Standing up for ourselves

Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, or you're just begging to be taken advantage of.

We (Spry Fox) have filed a copyright infringement suit in federal court against 6Waves LOLAPPS in response to their release of Yeti Town, their blatant copy of Triple Town. This was a difficult decision for David and I. We are not enthusiastic about the prospect of spending our time in court as opposed to making games. And in general, we believe that only in the most extreme circumstances should a video game developer resort to legal action in order to defend their creative works — the last thing our industry needs is frivolous lawsuits. Unfortunately, it is our opinion that 6waves has behaved in a reprehensible and illegal manner, and we can not, in good conscience, ignore it.

The full legal complaint can be downloaded here. In particular, I will call attention to these issues:

First: Yeti Town, as launched by 6waves, was a nearly perfect copy of Triple Town. We’re not just talking about the game’s basic mechanics here. We’re talking about tons of little details, from the language in the tutorial, to many of our UI elements, to the quantities and prices of every single item in the store (how exactly did 6waves “independently” decide to price 200 turns for 950 coins, or 4 wildcards for 1500 coins each? That’s quite a coincidence!) But don’t take our word for it. Here are just a few quotes taken from the numerous press articles that were published shortly after the release of Yeti Town:

• Gamezebo: "Unfortunately for Yeti Town, the only substantial difference between it and Facebook’s Triple Town is the platform it's on. Otherwise it’s the exact same game, only this time with snow."
• InsideSocialGames: "Yeti Town is a matching game nearly identical to Spry Fox’s Triple Town"
• Games.com: "Replace "saplings" with "bushes", "tents" with "houses" and "yetis" with "bears". What do you get? Something that would look a lot like independent developer Spry Fox's Triple Town"

Second: what most people don’t know is that 6waves was in confidential (under NDA) negotiations with us to publish Triple Town at the exact same time that they were actively copying Triple Town. We gave 6waves private access to Triple Town when it was still in closed beta, months before the public was exposed to the game. We believed those negotiations were ongoing, and we continued to give private information to 6waves, until 6waves’ Executive Director of Business Development sent us a message via Facebook on the day Yeti Town was published in which he suddenly broke off negotiations and apologized for the nasty situation. His message can be found in its entirety in the body of our legal complaint.

It’s bad enough to rip off another company. To do so while you are pumping them for private information (first, our game design ideas, and later, after the game was launched on Facebook, our private revenue and retention numbers) is profoundly unethical by any measure.

Despite all this, David and I still struggled with the idea of initiating a lawsuit. However, 6waves brought the issue to a head when, rather than openly and honestly discuss their actions, they had the chutzpah to tell Gamasutra that they had developed Yeti Town completely independently, and characterized the legitimate public criticism of their company as simply “part of the natural process” of game development.

We believe that there is nothing “natural” or ethical or legal about 6waves behavior. What they did was wrong. And if they get away with it, it will simply encourage more publishers to prey on independent game developers like us. We refuse to sit back and let that happen.

-Dave & Danc

The Real Triple Town available on iOS and Android

The holidays were crazy. Instead of opening presents, we were putting the finishing touches on the mobile version of Triple Town. Some late nights all around. Big kudos to Cliff Owen for doing an immense amount of the heavy lifting.

Triple Town for iPhone and iPad
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/triple-town/id490532168?ls=1&mt=8

Triple Town for Android
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spryfox.tripletown

If you love Triple Town, please download it (it is free) and rate it. We are in a bit of a David and Goliath situation here since a very large and nasty company copied Triple Town on mobile right at the end of December. We're a small team and we work hard, but moving to the phone took a few precious months. I don't quite know how to express the feeling of bleeding our lives out trying to finish the game...all while watching a soulless shark lavishly spend VC cash to ride up the chart. Using my own design. That was like a punch in the gut. Betrayal, violation and powerlessness all wrapped up into one unpleasant emotion. This has easily been one of the most emotionally difficult releases I've ever done.

