Thoughts on some of the current "Indie Dev" mindsets

General
1

Topic

I’ve noticed that a lot of indie devs, especially beginner devs, adopt the mindset of “I’ll make a game that’s similar to [Game Name].” Regardless of the quality of the result, I want to ask: is it healthy to approach game development by modeling a game after “existing” projects created by professionals?

Polls

Is it healthy to have this mindset about game development?
  • Yes
  • No
  • It doesn’t Matter
0 voters

Do you often have these mindsets?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

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If you have any contributions to the discussion, feel free to comment.

7 Likes
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IMO cloning causes evolution.

Best example is vampire survivors. There are so many clones, and some added a unique spin to the existing mechanics

For example halls of torment or death must die.

I like “I do a game like… And add something to it”

12 Likes
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I always propose that “original work brings a game to life,” but yes, I see your point of view.

2 Likes
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I don’t see a problem.

“I want to make a game similar to game X”

Is just a slightly more specific version of

“I want to make a [insert game genre here]”

The only thing that really matters is how passionate they are about the project, not what the project actually is.

7 Likes
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I agree. People often think that modeling a game after another is just a cheap ripoff that will be pay-to-win and trash. But not all games are cash grabs.

2 Likes
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Making something truly original is almost impossible. Games get better when we can stand on the shoulders of giants.

Having said that, blatant rip offs do annoy me. Jumping on the me-too bandwagon will often take you on a path to disappointment. Not always, but quite often. I see so many bland copies of greats, that TBH just makes me think “Why would you do that? A complete waste of time”.

There is a difference between ‘using something for inspiration’ and ‘cloning, altering slightly and calling it your own’.

PS And this is again different than choosing a genre. Making Halo but with animals rather than aliens is not being inspired, it is copying.

10 Likes
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I do copy other games as a programming excersice. It is very helpful for me as a begginer because I can see how the final game should be but still have to think how things are done. The acquired knowledge is usually highly extrapolable to other projects.

I completely agree with these opinions.

9 Likes
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Truth is that if you do some market research and what players are looking for, you’ll find that doing something “completely unique” will likely fail, but sticking to something people already know will “work”. For a first few projects I always recommend making something “safe” and stick to known things, and do what players are looking for / what sells the most, and once you have more experience and a semi decent income, THEN do something more unique and exciting. But just my opinion and what worked for a few of my friends.

2 Likes
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Throughout my career as a software engineer (especially at the beginning), cloning other projects has always been something that made me understand and apply different concepts better.

I’m not talking about blindly following clone tutorials, but really trying to do it even with the help of them.

This way, mainly through repetition, it becomes much easier to fix what you already know and put into practice something you are learning without having to go through the entire discovery process of a new project, specially if you a re a newcomer.

Of course, commercially speaking I don’t think it’s a good thing in the medium and long term, but it depends on each person.

9 Likes
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I’ve noticed that a lot of indie devs, especially beginner devs, adopt the mindset of “I’ll make a game that’s similar to [Game Name].” Regardless of the quality of the result

This is a bit vague but taking this as:
“Is it a good idea for a novice game developer to make a game that implements established mechanics?”, then I’d say absolutely yes, cause that’s how humans learn.
Further, as a lot of other people already said, through re-creating (not copying) these mechanics, you gain better understanding on game design in general, and this in turn can inspire you to change things up to put your own twist on established mechanics.
That’s you get innovation.

Put simply: you can’t have the next Michelin-star chef if you don’t let them learn how to make Omelettes first. :smiley:

8 Likes
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but here’s the thing… what is a ripoff???

If you say that having the same mechanics of another game, then it’s a game in the same genre…

Otherwise, we would need to call every single game under the Souls-like genre as a ripoff of Demon/Dark-Souls… even BloodBorne, that is exactly the same thing under the Noir theme with a gun to “parry”.

The same would go to all those games under the Metroidvania…

From my view, a ripoff is more clear on mobile and very simple games, such as Flap Bird, where you do 100% the same thing, changing basically the sprites.

I honestly don’t see a problem with Ripoffs. Especially if you are learning…

I’m currently working on a prototype of a airport manager in 3D… I’ve played a lot of Airport CEO, and saw some stuff of Sim Airport… and both covered pretty much everything I can think of this theme, so I would be doing only a ripoff if I don’t bring anything new to the table? I want to make some stuff a bit different, but not that different that you would call it NEW…

In the end, it’s just a matter of consumers… does not matter if there’s a bunch of 50 shades of Call of Duty… you either buy or not.

And from a business point of view, it’s a matter of how many people are you going to reach and what are you offering them. Risky moves are more rewardable but the fail is also big(Concord is there as proof). Being conservative, might give you less money, but is more manageable.

Imagine if the Super Meat Boy had failed… Those 2 guys worked their asses, burnt all the money they had… and they had experience before…They could had been bankrupted.

That’s why every single indie game company I’ve seen always says to know your market, keep scope as simple as possible. Then… when you have revenue enough, then you risk. And even if the risk paid of, you don’t risk again right away. You keep on small scopes, build some money, then take another risk…

3 Likes
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@boom.fish.blocky

Are you talking about games that are made to be released or that are purely for learning programming/fun?

