TIGSource Forums

Hey guys,
What do you think, is borrowing ideas plagiarism? Is it wrong to take a
few core ideas from someone else's work and implant it in yours?

Let's say if i were to create 'something like Minecraft' that is visually the same
(everything is made out of blocks) but with a lot of original ideas
in it, with a lot of differences. Would you say that it's just
'that type of game' and not stealing? Could i say that
I were greatly inspired by the game but had no
intention of stealing the original idea?

Would like to hear your opinions  :gentleman:

I think 'stealing' ideas is fine.  I don't think ideas can be owned anyway.

I sort of like Cactusquid's view on the concept. If you're going to ripoff an idea, at least try to make it better than the original.

I don't think there's anything wrong with taking an idea that could've been executed better and refining it.

But if your game is worse than the original, then, well...

That's an interesting point of view, but still I wouldn't feel alright if,
by any chance, the game I made overshadowed the 'original' one.

Why not? if you made a better game, thats all there is to it. All games are all reusing the same ideas, mostly, anyway. For instance, you don't blame notch for making a 1) open ended 2) sandbox/building 3) first person 3d game with 4) Zombies. But he managed to take those commonly used elements and make something that is fun (well, lots of people find fun). I feel like its not too different a concept here.

Don't forget Minecraft is heavily "inspired" by Infiniminer.  ;)

Also, I don't think there's anything morally wrong with "stealing" ideas from another work as long as it's not a carbon copy. And even for  that there are exceptions, like not doing it for profit and/or receiving the original author's permission. Hell, just to give you one example, if people hadn't "ripped off" the core concepts of Super Mario Bros, some of the best games ever wouldn't exist.

I don't think you can "steal" ideas, stealing would mean taking away an idea from somebody leaving them with no idea. You could copy an idea, yes, but steal it? Nah.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.

— Jim Jarmusch

Does "borrowing" an idea means you give it back when you're done with it? ???


I don't see anything wrong with building upon existing ideas. It's how this industry and pretty much any other human activity progresses.

I'm surprised that others seem to be fine with this too, given how much rage those "Someone ripped off X" threads contain.

There's a difference between stealing/borrowing some ideas from a game and outright cloning it...

I kind of agree with Nifflas' perspective on it. There's nothing wrong with taking an idea and executing it in your own way, changing things that you feel should be changed. But completely ripping off an idea without changing it is another story.

What about open source clones like FreeCiv and OpenTTD?

You seem to be forgetting that this is exactly what Minecraft did.

Ideas are free.

Picasso's quote describes this best.

"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."

By this, I take that he means that a bad artist just directly copies the other, and doesn't improve, or even makes it worse; it's thus only seen as a rudimentary 'copy' of the original. But a good artist makes the original idea their own idea, 'stealing' it, by making it so much better.

Basing your idea on something else, or taking another idea and building from it, or being inspired by a single aspect of an idea... these are all fine. Just don't directly COPY the entire thing. Always put yourself into it.

Argh! Flashbacks!

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=10741.msg331119#msg331119

Ideas WANT TO BE free!

If you are really a bad buglar you will get caught and people will point how it is a copy of the original game ; ) .

I like this quote.

wow haven't been here a day and all this posts came up  :) thank you guys
Yes, I agree with everyone. It is plain wrong to just blatantly copy an idea as in
the nifflas' case. And yes, I forgot that Minecraft is a spiritual successor to
Infiniminer, so I guess my question was already answered before I even asked it  :)

Good artists steal, Bad copy -> I like that one  :)
yes, inspired ideas must improve or take a turn, and one should
always put themselves in it - that's true.

I also like that Jim Jarmusch quote very much, thank you for that, guillermo.

Thanks for all your thoughts, it means a lot to me.

Might as well start working on "Craftmine" *walks away ignorantly*   :tearsofjoy:

 :gentleman:

Originality is a facade. Blizzard hasn't released a completely new idea in 18 years. Their games are excellent because they look to their competitors and take what works and leave what doesn't. Zynga is very similar in the casual game space, well more so now that they realized they can't directly rip things off anymore, but I digress.

Personal credo.

The creative process consists of the evaluation of sporadic recombinations of familiar information.  This happens at a very fast pace, and hundreds of ideas are tossed for each that is acted upon.

What we create is simply a permutation of what we see; of what is familiar to us.  Therefore, it's only to be expected that familiar elements will pervade throughout.  Yet, as an individual, coherent creation grows in scale, it increasingly develops a character of its own. As the creative process functions more and more within a single enclosing concept, that concept becomes individualized regardless of its constituent parts.  That individuality, then, extends to cover all elements within it.

So it isn't a matter of how much we borrow, or how we choose what to borrow, but of how much of our own ingenuity--our own creative process--we apply to the formation of our idea.

you don't have to borrow ideas. you can steal them. you just need to be the one with the bigger gun. :gentleman:

(http://home.swipnet.se/~w-12947/Gfx/AoD/army15.jpg)

Copy... Steal... I'm the one with the gun.

I'm fine with using ideas and having people use my ideas. It's kind of self regulating anyway. If someone makes a better version then they deserve the glory for making a better game and if they just carbon copy it then noone would really care if they can get access to the orignal.

it feels weird, but south park made a pretty good point about ideas being used over and over again.
we wouldn't have almost anything we see now without some ideas being borrowed here and there. even if several almost direct clones were made here and there.

Given the fact that the formula for success is idea^execution, I think people guard their ideas too closely.

Not to mention, if you think about the real big technological successes (Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc.)... none of them are new ideas, just good execution.

As a side note I'm actually working on a website where me and people that are willing can post their game ideas. I'll be pushing a couple soon and I hope to get everything public that I'm currently not working on or plan to work on within the next few months. Let them breathe I say.

"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
- Pablo Picasso

This only applies if we're thinking in terms of "big ideas" or general concepts though. Those are of course dime a dozen, especially if we're talking about videogames, and in my experience, people who are paranoid about others "stealing" their ideas are the ones who haven't made anything themselves and think having an "awesome concept" for a game amounts to some kind of unique and special talent.

However, I believe that the sum of "smaller" ideas, the specifics and low-level creative decisions, is what ultimately matters. Once you've worked out an overarching concept, there are usually hundred of thousands of possible ways to approach its execution and choosing the "right" one (or one of the right ones) out of those is laying the foundation for a good game.
 :wizard:

I agree, this is a good quote. If you make something really interesting that is difficult for others to replicate, then that's where the real value in something is. Everything is copied off of something else.