To add insult to injury, the night we got ready to upload the Android version we made an awkward discovery: There was already a game called Triple Town being sold by a certain Mr. WangYang.  In fact, it was Triple Town.  The art was ripped from the web version.  The logo was the same.  Check out that screenshot...captured for posterity.  I want to send big thank you to Google.  Even though their offices had closed for the night, they took down the fake immediately.  That was deeply appreciated.

Ripped off: An example of a counterfeit game.

The best and most positive thing anyone who loves innovative indie games can do is spread the word about the original. Share the link. Download Triple Town. Write a review. Tell your friends. Heck, I tell strangers in coffee shops.

No one ever complains since a good indie game is an authentic joy. The next time I see someone after introducing them to Triple Town, all they ever want to talk about is Triple Town. It becomes an essential part of their life. It doesn't matter that it was done by a few guys working out of home offices. All that matters is that it is a good, original game that players love. I figure the Fast Follower bastards may have money and evil on their side, but maybe a passionate community and some word of mouth about a decent game can carve a small space for the little guys.

Big thanks for all the continued requests asking us to make Triple Town for mobile. It kept me going.

take care,
Danc.

PS: Also a lot of folks told me they just wanted to 'buy the damned thing'. So even though the game is still free if you want, you can now pay once and get unlimited turns.

PPS: First game in Unity! Very nice!

Plagiarism as a moral choice

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous boundaries.

The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal emerged in Europe only in the 18th century, particularly with the Romantic movement, while in the previous centuries authors and artists were encouraged to "copy the masters as closely as possible" and avoid "unnecessary invention.

The 18th century new morals have been institutionalized and enforced prominently in the sectors of academia and journalism, where plagiarism is now considered academic dishonesty and a breach of journalistic ethics, subject to sanctions like expulsion and other severe career damage...

Plagiarism is not a crime per se but is disapproved more on the grounds of moral offence...
-Wikipedia's entry on Plagiarism

Thought: Most professional game developers are also professional plagiarists

Here's a quiz for all the game developers who are reading:

• Do you follow the rule of thumb "90% familiar, 10% fresh"?
• When you look at the game you are working on is there a direct comparable?
• Do your designers say "For that feature let's model how X did it" and consistently refer to the same pre-existing game?
• Is your primary reference a game considered original or innovative in the last 3-5 years?
• Is your primary philosophy of design "I could totally make a better version of game X"
• Do you copy mechanics and assume that adding different content such as levels or graphics makes your game unique?

If you follow these patterns, you are likely a plagiarist. To rewrite the industry's golden rule in the language of other arts, "90% is plagiarized and 10% is remixed to give the illusion that the player is engaged in an original work."

This lazy and morally offensive practice has become a social norm within our incestuous industry. We don't even consider that there might be alternative method of developing games. We are the equivalent of the western world before the suffrage movement. Or the South before the civil rights movement. We look at our current derivative behavior, acknowledge that it is harmful and then proceed to dogmatically justify its continued pursuit based off economic, legal, historical and short-term selfish reasons. Yet the fact that 'everyone does it' fails to provide a strong moral foundation for an act that diminishes our industry and damages the minority that strive to create original works.

Where plagiarism differs from evolving key innovations of the past

It is a common practice to include individual mechanics inspired by previous games. This is a natural part of the creative process. Plagiarists, however borrows systems en mass. They takes not just the movement mechanic from Zelda, but the flow of the dungeons, the majority of the power ups, and the millisecond by millisecond feel of the game.

Game designs are very close to a mechanical invention.  The rules, interface and feedback systems all create a reproducible set of player dynamics.  Think of a game as an invented 'fun engine' that when placed in front of a player yields delight and mastery.

Developers go through a few stages of invention when building games.

