. These things stifle innovation, not encourage it.
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The Flashpoint
Tycho
@TychoBrahe
Wednesday, February 22 2012 - 12:01 AM
I’ve talked about David Sirlin a couple times before. I think that if you were to crack open his skull, his brain would look physically different from other brains; I play his games because they’re good, but also in an attempt to figure him out. I felt confident that he’d have a useful perspective on the “clonin’ fever” that swept the web recently, and I wasn’t wrong. He makes a distinction I think is vital, and desperately missing from the utopian/free love model of creative work - what amounts to an Aesthetics Of Cloning. His games Puzzle Strike and Yomi are playable online at FantasyStrike.com.
Regarding cloning, copying, and stealing of game designs: let’s get a couple things out of the way first.
Copyrights. Never violate someone’s copyright, period. That only covers the verbatim expression of an idea though, not the idea itself. This means don’t copy exact art assets, literally identical code, etc. I think we’re all on the same page here.
Patents. Game mechanics really shouldn’t be patentable. I wrote an article on this, on how far warped the patent system has become since 1793 when Thomas Jefferson first outlined the criteria of a patent to be novel, non-obvious, and useful. In that article you can read about Sega’s absurd patent for a game where a car drives in a virtual city with an arrow floating above the car telling you where to go, and where virtual people jump out of the way of the car. Or Namco’s absurd patent on mini-games in loading screens. Wizards of the Coast has an absurd patent on cards turning sideways to denote a game state (aka “tapping”). If anything, go ahead and break some patents on game mechanics so this stuff can be struck down in court. These things stifle innovation, not encourage it.
( Read more...Collapse )