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[Alex May]

He's saying that Energy Harvest is a rip off of Auditorium, which is blatantly is.

[Mipe]

Oh, right, there I was wondering if they really made Auditorium. Glad to see I just misunderstood. But yeah, blatant rippers.

Notice how these are Flash games. It seems that they are somehow ripping original Flash games and reverse-engineering them, then changing the content with own. I wouldn't be surprised if you compared one and other to find most of lines being basically the same.

Not a suggestion, reverse-engineering copyrighted games is a bad thing to do, I am just speculating.

[Alex May]

Trundle's a rip of Night Game/Night Sky (and not Tumbledrop) which isn't flash... and neither is Tumbledrop made in flash

Still, it's completely possible to (at least partially) reverse engineer flash afaik, some game maker games I think, and some C#-based games (you can reverse engineer Eufloria pretty easily for example - it's neither encrypted or obfuscated), so I bet it has happened before.

[Mipe]

Yeah, sorry, I was thinking about Tumbledrop when I was typing all that. My brains and fingers are totally out of sync. Which game was the ripoff of Tumbledrop again?

(Oh yeah, Unity game, not Flash. They both are played in browser, so hard to tell a difference if it wasn't for that Unity logo.)

[Alex May]

Yeah, it's hard to tell. There are multiple Tumbledrop ripoffs, some Flash and one iPhone one that I'm not sure got approved.

[Widget]

Not adding anything, but just to say this makes me (aswell!) sick. And no, not just because someone's ripping off Nifflas 

Ripping off a "mainstream" game (hello! FF7 NES edition) is kinda pathetic, but deliberately ripping off an indie developer (who's only asked money for two of his games... one of which is yet to be released) is deeply pathetic and thoroughly poor-spirited.

[s0]

Ripping off a "mainstream" game (hello! FF7 NES edition) is kinda pathetic

That's not a ripoff, it's a remake (or rather demake). There's no way anyone's going to confuse it with the original.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

So Mobile Bros are just an outfit to take games and make dodgy knock-off versions?
Look at this horrible thing:



So I'm curious as to what the plagiarist defence force here thinks that Mobile Bros are bringing to the table. They're not designing games, and they're not doing anything with in terms of art. Nifflas unknowingly did the art in Trundle, and I bet even those pegs were stolen. They're just making horrible versions of other people's games.

If you're influenced by something then you should show some respect and steer clear of the same results.

[Problem Machine]

Yeah I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when I thought it was just one game, but it being coincidental gets exponentially less plausible with each ripoff they release, and they seem to have several. So, yeah, this is shitty, and will require justice sodomy to rectify.

[nikki]

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal. (Pablo Picasso)

And he's done his share of stealing of idea's, copying other less-known artists style and becoming very rich and very famous with it

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal. (Pablo Picasso)

And he's done his share of stealing of idea's, copying other less-known artists style and becoming very rich and very famous with it

I despise seeing this (unconfirmed) quote wheeled out as an smug excuse for laziness and plagiarism.

[moi]

Videogames are an art form, and "heavy inspiration" happens all the time in art, have you seen a zombie movie? All zombie movie aer basically the same,  and yet they don't stop releasing new ones all the time.
The copier guy is full of shit, and his game is probably the equivalent of a B movie, but I wouldn't "call the lawyers" on him.
Also Nicalis should stop making buzz and hype and work faster on their games.

[nikki]

i despise people wheeling out accusations and non-facts because of their own lazyness.

i mean give it a go on google, you'll find it confirmed and furthermore stolen of others who said it before him.(ts eliot, and i. starvinski i believe)

well because iv'e already had to write this i've took the time and did all your work aswell
Google

good luck with it!

[Christian Knudsen]

I believe the point is that Picasso still had a crap load of talent despite copying ideas and styles. Mobile Bros not so much, it would seem.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i always interpreted that quote as someone making fun of the so-called great artists of the time; i.e. i think the point of that quote is that famous or successful artists steal from unknown ones, all the time, and that it's not a good thing

and yeah, the plagiarist defense squad is kinda bizarre to me, but usually it's just people arguing for the sake of arguing who didn't actually compare the two things closely and see how much was copied; a recent discussion of yoko kanno's plagiarism and cas's 'but is it newsworthy?' thread are other examples

of course, something like 30% of college papers are plagiarized in whole or in part (as in copied sentences and paragraphs word for word) according to a study i saw once, so when plagiarism is *that* common in the general population it's not surprising you'd have a lot of people defending it

either that or they can't make a clear mental distinction between new expressions of common ideas and copied expressions, and group the two together as if they were the same. seeing a picture of a dinosaur eating a robot and drawing your own version and calling it your own is fine, tracing that drawing and then claiming it as your own isn't

[Christian Knudsen]

Actually, reading some of the links that nikki linked to (and didn't read himself, it would seem), it seems to mean that an immature artist will simply copy another work, whereas a mature artist will "steal" it to take it to a new place. Here's the third link on the Google results:

http://www.businessofdesignonline.com/picasso-good-artists-copy/

So, yeah, it would be a good idea to try to understand the meaning of a quote before using it in a discussion.

[s0]

There's still a difference between plagiarizing a certain portion of another work (which is what most of that Yoko Kanno stuff seemed to be) and making a carbon copy.

[team_q]

What's with all these ad hominum attacks, I thought you guys were better then that!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i don't think there's a difference between copying a paragraph word for word and using it in your book and copying an entire book, the difference is only of degree, not type. plagiarism is plagiarism regardless of how much you copy.

also, i didn't mean what i wrote as an ad hominem attack, i meant it as a defense of the plagiarized defense squad -- i.e. i'm saying that the distinction between copying something word for word and copying an idea isn't an obvious distinction, it's a fine distinction that takes a lot of experience to understand. we aren't born knowing the difference, a lot of people actually don't see any difference between copying an idea and copying an implementation of an idea, even though there is a difference. i don't think it's insulting merely to say that people differ in how fine their distinctions are.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Eric, out of interest, do you think Mobile Bros's approach to game development is okay? What do you think they are bringing to games?