1. Copying a design. Most programmers make a simple copy of an existing functional game as part of their learning process.  You copy everything including interface, levels, scoring and more. You don't understand why the game works so you replicate it in the hopes of blindly capturing the magic. You may change out the art, but otherwise it is the same game. 
2. Modifying an existing design. Usually this involves just playing with existing parameters or content.  You might add a a triple shotgun and new levels to your Doom-clone.  You still don't understand the game, but you can play with safe variables like narrative, level design or theme that are unlikely to ruin the value of the core mechanic. Warcraft is a classic example of a modification of the original Dune 2 RTS design. 
3. Adding to a design. Taking the core fun engine and add something to it. Think of this as adding a turbo charger on an existing car.  Sonic took Mario and made the main character much faster.  In the best games this results in a cascade effect throughout the entire design that requires you to rethink content, pacing, scoring and more. 
4. Synthesizing a new design. Take multiple disparate parts and put together a new game that has unique dynamics. A game like PuzzleJuice is a great example of a synthesized design that takes elements from Tetris and Boggle.  To many players, it feels like a brand new games built out of familiar pieces. 
5. Inventing a design. Using a variety of sources of inspiration, create a new fun engine that is unique and new to the world. 

The early stages of copying are an essential process that all students of game design should undertake.  As a learning activity, there isn't a lot of money in creating master studies, but it is a respectable pursuit along the path to self improvement.  As long as students cite their inspiration and refrain from competing directly with the original creator there is little conflict.

The later stages of invention are risky, difficult work.  There's an immense amount of experimentation and failure.  Even the simplest game inventions (such as Tetris or Lemmings) were the result of years of diligent labor by master designers.  There aren't a lot of these people, yet they bring immense amounts of joy to the world.  They deserve to profit from their inventions and in general players are excited to spend their money on new, delightful games.

The plagiarist is someone who wants to shortcut the process of invention. They decide that it is cheaper to copy as much a possible so that the dynamics of a previous game are preserved. Then cosmetic tweaks are applied and the copy is sold as a new thing by an original creator. Changing out the graphics or giving the game a new plot are the most common tweaks because they are easily decoupled without damaging the delicate dynamics of play.  When you look at the games released on the market, you can easily see that there is a spectrum of theft.  The most blatant plagiarists are those that steal the most and innovate new mechanics and dynamics the least.

The economic and human cost of plagiarism

By cheaply creating games without needing to pay the cost of research and invention, plagiarists are able to quickly release games into markets that the original innovator has not fully addressed. Clones therefore capture value that would have otherwise eventually accrued to the original innovator. For example, clones of Minecraft that reach XBLA earlier tap unmet demand and reduce the audience for Minecraft when it eventually releases there.

On first blush, consumer advocates might imagine that this is a fine situation. They get a product they like faster and as the population of plagiarists merrily plagiarize one another, you end up with an explosion of quality choices.

Consider how this effects the original source of the innovation. While the overall market may be larger, the original innovator is left naked with no protection that lets them recoup the cost of the initial invention. There are few legal protections for game inventors. There is only the stark reality that many smaller independent developers, the life blood of innovation in our current markets, are blindsided by a blast of competition that they lack the development resources, distribution agreements or business expertise to successfully compete against. The plagiarists capture the majority of the market, establish well known evergreen brands and the original innovators are at best a footnote.

As a result of this tragically common feedback loop, those inclined to innovate are discouraged from innovating in the first place. Why innovate when it costs you money and doesn't yield the competitive advantage you might hope due to the nearly instantaneous influx of copy-cat competitors? It may look like a better business option to simply join the plagiarists and avoid the whole expensive innovation thing in the first place. It is no surprise that the game industry tends to have a large number of evolutionary works, but fewer genre-busting founder works.

The plagiarist's 'make a buck at any cost' attitude directly results in a creatively stagnant industry long term.  You don't need to look far to see concrete examples of these dynamics in action. Note how quickly the cartoonishly mercenary plagiarism-focused culture of social games turned a bright spot of burgeoning innovation into an endless red ocean of clone after clone within a mere handful of years. Such a wasteland fails to grow the market and ultimately leads to less consumer choice.

Plagiarist pride

There is of course skill in plagiarizing well, just as there is skill in forging a famous painting. To be a professional plagiarist is laborious work. I acknowledge this. We've developed a whole subculture of designers that specialize in the subtle arts of copying the work of others. A 'good designer' is one that excels at 'researching comparable games'. They steal with great care from only the best. They also excel at 'polish' which has been warped to mean the skill at reverse engineering a comparable game so that the copy feels identical down to the smallest detail.

