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What is your attitude towards competing/copycat franchises?


Fabulously Olivier
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Competitors/copycats  

24 members have voted

  1. 1. What is your attitude regarding similar franchises to your favorites?

    • I love them no matter how similar they are. More of a good thing!
      8
    • I'll buy them if they have some unique mechanics
      5
    • Competition is good, but you need to be better, not just different
      6
    • Unlikely to buy them regardless of quality or differences
      2
    • My favorite franchise is special, and clones need to stay away!
      0
    • I'm entirely indifferent
      3
  2. 2. Are you more or less likely to buy games that are substantially similar to your favorite franchises

    • More
      10
    • Less
      3
    • Don't care
      11


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I've noticed that in general, Nintendo fans seem to be more protective of their IPs than most gamers. Temtem and Digimon attracted vitriol for being similar to Pokemon. Genshin Impact drew early heat for looking like Breath of the Wild (as opposed to the criticism it actually deserves for being gacha trash). There's the classic platformer wars between Sonic and Mario (as if Sonic could ever compete). In general, we seem to view our IPs as beyond comparison.

 

So what are your feelings on the matter?

 

As for me, I'm in the optimist camp. If I see a strategy RPG like FE, I'm likely to try it. If I see a competing Musuo game, I'm extremely likely to buy it. If there's something that reminds me of Persona, I'll look into it. More of the things I love is always a good thing, and the one franchise developer can never develop faster than I can play.

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Generally, I like 'em as they're usually really good, (I.E, Berwick Saga) or really bad, (The Russian spinoff Mario, sorry, Mapno games) and I can enjoy them either way.

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3 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I've noticed that in general, Nintendo fans seem to be more protective of their IPs than most gamers.

I don't even believe intellectual property rights should exist.

If a game looks like a game I like, that does give me a reason to consider it. What really matters when choosing to buy a game is that I think I'll enjoy it. On the poll I said "competition is good, but you need to be better, not just different." Now, I know that not every game can be a masterpiece like FE6, but I want a competently made and fun video game, preferably that doesn't feature a roster of anime girls as its box art. Something that stands on its own.

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I'm more-or-less indifferent, assuming the copycat at least tries to be a good game (as opposed to lookalike shovelware/bootlegs). You can own your characters and series' name, but you can't own how a game plays. And when it comes to Nintendo's properties especially, it's not as though people can just make fan games. We've all seen how that turns out. And Pokemon especially really needs competition.

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2 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I don't see any mention of Glory Emblem, shame on you.

I had no idea that even existed. But considering it blatantly steals character designs, Nintendo probably has grounds for legal action (or would, if China didn't wipe its ass with copyright law). That's not competition, it's brazen, shameless theft.

Edited by Fabulously Olivier
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1 minute ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I had no idea that even existed. But considering it blatantly steals character designs, Nintendo probably has grounds for legal action (or would, if China didn't wipe its ass with copyright law). That's not competition, it's theft.

Oh, absolutely, it’s apparently 100% spyware too if the FEH Reddit is to be believed. Doesn’t change the fact that it just might be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen - ‘Edward partner’ still makes me chuckle.

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New ideas and original concepts are inherently iterative. It's basically impossible to come up with an idea that is completely unlike anything that anyone has ever seen before. Instead, we take what has gone before and we refine it, add to it, or combine it in interesting ways. Any new game is going to take elements from existing games, just as those games took inspiration from what came before them, and so on. So long as a game is iterating even a little bit, I don't see any problem.

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I don't have a problem with games that are really similar to ones I like (even to the point of them being straight-out copies), as long as they offer something fresh. Not necessarily in terms of gameplay or mechanics, if it has a great story, I won't mind the gameplay being the same. This holds true for rom-hacks or fan-games as well, they don't have to add anything new to the game they are based on, as long as the writing and the story is good. And by good I mean, at least as good as the original game, but preferably better. 

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As long as it isn't a blatant rip-off, I usually welcome it. For example, i love Pokémon, but when Yo-kai watch came around to America i pre-ordered it (Mind you, nobody bought it in America unless you're obsessed with Japanese mythology as I am). It was similar enough to feel great and familiar, but different enough to provide a new experience.

