if he had a list of more specific things cloned, and side-by-side comparison shots, that'd be a stronger case

Let's just pretend I actually did this and you realized you were wrong and you apologized and said you were sorry that ea did such a mean mean thing.

I was actually really excited about Afrika... I wish it had been reviewed better.  Games like that can expand the audience for me... people interested in animals, outdoor stuff... I want more of those people to exist!

Yes, EA's version will even likely be better than mine.  But if it were different, at least we could both exist.

the one that seems like cloning is "the minigame with the zebra uses purple and yellow "daisy-like" flowers that are almost identical to the ones in Venture Africa" -- the rest seem like they could be coincidences

Tough audience...

I'll update when there are more details available about their game.  I bet I'm right.

Like I said before, if they wanted to make an ecosystem game about african animals, fine, that's great.  But if they do that and directly copy all of the core mechanics and also include touches that directly resemble my game, that's where I think they've crossed an ethical line (not a legal one, mind you).

Viva Pinata was an awesome ecosystem game that didn't cross any of those lines.

And honestly, is it not fair for me to be annoyed given the circumstances?  I'm not exactly calling for a riot, I just don't like them.  EA is icky.  They touched me.  That's gross.

Ah, well that's actually a good point then

i haven't played either game, but from looking at the videos it seems this is more a case of cloning an original genre which had only one person's games in that genre rather than cloning a game. sort of how kudos was with the sims. or light of altair with civilization. or cute knight with princess maker.

Uuuh, thanks for your opinion?

Cloning probably isn't the best word, since it's not a carbon copy, obviously.  But it does appear they've ripped off some ideas, and given my distaste for them, it feels like I just woke up next to a sweaty frat boy and I don't remember what happened last night.

On the other hand, you could try actually playing my game and then providing your opinion.

EDIT: and I say that flippantly because I bought your game asshat

Agreed... I really hadn't planned on fighting anything... it just pissed me off so I wanted to post about it.  This seemed to be a good place to sympathize with fellow indies

For the record: From what I can see here, I don't think anything they are doing is copyright infringement.

Yes, 5 years ago I worked for TKO Studios as a lead programmer, our main source of income was a nubmer of generally shitty EA contracts: we did Medal of Honor: Breakthrough, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, and the multiplayer portion of Goldeneye: Rogue Agent.  For two of those at the end of the dev cycle, I spent 4 months each in the EALA offices with no weekends off and quite a few all-nighters.  They were basically slave driving us in the middle of the whole EA_Spouse debacle.

After TKO imploded quite a few people went to work for EA.  One of those people was a producer who apparently is now working on SimAnimals: Africa.  He's a perfectly nice guy, and though I didn't work closely with him he certainly knows the stuff I've worked on since then, esp since a couple of the people that did art for Venture Africa also came from that company (a tech artist and an animator).

The big thing that WORRIES me is that this game is a freeform ecosystem sim game .  No one else has done that besides me (that I know of).  But that doesn't tick me off at all.  If that's where the similarities stopped, they would simply be competition.

But the devil is in the details.  The animals needs you can see on the left are food and water (same as Venture Africa), the minigame with the zebra uses purple and yellow "daisy-like" flowers that are almost identical to the ones in Venture Africa, the fact that the two gameplay features they tout are "control the ecosystem" or "control an animal" (in Venture Africa it was Create and Control, with the tagline "Be the Animal").  The environments they feature are "savannahs, jungles, river deltas and volcanic deserts" - the last level of the demo in Venture Africa is called "River Delta" and the last few levels of the game are set in the desert next to a volcano.  (the environments being similar might be a bit of a stretch, but the direct reference to "River Delta" makes me suspicious).  Lastly, it's a bit hard to interpret what the UI element in the upper right of the screen is, but it appears to be a population counter, which is the core of Venture Africa's gameplay and the same UI placement.

I haven't yet been in touch with the producer that I know over there.  Obviously I have no problem with sharing ideas, I just have no recourse when EA rips off a game of mine.  THe only thing that keeps game designers from cloning other designers' ideas is an unspoken code of conduct and gamer's desire for "new" stuff.  I'm really not asking them to pay me or to stop making their game.  I'm just hanging my head because the company that BROKE me and made me go indie is likely profiting from my ideas.

EDIT: yes, I'm aware of simLife obviously, but the free-form 3d aspect of the game puts it much more in the category of an RTS than an old square-based game like SimLife.

Yeah, in looking at the video more I think it probably wouldn't be obvious how similar the two are unless you've played Venture Africa.  As for as how unique the game is: so far as I know, no one had done a 3d sim game about wild animals and their ecosystems before Venture Africa.  Viva Pinata actually had a lot of similarities (and I thought it was great, and original).  But in reading into what's in the SimAnimals video, it's REALLY similar to my game.