The current industry put such skills on a pedestal. We hire for them and we pay top dollar for reliable execution. Yet at best, these are the skills of a journeyman, mechanically copying the master works of past giants.

If you stick to doing only this, there's a pretty clear career path. You end up as a wage slave. Typically such laborers are hired by businesses that couldn't give a damn about pushing the craft of game design forward. Instead, the goal is another product for another slot on either the retail shelf or the downloadable dashboard. Grind it out, worker bee. If you can copy a past hit by the flickering candle of midnight crunch, your family gets its ball of rice for the day. This is the entirety of your creative worth. If you go to sleep each night thinking "I'm a hack, but at least I pay the bills", you deserve pity. And you need to contemplate the quiet whisper that maybe you don't need to spend your entire career diligently copying others.  Remember when you were a sparklingly original creative person?  Remember when you wanted to change the world? Remember that time before you compromised?

Plagiarism is a moral choice

We live in an economic world.  Yes, you need to eat. We also live in a legal world.  There is a rather low minimum bar for our behavior. But as creators and artists, we can each choose where we put our creative energy. What we create has a moral and emotional component that is perhaps more important for both our mental health than any paycheck. To be a plagiarist and to stay a plagiarist is to waste your very limited time on this planet. What amazing things could you be making if you didn't spend so much time slavishly copying others?

What's the alternative? Why not start up a small prototyping project? Knock a genre down to its most basic element. Give yourself constraints so you intentionally do not replicate games of the past. Rebuild your game from that simple foundation, borrowing elements from the entire breadth of game history. Finish a game that has a half dozen influences from widely disparate games that in the end create a player experience that is uniquely yours. This is how you stop being a plagiarist and start becoming a master game designer.  There is still time to create something amazing and new.

take care,
Danc.

Useful links

• Inspiration vs. Imitation: http://www.jessicahische.is/obsessedwiththeinternet/andbeingresponsivelyinspired/inspiration-vs-imitation-2

Panda Poet: My most social design

Way back in 2010, Spry Fox put out a single player word game for the Kindle called Panda Poet.  I had always had some vague ideas for a multiplayer variation so when an opportunity came up to create an original HTML 5 game, I pitched play-by-mail Panda Poet.  As David says over on his blog, this is our third release this month so things have been a wee bit hectic.  Reminder to self: do not launch multiple new games while attempting to vacation in Japan.

As with all my projects, we spent the first few months heavily iterating on prototype designs.  I went back to the root of the original concept and ended up deviating substantially from the single player mechanics.  The game still involves growing pandas by spelling words.  But now the game is based around a capture mechanism that lets you take pandas from the other player.  The territory aspects of the game give play a rather unique feel and the end result reminds me of "Scrabble meets Go."  The timer countdowns that were such a large part of the single player game are gone.  Playing against another player who constantly creates words out of any letters you didn't use ends up being more than enough pressure to give the game forward momentum.  The arrow of play is strong in this one.

Go give Panda Poet a try over at game.pandapoet.com.  Or install it on the Chrome Web Store. Invite a friend to play.  It is more fun.

Putting the social into a game

Most multiplayer games played over the computer aren't very social.  In console games, you get a lot of teabagging and swearing with very little space or time set aside for meaningful social dialog. In games on social networks, you find people poking one another using cynically automated systems. There's a pushy one-to-many broadcast aspect of the experience that does little to encourage deeper social bonds.

My wife is a longtime player of Words with Friends and seeing her chatting with complete strangers for months on end reignited my interest in play-by-mail games.  You can think of these games as a bit like a conversation.  You make a statement by playing a turn and then pass the conversation onto the next person so they can respond.  Side by side with the game is a chat window, but the important realization is that both the chat and the moves you make in the game are forms of communication.

