The term "New Game" usually means that you might expect a different experience from a new product. Nevertheless, the tem in the video game industry very rarely means that it is an entirely new concept. Most of the games we can obtained that are "New" are following a specific formula or sequence of events that we are already familiar with.
For example First Person Shooters (FPS) you know that of course you will have to shoot your way through the game, but there are many things that have been done that have renewed the genre since Wolfenstein 3D. Great examples of excellent landmarks for the genre are Call of Duty 4 and the Halo series.
In the early years of MMORPG development not many developers worried about similar games popping out, because it was just very expensive to take on a project like a MMORPG and there was not enough demand for online multiplayer games.
Recently, Maplestory one of the games with one of the largest communities has seen a very similar game come into the market. I have never played Maplestory but I tried the alleged clone to see what was my experience like.
The Experience
While entering WindSlayer I had a mindset that I was entering a game which deeply resembled an already existing one, but I tried to keep my mind open. The art made me remembered Lunia a little bit, then I went on, created my character and started playing. I didn't go to far before being annoyed by the extreme lag, which was awkward because I can play other 3D MMOs with no lag or FPS problems and yet I was getting killed by "pupu" monsters because of the lag.
I intended to play both games, but the MapleStory client is 833 MB compared to 272 MB of WindSlayer.
Besides the gameplay point-by-point comparison differences that you find between similar games, there are also other non-feature differences that I've found.
"Copycat games" tend to
Be smaller in size than the parent game.
Have tighter knit communities.
Be easier to understand because they are a simplified version.
Run faster.
I had a taste of this when I sampled Last Chaos first and then learned about the existence of Lineage II, it was a very different, yet similar experience. Last Chaos was like playing inside a shoebox, and Lineage II was like a world so large I needed a jet to go to the next town. The classes were very similar and the terms of the items were almost identical. I felt like a kid riding a bicycle after years of training in the tricycle.
Later I became frustrated because finding another player was considerably harder because of the size of the world, when in comparison I could meet 15 new people in the same hour in Last Chaos. Also I could run many CPU and RAM intensive programs while running the lighter game than with Lineage II.
I came to the conclusion that what I really needed was a different experience, maybe a different genre, or a different theme to the game, the same experience with better graphics and a bigger world was in the end the same game, the same goal, and more complicated terms.
Here is a video of my first minutes in WindSlayer
Nobody Copies Losers
If your work it not successful then most likely nobody is going to be tempted to copy it. It happens everywhere, artist copy other artists, governments spy on other governments, and commercially everyone has to trademark their brand or else they can say goodbye to their profits.
Some companies do not want to take risks and rather go with some conservative formula than try to amaze their clients, and that is easily noted in our games. Some aspects such as gameplay are not copyrighted but that doesn鈥檛 mean that copying them movement by movement is a good idea. Because if it's out there then we want something different to what we already know or else stick to what we know is a sure fun time.
Introducing new innovating themes, features, stories or even a new genre hybrid is a big financial risk. And small companies are less likely to take the risk.
Big Boys Do it Too
Have you seen the comparison between World of Warcraft and Warhammer Age of Reckoning? if not I strongly suggest you do. Because even if we try, the similarities are too many not to conclude they influenced each other in some way or the other.
Try to deny it or not, GamesGarage is launching WAR knowing WoW would be the main adversary for their market share, because their product is very similar, and they will be heavily compared to WoW and its past and future expansions.
Crossing the Line
Okay so maybe Avocado Entertainment launched WindSlayer that is very similar to MapleStory. You know what the worst part is? They deliberately copied the nexon website, I realized what the site looked so familiar. I play Mabinogi so I visit the Nexon site regularly, enough to notice this "extremely similar appearance of the site".