1 Like
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Cloning is unwise.

Unless you fully understand why the original concept worked in its entirety, you could attempt to clone it and fail miserably.

For example. Take Wolfenstein 3D, a leader of the FPS genre. Two games tried to clone it, without really understanding why it was so well-liked: Corridor 7: Alien Invasion and Nitemare 3D. Both of these games had fancier graphics, more enemy and weapon variety, had greater sound and music variety, but yet were terrible games hardly remembered to this day.

Main reason these two failed was:

a) Corridor 7 was dark. Like really dark, and some levels were pitch dark. And you needed to fulfill a specific kill percentage to proceed to the next floor, and this made the game extremely hard.

b) Nitemare 3d was hard as balls. The easiest gameplay setting was roughly equivalent to Wolf3D on Death Incarnate. It was also more mazelike and harder to navigate than Wolf3D, which artificially made it harder than it needed to be.

Both these games tried to clone Wolf3D, without understanding it, and despite having more of everything and more attention to visual and audio improvements, they ultimately failed.

Then you have games that are created as sequels to an original masterpiece, that also failed. They tried to clone all the elements they thought they understood and removed the elements they felt were unnecessary but turned out to be critical. ie Majesty 1 vs Majesty 2.

So if you are going to clone a game, you really need to understand why it did well and what its actual shortcomings are… and well, that takes a veteran game developer to figure that out, so beginners shouldn’t really attempt it. The exception being if you don’t intend to make a profit on it. Then go ahead, as someone will likely enjoy it, even if it costs only a few dollars.

For example, Space Killer tries to innovate on some aspects of the Vampire Survivors genre with its own spin on things. It doesn’t do it well, but it can be enjoyable, especially as it doesn’t cost too much.

5 Likes
15

Any, including commercial ones and tech demos.

16

As someone who is doing some game design in a more “hobby” fashion:
I’ve written a few tabletop RPG systems, and I’m currently working on a small indie videogame.
IMO what you will experience is that even if you don’t want to clone some game, you will almost assuredly use some of the mechanics that were used in other games in that genre.
Does it count as “cloning”? I think we people just simply concieve similar ideas, and if your goal is not to directly rip off a given mechanic, you shouldn’t lose your sleep at night over your game being “unoriginal”

2 Likes
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Cloning and taking inspiration from things are quite different.

For example:
You create an original Bob Ross painting using the exact same method as Bob Ross did with his wet on wet technique.
VS:
You create a painting similar to Bob Ross’s style, but, you modify it by painting with an acrylic paint first, but you don’t let it dry, before placing the oil paints on next. He always would let the acrylic painting dry completely then use liquid clear with the oil paints. And you decide to not use natural brushes, but work with synthetic brushes instead (BR never explained why natural brushes were essential, but empathized continually to use them)

With one, your painting follows the same exact steps as Bob Ross, while the other is inspired by his method, but you’ve made significant changes to the process, that its effectively a new method.

Its like the difference between stealing someone’s video on youtube and using fair use to take parts of it to create your own video with.

Same can be said of tabletop games. You can make a game system super similar to D&D, DW, or DCC, or you can take elements from each of them to create your own system.

2 Likes
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All this talk… look what showed up to me on Youtube lol (But this is not even a ripoff… it’s a steal, for sure)

It’s 3 months old, but it showed up only yesterday to me

3 Likes
19

Well that’s fucked up, but that’s not really the same as making similar games. It’s fine enough to imitate a game design if you’re basing it on nothing but the end product (99% of FPS games are technically doing just that).

A huge part of creating art for many artists (not just game devs) involves selectively stealing ideas, for instance lets say there’s a single specific feature in a single specific game you really like, you might steal that idea (rather than the whole game), and then repeat that for maybe 5 or 6 different games, the end result will be so different that not very many people will be able to realize that you stole those ideas from somewhere else.

Another example would be vampire survivors, they just stole the entire game design of another game wholesale but built more upon it than the original game did. Their whole success was built on the back of another game dev who wasn’t as good at marketing as they were, but they technically only stole the idea so they’re good, their mistake wasn’t stealing the idea, their mistake was stealing all their ideas from one game rather than several so it wouldn’t be so obvious.

But stealing assets and code directly that’s not even in the same ballpark, that’s a straight up crime depending on how it’s licensed. Terry Brash isn’t wrong about one thing though, it does happen all the time. Big software companies are notorious for stealing open source GPL licensed code and closing up the source thinking nobody will be able to tell (or just not caring); as just one example. Nvidia and Microsoft notably have done it quite a bit.

Many big companies also just steal straight up copyrighted assets such as artwork, do some minor editing and try to rebrand it.

If you release something on the internet, someone will try to steal it.

1 Like
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This is not just common in video games, it’s common in all forms of art. And not just rookies do it, veterans do it too. Everyone does it, all the time, whether they admit it or not. There is no form of culture that is completely unique. Everything requires some degree of appropriation.

1 Like
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This is a normal approach to ideas and development, I think, you just need to understand whether a person is inspired by the game and wants to add something of their own to the idea or whether they want to copy and hope for recognition. The very fact of such a mindset is definitely not something bad