Panda Poet follows a similar model.  It has an inbox, just like an email program and you can have multiple conversations going at once.  Here are some observations:

• Every interaction is opt-in:  Everytime you choose to make a move, you are signaling that you want to continue the relationship.   There's little penalty for dropping out. 
• Relationships grow over time:  Many random matches put strangers together.  Initially, people play silently for long stretches of time.  However, very slowly you get the occasional safe comment.  Eventually this blossoms into more detailed conversations.  Trust comes from a long series of safe and reliable interactions.  Each time you submit a turn, you are building trust and respect. 
• Griefing is difficult: If someone is rude, you just resign from the game and stop playing with them.  Or you don't play the next turn. It is possible to spam someone, but number of people effected is so minimal and the feedback in response to your Killer cleverness so sparse that it is rarely worth it.  The typical incentives driving griefing fizzle without an audience or social status.
• You can build on existing relationships: When was the last time you did any activity with your brother or close friend from college that now lives a thousand miles away? We live in social world fractured by Schumpeter's creative destruction.  You dwell in distant lands as determined by the latest job opening.  As a result, the deeply meaningful local relationships that dominated life of eras past suffer. Social isolation is a very real consequence of the capitalist eradication of that most charming of labor rigidities, a generational home.  Games like Panda Poet give you a private shared space to reconnect.  Take five minutes out of your day and create a new experience with the ones you once held near. 

I see immense potential in this style of game and I'll be using similar multiplayer structures in future games.  When you design a game with real social play, ask "What is the intrinsic rhythm of back and forth conversation between participants?"  If this key pattern has no space to exist, then perhaps you aren't creating a social game after all.

take care,
Danc.

Links

• The Panda Poet website
• Multiplayer Panda Poet on Chrome Web Store    
• Single player Panda Poet on the Kindle

Other Notes

Successes

• Easy initial learning curve:  People get that you are supposed to spell words.  There doesn't seem to be much confusion over the basic UI.  
• The game is reasonably well balanced. I've seen multiple games between two skilled players that are decided based off the final few words.  You almost never find yourself halfway through the game in a position where it is impossible to make a comeback. 
• Pacing:  I'm adore the short play sessions (a single turn takes 10-30 seconds).  However, since players can have multiple games going, you get a random distribution of games popping up throughout the day much like email or an IM conversation with a friend.  This combined with a daily email archive  prompting people to check back into the site and catch up on waiting games should yield a reasonably high rate of retention. 

Our big challenges going forward:

• Complex capture mechanics: The capture mechanics are a dash too complex for casual players to understand the strategic elements of the game immediately.   In particular, it takes multiple games for players to understand how to lock in pandas mid game. 
• Poor monetization opportunities:  Right now there's just an initial Premium version that removes ads and gives access to a more expansive and strategic board layout.  My suspicion is that we are going to need to do a lot more work to craft a compelling offer. 

Steambirds: Survival Mobile

Today, we are launching Steambirds Survival for iOS. The layout has been rejiggered to work nicely on the iPhone. And there's a wonderfully expansive HD version for the iPad that it easily my favorite way to play Steambirds. The Android version will follow shortly.  All of them are free, so give it a go and let me know what you think.

Though this new mobile version of Steambirds Survival shares the same name as web-based game, by partnering with Halfbrick (of Fruit Ninja fame) we've transformed it into a much bigger (and my opinion, better) game.

• Improved progression system with new missions:  There are 64 missions, 8 of which are infinite survival modes.  If you liked Steambirds and want to play it forever, this is your game.  (Sometimes you need something a bit meatier than a tiny handful of puzzle levels.)
• Free-to-play:  This is our first free-to-play game on mobile.  Like most of our games, we take the 'free' part pretty seriously.  I want people to buy because they love the game and can't get enough.  I'm very curious what lessons we'll learn. 
• Multiple player planes: We added a really fun recruitment system that lets you hire multiple player controlled planes.   Running through a level with three Chickadees feels amazing.  Previously lackluster planes like the Cockroach turn into fascinating exercises in multi-plane tactics. 
• New Reinforcement powerup: You can call in NPC allies to fight along side.   This leads to rather epic mix ups with dozens of planes pinwheeling about in a deadly dance. 