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12 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

Oh, absolutely, it’s apparently 100% spyware too if the FEH Reddit is to be believed. Doesn’t change the fact that it just might be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen - ‘Edward partner’ still makes me chuckle.

Wait, "Edward Partner" ? I demand elaboration.

3 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I'm still bitter about that. From a great SRPG competitor to a d-list JRPG. 

Available for free on mobile.

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Well, it's hard to ignore that a lot of indie games will lift entire mechanics from popular retro games, and even try hard to have aesthetic similarities. And a lot of those games are great. Most of the beat em ups I've played from the last few years have clear streets of rage and Final Fight inspirations. I just played The Takeover, where two main characters Ethan and Megan are almost 1:1 the same as streets of rage 2 Axel and Blaze in terms of moveset. Bug Fables, a game that not only derives a style of RPG from a popular franchise, but perfects it. There's a ton of Mega Man clones out there that are great. And best of all the metroidvania genre - which probably wouldn't be considered much of a genre in 2020 when Metroid and Castlevania have both been largely dead and/or attempting to be actions games for the last ten years.

When a triple A game is lifting entire things from other triple A games, yeah I think we have grounds to be more critical of lazy design. We're still getting Dark Souls clones to this day. I laughed out loud when I climbed my first "Ubisoft Tower" in Breath of the Wild. And entire sub genres of big budget games are getting pointed out for manipulative design. Games as a Service games (aka: GaS) where you buy something in early access and wait for the chance to either buy more of its content or are inundated by microtransactions. Looter shooters, Battle royales. All games that would have been considered a bonus mode in earlier eras of gaming.

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13 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

which probably wouldn't be considered much of a genre in 2020 when Metroid and Castlevania have both been largely dead and/or attempting to be actions games for the last ten years.

Castlevania ought to be a series of platformers with fixed jump arcs.

Honestly though, as a Mega Man fan, I'm a little tired of seeing games which are just a Mega Man subseries but with the blue bomber swapped for an anime girl. I know I said I just wanted a competent game, but on the poll I said I was less likely to buy games substantially similar to other franchises. This is because I don't like to buy things I already have.

I have a lovely blue paisley shirt. I adore that shirt. I am not buying another one. I can already wear the one I have. Likewise, even games in the same series need to have unique merits compared to their predecessors.

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As long as they try to be competent and do the things well, I don't mind.

I love both Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid for instance, Splinter Cell was made to compete with MGS however they play rather differently compared to each other, same with Silent Hill and Resident Evil, Silent Hill was originally just made because Konami wanted a Resident Evil Clone but the devs managed to make it into something original. 

 

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On 9/2/2020 at 7:48 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

I don't even believe intellectual property rights should exist.

So I should be allowed to make an 18+ game of your characters without your consent? I should be allowed to steal your super-cool idea and make money off of it? Let's say you spent hours, weeks, months on a passion project...and then I stole it, uploaded it, and took credit for it. What would you do about it? If there are no IP rights, there's nothing you can do about it except try to convince everyone that you're the one who produced the game, not me, and then a lot of people might just say you're the one trying to steal credit. Wouldn't feel very fair, would it? I get that it's frustrating when a beloved fan project gets shut down (as has happened many times with fangames of Nintendo IPs), especially after it's been completed, released, and around for a while, but just because you're passionate about your art, doesn't give you the right to steal someone else's IP through it.

No IP rights = no copyright protection, and that means anyone can produce copies of the game and sell it for cash, which devalues the game in question, so nobody wants to actually pay for it, which in turn wastes the time and energy of the person who made the game in the first place. They get nothing while everyone else gets to benefit from their hard work, leaving them to find some other way to make a living. In the process, they'll likely lose a lot of their drive to make another game due to the expectation that everyone will just steal that one too, and whatever job they have to take will likely cut heavily into the time they would otherwise spend making another game. I don't see how any of that is a good thing.