And yeah, I'm hoping that this one follows the previous one in their series (SimAnimals), which was much more about Pets than ecosystems, though it really appears that this one has a lot of ecosystem stuff going on.

It is lucky that they are aiming for a market that's younger than mine.

I think I've finally made it.  EA is ripping off my first indie game, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, with SimAnimals: Africa.

Here's video of my game, Venture Africa:



(and the game download page if you are interested)
http://wildlifetycoon.com

Here's the recently released gameplay video of the EA game:
http://simanimalsafrica.ea.com

Ecosystems of african animals need food and water to survive and breed, purple and yellow "daisy" like flowers are some sort of gameplay element, their settings are incredibly similar to the settings in Venture Africa, you can either play with the ecosystem or control an individual animal from an overhead view. These guys straight out ripped me off, added kidsy graphics and some extra features on top.

What's worse is that I happen to know a producer on the team (I used to work with him at a studio that did contracts for EA before I started Pocketwatch).

Granted, it's been several years since Venture Africa came out, but it's still hard to swallow when I'm scrounging for pennies because of all the freakin game design research and prototyping I do.

Anyways, I know I don't post here often but I thought it might interest y'all folks.

This year created a lot of controversy regarding the judging because the finalists weren't as obviously impressive as the past 4 years.  There wasn't a single game that captured people's attention like Aquaria, Darwinia, Gish, Crayon Physics Deluxe, World of Goo, etc.  The games that won were mostly smaller experiences, reminiscent of the earlier days of the IGF.  I don't think the judging screwed things up, I just think this year's entries were a real departure from the last 4.

This paragraph sounds like you are bitter about something. I thought the nominated games were very good this year. It's easy to come up with games that argue against your list of "big experiences."

What Paul said.

I wanted to comment on the Coil vs Aether issue - Aether may indeed be a better game, but saying that you think Aether should have been nominated over Coil because it's "better" ignores the category that it was nominated for.  Coil was nominated for Innovation.  Is it more innovative than Aether?  I think so.  Was Aether a "better", more complete game?  I also think that's true.  Should Aether have been nominated for Innovation?  I don't think so.  Should it have been nominated for another category?  Perhaps.

The point is, you can't say the judging process is screwed up because Coil was nominated and Aether wasn't.  The argument to be had is whether Aether should have been nominated in another category.

As for significant misses in the IGF, I usually find the Tech category to miss a lot of the best games, largely because what the judges are trying to decipher is what's going on behind the curtain.  It's the only category that rewards a non-gamer-facing attribute.  I believe that category really could use a little rethinking.

This year created a lot of controversy regarding the judging because the finalists weren't as obviously impressive as the past 4 years.  There wasn't a single game that captured people's attention like Aquaria, Darwinia, Gish, Crayon Physics Deluxe, World of Goo, etc.  The games that won were mostly smaller experiences, reminiscent of the earlier days of the IGF.  I don't think the judging screwed things up, I just think this year's entries were a real departure from the last 4.

As for feedback, I know Simon and the IGF guys are trying to provide more feedback from judges because of popular demand, but I just feel that's not the point of the competition.  I love hearing it when I enter a game, but if the feedback creates controversy, I'd rather them cut it altogether than increase the load on the judges.

Venture Africa was in Walmart briefly (it did better in Target, Apple Stores, and a few other retailers).  Venture Arctic was in WalMart Canada, and may still be, I'm not really sure TBH.

I've posted the results of this little experiment on my blog

Interesting that making Venture Arctic free actually INCREASED revenue...

(subscribe if you wish)

You'll want to change the prefs.cs files, which are located in your c:/programdata/Pocketwatchgames/venturearctic dir if on vista, or c:/documents and settings/all users/programdata/pocketwatchgames/venturearctic on XP.

You should try the spouting blood cheat.  Glad your sister is enjoying it

Glad you enjoyed it!  Sounds like you "got it", not everyone does.  As for replayability, yeah, the game could use a few more meta-goals, special challeneges, stuff like that.  Hopefully the next one will have more of that stuff!  Thanks for the feedback...

Hahaha.  In my first game, Venture Africa, you have to have two animals *get together* to breed.  But the lions all have manes.  hmmmmm I think I need to retake biology 101.

Interesting game. Cheers for making it free. I can definitely see you took some care in making it satisfying and challenging to balance large ecosystems.

My rabbit utopia in the southern island quickly collapsed after I introduced too many predators to meet the raven quotas. Does breeding animals specifically for the short term strategy of killing them off during the winter for their seasonal energy make me a bad person?

Anyway, I think I found a few bugs. In the first location I decided not to move on to the second level after beating challenge 9. However, in the unlock menu the second level still remains locked. Also, if you click on skip season just as the seasons change, it skips the new season even though you clicked to skip the previous one.

Thanks Noyb!  Seems like the bug list never ends.  *sigh*