Does your game have a clear "Arrow of Play"?

After launching the web version of Steambirds Survival, I was unhappy with the mission structure.  Originally there was an open list of planes that you could unlock in any order.  It seemed like a good idea at the time since 'openness' and 'choice' are good, right?  But we saw that a lot of players would cherry pick a few planes and then after they found one that they liked, they'd just play that plane to grind the in-game currency, copper. As a result, the progression lacked a clear feeling of momentum that encouraged you to trying out a wide variety of different play styles.

With the new mission structure, you unlock cities one at a time and each city reveals more cities to play.  Within each city, there are 8 sub-missions that give the player to demonstrate increasing levels of mastery to pass. Now, there's a very clear direction to the unlocking and this should give players short term and long term goals to work towards.

In physics, Arthur Eddington coined the phrase 'arrow of time' to describe how time appears to flow in a single direction.  As you dabble in general relativity, you realize that time is wonderfully compressible and can be manipulated in a variety of clever ways, especially near the speed of light.  Yet even with all this variation, it consistently advances forward.

When I look at a design, I always ask "What is the arrow of play?"  This is a directional property of the mechanical systems that always moves the player forward. And like time, there's often a surprisingly amount of variation that occurs along the way.  Some players advance slowly, others take strange side paths, but all advance.

Tools for creating the arrow of play

In Steambirds Survival, there are a variety of systems that result in a distinct arrow of play.

• Inevitable decay: Plane health almost always goes downward.  There are very rare health boosts, but they are at best a temporary reprieve. 
• Escalation: Enemies slowly increase over time.  Waves get larger.  Difficult enemies spawn with increased frequency.  Even the best players find themselves at a point where they can't fight back the chaos any longer and errors creep in. 
• Short term goals: Short term, you are trying to live long enough to complete mission goals that are just on the edge of your capabilities. 
• Repeated patterns: Each mission goal unlocks new mission goals.  Once you learn the pattern you can repeat it again and again building momentum like train wheels accelerating down the track. 
• Resource flow: Each goal you complete earns you copper, which you spend to either facilitate the completion of goals or to unlock new cities. There is a clear resource flow from sources of currency to sinks of currency. 
• Limited choices:  Unlocking new cities in turn lets you unlock more cities, eventually getting to the point where you have explored all the content in the game.  At once point in my career I thought linearity was a curse. And it is when taken to extremes.  But it is also a tool.   If you end up overwhelming most players with too many choices, the perceived quality of the choices provides goes down.  In Steambirds Survival, there are always at least 4 choices.  You can unlock up two cities.  Or you can attempt missions in at least two cities.  The hope is that it is clear what to do next. 
• Linear affordances:  The map of cities is a simple list that scrolls in along one dimension.  Should I have made a map that scrolls in two dimensions?  I could have, but I'm not sure it would have improved the quality of the choices that the player made.  Instead, by restricting the dimensionality of the UI, the player can focus on picking a city instead of wandering around a map, trying to remember which corner the next locked item is located at.   (I learned this lesson from map scrolling in Lemmings.  One of my favorite tools for simplify interfaces)

Games are about change.  The system moves from one state to another at the poking and prodding of the players. Each tick of the clock or press of a button creates momentum that leads the player on a joyful rush through challenge after mastery challenge. You start slowly.  The player builds speed and eventually they steam forward in a continuous state of flow.  The arrow of play leads inevitably to a sense of pacing.  Yet critically it approaches these not from a traditional narrative perspective, but as a property of the game systems.  The beats of the game rhythm are those clicks and taps turning tight loops over and over.  Steambirds is a turn-based strategy game, a genre typically seen as a slow and plodding.  Yet in the middle of a dog fight, it can feel like an action game.

A system that lacks a clear arrow of play results in players being mired in odd dead ends.  It isn't enough to make a game that has feedback loops, widgets to master and all the various atomic elements of a game.  It also needs a strong sense of momentum that like time or entropy hurtles the play forward.

take care,
Danc.