Games take a lot of time and effort to make. The AAA titles we play today often take a team of anywhere from 50 to 100 people spending months of their time away from their families. They often put up with a lot of stress, most often due to deadlines, sometimes due to their superiors acting like total arsewads. Sometimes they even have to put up with sexual harassment and other forms of bullying. People who work on games absolutely deserve to be paid for their time, and to do that, companies have to make a profit, which would be much harder to do if anyone could make games featuring your creations. IP rights help curb the spread of pirated games and bootlegs (unless you live in China, which has about as much respect for IP rights as it does human rights), which in turn helps protect the profits of the IP owners and ensures they can pay their employees what they deserve for their work (and yes, I am aware that some, perhaps many, companies don't pay their employees what they deserve, but that's tangental to this discussion, which is about IP rights and the validity of IPs obviously inspired by other IPs).

It's better to try and turn your fangame ideas into your own IPs, which will likewise benefit from the protections offered by IP rights. After all, we're supposed to encourage creativity in art, so why not encourage fangame developers to develop their creativity by figuring out how to turn their fangames into their own IPs? Them's Fightin' Herds started out as a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fangame titled Fighting is Magic. Fighting is Magic got the ol' C&D by Hasbro, so what did the developers do? They rebuilt the game with their own characters, designed by none other than Lauren Faust herself!

Freedom Planet likewise started out as a Sonic fangame, until it was retooled into its own IP with three female protagonists and a distinct plot, helping it stand apart from Sonic while still evoking a similar feel. 20XX and its upcoming sequel 30XX were obviously inspired by Mega Man and MMX, yet they took their own direction, adding all kinds of temporary upgrades and making replays different with a randomized selection of bosses and level layouts. A Robot Named Fight was very obviously influenced by Metroid, but has its own premise - robots fighting a fleshy abomination and its spawn - with likewise randomized upgrades and a storyline incentive to play through multiple times.

Indie developers can be more creative with their own IPs, plus they're free to build their own worlds and canon rather than being stuck with what already exists. Indie developers are free to do whatever they want with their IPs rather than have to play by someone else's rules. Ever felt frustrated with Nintendo's overreliance on tropes like Peach or Zelda getting kidnapped, and wished they would make more games starring Peach or Zelda as the heroine? Well, why not go make your own Princess heroine character who does the things you wish Peach or Zelda would do? Or maybe you wish Mega Man had more female bosses like Splash Woman; you could make a similar game with a mostly or all-female selection of bosses - and it doesn't even have to feature robots!

If an indie becomes successful enough, they can even make a living off their IPs, especially if they branch out into merchandise (clothing, mugs, toys) and tie-in media (like books, TV series, or even feature-length films) allowing them to quit those dull day-to-day jobs that so many of us wish we could. Furthermore, healthy competition prevents any company from monopolizing the industry. Big-name companies like Nintendo have been stepping up their game in recent years, and I think the wave of successful and popular indie IPs that exploded after downloadable titles became mainstream played a large part in that. Companies can no longer afford to be lazy, because there is always an indie out there waiting to claim the crown if they let their own IPs falter.

I support people producing similar IPs so long as it's clear that their drive comes from passion and love for the source of inspiration. I scorn cheap, lazy, shameless copycats who try to deceive their customers for a quick buck. There's a difference between saying "I was inspired by Super Mario!" and claiming "I am Super Mario!" even though you aren't. 20XX, A Robot Named Fight, Freedom Planet, Them's Fightin' Herds...none of these games are trying to fool you into thinking they're something else. They aren't shallow imitations of existing IPs, they're worthy counterparts who boldly stand next to their predecessors, bearing their similarities as badges of honor. And so I feel any such inspired IP should be: a proud homage to the source who at the same time isn't afraid to compete with that source, because its creators know it's that good.

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10 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Wait, "Edward Partner" ? I demand elaboration.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/gameluster.com/fire-emblem-heroes-ripoff-glory-emblem-goes-viral/amp/

Can’t find the exact pic I saw that on, you could probably find it through the Twitter group or by asking around the FEH subreddit. It’s absolutely the most hilarious spoof I’ve seen in a long time.

Spoiler

9BAFA020-E69C-4C8D-94C3-206A989DB03F.thumb.jpeg.ecc14f657442cc1c44b0d9e18bb218a7.jpeg5DCCC578-7CC1-4E50-8C2B-217F8BE88097.thumb.jpeg.7d0af059134b4e8de56fcb111b6a43d7.jpeg

 

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